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I'm more interested on why people assume that it has to be creationism OR evolution.

There's no such thing as "creationism" in science. Science is merely an epistomology that stresses experimentation, prediction, data gathering, and objective analysis. The fundamentals of science is simply this: an hypothesis must be falsifiable, or it is merely conjecture and flights of fancy.

I can assert there are invisible pink unicorns all around us, helping us every day. There are only two way to prove this assertion: present all these pink unicorns, or create an experiment that tests for the *nonexistence* of pink unicorns, and have that experiment present negative results. (That's a double-negative, which is a positive. Don't do that in English.)

Also, the ideal scientist will not set out to "prove" or "disprove" an hypothesis. They set out in search of the truth of the matter. An hypothesis is merely one step on the way to that truth, and they set out to test that hypothesis. As soon as they attempt to "prove" a particular hypothesis, their interpretation of the data becomes biased and skewed. (For example, check out Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box.)

Evolution is a theory, yes; but in science, "theory" is a class of hypothesis that have passed experimentation. This means it has been backed up by evidence, not by personal belief or the assertions of ancient documents of questionable literal veracity. The basics of evolution by natural selection (generally what people mean when they talk about "evolution") have passed all tests so far. Since we can't easily directly test natural selection, these tests are mostly comprised of tests of the predictions and necessities of natural selection, such as the genetic relationships among species, or the filling-in of the fossil record.

The problem isn't a personal belief in creationism, or a higher being. (To have a creation, you must have a creator.) That is a very personal choice, and since there is no known way to prove or disprove the existence of a God, there is no way to prove or disprove creationism. And in this, I respect whichever side you choose.

However, to teach something that doesn't even rate the label of "hypothesis" as a competing theory to evolution is to ignore the fundamental philosophy of science: the doctrine of testability. This is why the proposition of teaching creationism in a science class is absurd.

Doing so would be a disservice to our children, our society, and our future.

The earth is round....
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flatearth.html

We'll never fly....
http://www.manwillneverfly.com/

We never went to the moon....
http://www.cen.uiuc.edu/~akapadia/moon.html

Gee.... This sounds awefully familiar.... Oh wait here...
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/26/131921 5&tid=126&tid=1

Again, I must respectfully disagree. However, because this is somewhat offtopic, I will restrict my disagreement to only your first point (concerning evolution), and if you wish to pick up the discussion, we can do so via email. (Unless the /. community doesn't really mind)

Ok. You said:

Now, we're talking about the equivalent of 6 billion bits. I don't care how many billions of years you give for things to evolve, you can't get to 2^6,000,000,000. The complexity simply exceeds the abilities of our brains to grasp.

Note that the assumption that things will just evolve on their own is a charitable one. If my '66 Wagoneer had done any evolving in the 40 years it's been around, it might get better gas mileage and put out less harmful emissions than it does. But only more newly designed vehicles have those features.

I agree with you that an organism needs to be designed to their environment to be able to produce the 6 billion bits, but I think you misunderstand evolutionary theory, because that's exactly what it advocates. Evolution is design, not randomness, as it is commonly misunderstood. Mutations and/or adaptations introduce new variants, and the pressures of the environment naturally select (i.e., design) the animal most fit for survival.

Let me give an example that shows how the mathmatics of cryptography do not apply to evolution. The analogy is admittedly oversimplified, so please don't take it beyond the point which I'm trying to make.

Ok. Say you've got 20 quarters - they represent the genes of a certain animal we're going to speed-evolve. Heads are good genes, tails are bad genes. According to probability, if you were to flip all the coins at once, you would have B^N (2^20) different possible combinations (about a million). Likewise, your chances of getting all heads (a.k.a., a designed animal), would be (50%)^20, or 1 in a million. It would take a lot of flips to get that gene combination!

However, that's not the way evolution works! Natural selection takes the "right" genes of a population and passes them on genetically to the next. If we wanted to "evolve" this quarter-gene-species, we would do the following:

1. Flip them all at once (1st generation).

2. Find all the heads, those genes are good and get passed on to the next generation, so they get moved aside (nautrally selected).

3. Re-flip all the remaining coins (next generation), and go back to Step 2.

You can easily see that it'll only take a few "generations" to get a completely designed gene structure!

That is a simplified analogy to evolution, but it is easily extendable. If you had 6 billion 4-sided dice (A,C,F,G), and you could roll all of them, and then select and pass on the ones that were "right", it wouldn't take you very long to come up with a perfectly constructed 6-billion-bit gene sequence.

Though I don't presume to be any judge of God's ways, what better way for the Creator to deliver a message about himself than to offer a part of him as a widely predicted and historically recorded sacrifice for his created humanity?

As a quick nod to your second point, I believe a better way to reveal oneself would be to not have any contradictions, bad science, absurdities, and cruelty in the same document as the good stuff. And if we were truly designed from the s

The problem is that when a bunch of folks get together and start making noise about how evolution is the devil and creationism should be taught alongside it in a science class, they mean Creationism, as in the Judeo-Christian belief. There's no scientific evidence *at all* for such a belief.

There *is*, however, a small mountain of evidence that proves evolution happens and that evolution is a viable means of speciation. There's a lot of really good reading on this topic (with references!) at TalkOrigins.

And just in case I'm not being abundantly clear on this point, evolution is a fact. It happens. We've seen it.

The problem with teaching anything other than evolution in a *science* class is that anything else *isn't science.* No matter what, creationist theories cannot be proven because they rely on faith. Faith is not evidence, nor is it proof, and that's what's conveniently forgotten by most folks in favour of teaching Creationism.

If they want to teach about different creation stories in a social studies class, great. I'd be all in favour of that too. It's Constitutional, it's a good exposure to other cultures, and it just seems well-balanced. But that isn't what the right-wingers are asking for. They want Judeo-Christian Creationism taught as a science, and that's just ridiculous.

p

I've lived in both places. Canada is just as fucked up as the States. (Probably get modded flamebait, but take a look at the facts, because the Truth hurts...)

- It's illegal to buy, get this, MILK (?!?!) from a dairy farmer. (Right now, you can own part of the cow, to get around this stupid law.)

- It's illegal for the farmer to sell his grain to anyone other than the Wheat board. A number of years back, there was a farmer who owned land on both sides of the East-West dviding line. He was fined $10,000+ when he tried to sell his WHOLE crop at the higher price that the Eastern Wheat board was paying.

- Hemp protein contains ALL 20 known amino acids including the 9 essential amino acids (EAAs) our bodies cannot produce, yet this *natural* plant is illegal to posess or grow?!?! (I'm NOT talking about the hallucinogen type. The US constitution was written on Hemp paper for Christ's sake.)

What's that old adage?

The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the republic.
Tactus.

--
The evolution & "supposed" pre-ancient history of man is a crock.
One of the many proofs that intelligent pre-historic civilizations existed long BEFORE man's ancient civilizations...
1. Progression of "apparent" history of "man" - Hominidae is 3 millions years old
2. Geological Time Frames perspective
3. A machined 3D relief map 120-million years old in a 1-ton stone, with inscriptions. WTF?!

It's a lazy Sunday and I'm a little bored, so I thought I'd respond to your post a little.

First off, it'd be nice if you were to include where you got your information. Most people don't have copies of the Journal of Gastroenterology lying about their house, from 1976 or otherwise. I imagine you instead got the Journal of Gastroenterology reference from here or some other creationist site without ever reading the primary citation yourself--this is disingenuous on your part. Second, you are salting your post with a demonstrably false and slanderous attack on scientists by accusing us of keeping the population ignorant of the appendix's role in the immune system, when it is clear that it was scientists who reported appendix functionality in the first place in academic and medical journals. Third, the appendix is indeed vestigial. Creationists are fond of redefining the word "vestigial" to be synonymous with "useless" but this is not the proper definition of the word in biology: "An organ, serving for two purposes, may become rudimentary or utterly aborted for one, even the more important purpose, and remain perfectly efficient for the other. Thus, in plants, the office of the pistil is to allow the pollen-tubes to reach the ovules protected in the ovarium at its base. The pistil consists of a stigma supported on the style; but in some Compositae, the male florets, which of course cannot be fecundated, have a pistil, which is in a rudimentary state, for it is not crowned with a stigma; but the style remains well developed, and is clothed with hairs as in other compositae, for the purpose of brushing the pollen out of the surrounding anthers. Again, an organ may become rudimentary for its proper purpose, and be used for a distinct object: in certain fish the swim-bladder seems to be rudimentary for its proper function of giving buoyancy, but has become converted into a nascent breathing organ or lung. Other similar instances could be given." This quote comes from chapter 13 of Darwin's Origin of Species from 1859. In my "Penguin Classics" edition published in 1985, the above quote is on page 429. All the way back to Darwin: vestigial does not necessarily equate to useless.

The human appendix appears to have an immunological function, albeit a nonessential one--removal of appendix has no ill effect and people have been born without the appendix at all. Regardless, we still correctly call it vestigial. We do so because of comparative anatomy: humans are classified as mammals and as primates, and so we compare the human appendix to structures found within other species. The human appendix is homologous to the end of the mammalian caecum, which normally functions in the digestion of cellulose, which is something that we humans cannot digest. Digestion is of course the primary function of organs in the digestive tract, so therefore the human appendix is vestigial even though it may have an immunological function. You are free to consider talkorigins biased if you wish, but it represents the scientific mainstream. They have an excellent article in their archives on anatomical vestiges with a hefty dose of discussion on the human appendix. I suggest that you read it so you know what the mainstream view of science actually is, not what the creationists like to claim it is.

As for the flagellum, you are badly mistaken on one major point (yet another reason to read up on evolutionary biology as written by biologists, not creationists). There is absolutely no requirement that the evolution of the bacterial flagellum requires that each step must be linked, directly or indirectly, to flagellar motility. For instance, it is now known that the flagellum is related to the type IV pilus (J Mol Microbiol Biotechnol. 2004;7(1-2):41-51). This page

It's a lazy Sunday and I'm a little bored, so I thought I'd respond to your post a little.

First off, it'd be nice if you were to include where you got your information. Most people don't have copies of the Journal of Gastroenterology lying about their house, from 1976 or otherwise. I imagine you instead got the Journal of Gastroenterology reference from here or some other creationist site without ever reading the primary citation yourself--this is disingenuous on your part. Second, you are salting your post with a demonstrably false and slanderous attack on scientists by accusing us of keeping the population ignorant of the appendix's role in the immune system, when it is clear that it was scientists who reported appendix functionality in the first place in academic and medical journals. Third, the appendix is indeed vestigial. Creationists are fond of redefining the word "vestigial" to be synonymous with "useless" but this is not the proper definition of the word in biology: "An organ, serving for two purposes, may become rudimentary or utterly aborted for one, even the more important purpose, and remain perfectly efficient for the other. Thus, in plants, the office of the pistil is to allow the pollen-tubes to reach the ovules protected in the ovarium at its base. The pistil consists of a stigma supported on the style; but in some Compositae, the male florets, which of course cannot be fecundated, have a pistil, which is in a rudimentary state, for it is not crowned with a stigma; but the style remains well developed, and is clothed with hairs as in other compositae, for the purpose of brushing the pollen out of the surrounding anthers. Again, an organ may become rudimentary for its proper purpose, and be used for a distinct object: in certain fish the swim-bladder seems to be rudimentary for its proper function of giving buoyancy, but has become converted into a nascent breathing organ or lung. Other similar instances could be given." This quote comes from chapter 13 of Darwin's Origin of Species from 1859. In my "Penguin Classics" edition published in 1985, the above quote is on page 429. All the way back to Darwin: vestigial does not necessarily equate to useless.

The human appendix appears to have an immunological function, albeit a nonessential one--removal of appendix has no ill effect and people have been born without the appendix at all. Regardless, we still correctly call it vestigial. We do so because of comparative anatomy: humans are classified as mammals and as primates, and so we compare the human appendix to structures found within other species. The human appendix is homologous to the end of the mammalian caecum, which normally functions in the digestion of cellulose, which is something that we humans cannot digest. Digestion is of course the primary function of organs in the digestive tract, so therefore the human appendix is vestigial even though it may have an immunological function. You are free to consider talkorigins biased if you wish, but it represents the scientific mainstream. They have an excellent article in their archives on anatomical vestiges with a hefty dose of discussion on the human appendix. I suggest that you read it so you know what the mainstream view of science actually is, not what the creationists like to claim it is.

As for the flagellum, you are badly mistaken on one major point (yet another reason to read up on evolutionary biology as written by biologists, not creationists). There is absolutely no requirement that the evolution of the bacterial flagellum requires that each step must be linked, directly or indirectly, to flagellar motility. For instance, it is now known that the flagellum is related to the type IV pilus (J Mol Microbiol Biotechnol. 2004;7(1-2):41-51). This page

> My point regarding herbivoires is that if we observe cattle are built for eating vegetation and we call them herbivoires, it doesn't mean they can't get the same sustinence from meat.

Yes it does mean exactly that. Take a look at Dr T. Campbell's studies. He is a bio-researcher for 40+ years, at Cornell.

> Words like "natural" don't fit into it...
Ugh, what do you think Cows have been eating for the past say, few million years?? They weren't cooking meat on the BBQ, mate.

How do you think Mad Cow Disease spreads? When the dead cows are ground up, and fed to other cows. It's a little hard to get, when they don't eat other animals.

> do you have a better idea as to how to dispose of the animal remains?
We never had a lot of dead animals, since they were for the most part healthy. If you have a lot of dying cows, you got bigger problems to worry about.

We usually buried them, so they could be natually broken down (bio-degradable), and replenish the soil.

Peace

--
The evolution & "supposed" pre-ancient history of man is a crock.
One of the many proofs that intelligent pre-historic civilizations existed long BEFORE man's civilizations...
1. Progression of "apparent" history of "man" - Hominidae is 3 millions years old
2. Geological Time Frames perspective
3. A machined 3D relief map 120-million years old in a 1-ton stone, with inscriptions. WTF?!

- Not an anonymous coward, just someone who is not creating an account, Mike Hopkins

- Not an anonymous coward, just someone who is not creating an account, Mike Hopkins

> Is that why the PS2 is an absolute horror to program for (as seen by the poor-looking games that come out on it)?

Partially.

It's a multi-processor machine - It has (only) 7 "cpus".

You think multi-threading is hard with 2 cpus?! Try keeping the EE (main cpu), VU0, VU1 (the 2 vector units, with 4K and 16K of RAM respectively, used for physics, and transorms, respectively), the GPU, and shuttingling data from the IOP to main ram, and IOP to the SPU, ALL in sync, *without* data stalls. Gee, you think this is trivial? ;-)

> Having Linux (which the PS2 does) doesn't seem to have made development any easier.
I'm not aware of any professional game developer using linux on the PS2. It already has it's own propiertary OS - you don't need a more bloated one. Every K counts, when you only got 40 megs total RAM.

You only have 4 megs of VRAM (video). After reserving memory for the screen (640x480), double-buffered, and a z-buffer, you only have ~ 2 megs left. Guess we'll have upload textures every bloody frame. Shit, how come we're out of main memory?! Fortunately none of the sound data has to even touch main memory.

> The developers that don't have a huge budget can't afford to make PS2 games, they flock to Xbox.
Dev kits are expensive whatever route you go.

One of the factors is that the XBox is way easier to develop fore. Most PC developers can easily get a handle on the 733 Mhz + GeForce 3.

--
The evolution & supposed pre-ancient history of man is a crock...
One of the many proofs that something intelligent existed long BEFORE man supposed came into being:
Progression of "apparent" history of "man" - Hominidae is 3 millions years old
Geological Time Frames perspective
A machined 3D relief map 120-million years old in a 1-ton stone, with inscriptions. WTF?!

A classic example of [potentailly] irreducible complexity is the bombardier beetle. It's a funky little critter that, when annoyed, shoots steam out its ass. The tricksy part is how it manufactures that steam without exploding.

The bombardier beetle has been used by creationists as an example of intelligent design, i.e., something this complex could not have evolved, but must have been created.

I fall on the evolution side of the fence, but, I have to admit, it's definately a thought exercise to imagine how this little dude developed his superpowers through evolution.

> Does anyone have any information on Lucy? Is there any reason to believe that it was a hoax?

See the talkorigins.org short article on Lucy.

Or perhaps it happens rather frequently!

link

As to specifics: Java Man was found with some other bones nearby, but the modern human bones also found by Dubois which are claimed to be in the 'same stratum' (the Wadjak skulls) were found 65 miles away in mountainous caves deposit, while Java man was found in river deposits. You also might want to consider Sangrian17, which was found on Java years later.

Piltdown man was indeed a hoax. This does not mean all such skeletons are, however.

The find of a tooth in Nebraska stimulated some art, but no one at the time claimed that the tooth made a complete Nebraska man. The picture which ran in the Illustrated London News had the following caption:

"Mr. Forestier has made a remarkable sketch to convey some idea of the possibilities suggested by this discovery. As we know nothing of the creature's form, his reconstruction is merely the expression of an artist's brilliant imaginative genius. But if, as the peculiarities of the tooth suggest, Hesperopithecus was a primitive forerunner of Pithecanthropus, he may have been a creature such as Mr. Forestier has depicted." (Smith 1922)

The discussion of Peking Man misses the point entirely. Even if they were killed in order to eat their brains(for which the evidence is sketchy) it does not rule out them being human ancestors... there have been human cannibals and there may have been hominid cannibals. It entirely ignores the physical characteristics of the skeletons, which is the interesting part- they aren't ape or monkey skeletons.

The bit about Lucy seems to have been invented out of whole cloth. There was no dramatic unveiling in 1982- I'm sure what event this might be a distorted account of. The actual bones are kept in the Paleoanthropology Laboratories of the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Casts of them have been available for some time, and they're definately bipedal... and certainly not those of a chimpanzee.

Your definition of 'shown false' does not agree with mine.

As to specifics: Java Man was found with some other bones nearby, but the modern human bones also found by Dubois which are claimed to be in the 'same stratum' (the Wadjak skulls) were found 65 miles away in mountainous caves deposit, while Java man was found in river deposits. You also might want to consider Sangrian17, which was found on Java years later.

Piltdown man was indeed a hoax. This does not mean all such skeletons are, however.

The find of a tooth in Nebraska stimulated some art, but no one at the time claimed that the tooth made a complete Nebraska man. The picture which ran in the Illustrated London News had the following caption:

"Mr. Forestier has made a remarkable sketch to convey some idea of the possibilities suggested by this discovery. As we know nothing of the creature's form, his reconstruction is merely the expression of an artist's brilliant imaginative genius. But if, as the peculiarities of the tooth suggest, Hesperopithecus was a primitive forerunner of Pithecanthropus, he may have been a creature such as Mr. Forestier has depicted." (Smith 1922)

The discussion of Peking Man misses the point entirely. Even if they were killed in order to eat their brains(for which the evidence is sketchy) it does not rule out them being human ancestors... there have been human cannibals and there may have been hominid cannibals. It entirely ignores the physical characteristics of the skeletons, which is the interesting part- they aren't ape or monkey skeletons.

The bit about Lucy seems to have been invented out of whole cloth. There was no dramatic unveiling in 1982- I'm sure what event this might be a distorted account of. The actual bones are kept in the Paleoanthropology Laboratories of the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Casts of them have been available for some time, and they're definately bipedal... and certainly not those of a chimpanzee.

Your definition of 'shown false' does not agree with mine.

As to specifics: Java Man was found with some other bones nearby, but the modern human bones also found by Dubois which are claimed to be in the 'same stratum' (the Wadjak skulls) were found 65 miles away in mountainous caves deposit, while Java man was found in river deposits. You also might want to consider Sangrian17, which was found on Java years later.

Piltdown man was indeed a hoax. This does not mean all such skeletons are, however.

The find of a tooth in Nebraska stimulated some art, but no one at the time claimed that the tooth made a complete Nebraska man. The picture which ran in the Illustrated London News had the following caption:

"Mr. Forestier has made a remarkable sketch to convey some idea of the possibilities suggested by this discovery. As we know nothing of the creature's form, his reconstruction is merely the expression of an artist's brilliant imaginative genius. But if, as the peculiarities of the tooth suggest, Hesperopithecus was a primitive forerunner of Pithecanthropus, he may have been a creature such as Mr. Forestier has depicted." (Smith 1922)

The discussion of Peking Man misses the point entirely. Even if they were killed in order to eat their brains(for which the evidence is sketchy) it does not rule out them being human ancestors... there have been human cannibals and there may have been hominid cannibals. It entirely ignores the physical characteristics of the skeletons, which is the interesting part- they aren't ape or monkey skeletons.

The bit about Lucy seems to have been invented out of whole cloth. There was no dramatic unveiling in 1982- I'm sure what event this might be a distorted account of. The actual bones are kept in the Paleoanthropology Laboratories of the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Casts of them have been available for some time, and they're definately bipedal... and certainly not those of a chimpanzee.

Your definition of 'shown false' does not agree with mine.

As to specifics: Java Man was found with some other bones nearby, but the modern human bones also found by Dubois which are claimed to be in the 'same stratum' (the Wadjak skulls) were found 65 miles away in mountainous caves deposit, while Java man was found in river deposits. You also might want to consider Sangrian17, which was found on Java years later.

Piltdown man was indeed a hoax. This does not mean all such skeletons are, however.

The find of a tooth in Nebraska stimulated some art, but no one at the time claimed that the tooth made a complete Nebraska man. The picture which ran in the Illustrated London News had the following caption:

"Mr. Forestier has made a remarkable sketch to convey some idea of the possibilities suggested by this discovery. As we know nothing of the creature's form, his reconstruction is merely the expression of an artist's brilliant imaginative genius. But if, as the peculiarities of the tooth suggest, Hesperopithecus was a primitive forerunner of Pithecanthropus, he may have been a creature such as Mr. Forestier has depicted." (Smith 1922)

The discussion of Peking Man misses the point entirely. Even if they were killed in order to eat their brains(for which the evidence is sketchy) it does not rule out them being human ancestors... there have been human cannibals and there may have been hominid cannibals. It entirely ignores the physical characteristics of the skeletons, which is the interesting part- they aren't ape or monkey skeletons.

The bit about Lucy seems to have been invented out of whole cloth. There was no dramatic unveiling in 1982- I'm sure what event this might be a distorted account of. The actual bones are kept in the Paleoanthropology Laboratories of the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Casts of them have been available for some time, and they're definately bipedal... and certainly not those of a chimpanzee.

Your definition of 'shown false' does not agree with mine.

As to specifics: Java Man was found with some other bones nearby, but the modern human bones also found by Dubois which are claimed to be in the 'same stratum' (the Wadjak skulls) were found 65 miles away in mountainous caves deposit, while Java man was found in river deposits. You also might want to consider Sangrian17, which was found on Java years later.

Piltdown man was indeed a hoax. This does not mean all such skeletons are, however.

The find of a tooth in Nebraska stimulated some art, but no one at the time claimed that the tooth made a complete Nebraska man. The picture which ran in the Illustrated London News had the following caption:

"Mr. Forestier has made a remarkable sketch to convey some idea of the possibilities suggested by this discovery. As we know nothing of the creature's form, his reconstruction is merely the expression of an artist's brilliant imaginative genius. But if, as the peculiarities of the tooth suggest, Hesperopithecus was a primitive forerunner of Pithecanthropus, he may have been a creature such as Mr. Forestier has depicted." (Smith 1922)

The discussion of Peking Man misses the point entirely. Even if they were killed in order to eat their brains(for which the evidence is sketchy) it does not rule out them being human ancestors... there have been human cannibals and there may have been hominid cannibals. It entirely ignores the physical characteristics of the skeletons, which is the interesting part- they aren't ape or monkey skeletons.

The bit about Lucy seems to have been invented out of whole cloth. There was no dramatic unveiling in 1982- I'm sure what event this might be a distorted account of. The actual bones are kept in the Paleoanthropology Laboratories of the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Casts of them have been available for some time, and they're definately bipedal... and certainly not those of a chimpanzee.

Your definition of 'shown false' does not agree with mine.

*yawn*

> BTW, as far as the other poster's point about creation theorists having no advanced degrees; i'd unfortunately have to agree that many DO in fact, have advanced degrees and serious publications to their names.

Not really that many, and even fewer have relevant advanced degrees. When the creationists presented a list of "50 scientists who question engineering" to the Ohio state school board a couple of years back, they had to dip into civil engineers and dentists to come up with a list of 50 people with advanced degrees who would sign their statement. Philip Johnson, the intellectual founder of the modern ID movment, is (IIRC) a retired professor of law. William Dembski, the guy who peddles bullshit about "complex specified information" and misrepresents the CS "No Free Lunch Theorem" actually has three PhD equivalents - Mathematics, Philosophy, and Theology. Michael Behe, the guy who pushes the irreducible complexity argument, is a biochemist - about the closest thing you'll find to a biologist in the whole lot. But when you get beyond those intellectuals (all associated with the Discovery Institute, a branch of the neocon Center for Renewal of Science and Culture), most of the leading creationists don't have any relevant degree at all, and several of the most prominent even have mail-order PhDs.

You can find more about this (and much else) at talkorigins.org."

Way too many people dissmiss the certainty of evolution because "theory" is in the name. Ronald Reagan was perhaps the most famous person to make this mistake, using the american vernacular refering to "theory" as somthing which is at a lower degree of confidence than a "fact". However within the scientific meaning of "theory of evolution", theory merely means the ideas which explain the facts. "Facts" can be considered to be the raw data which theories are built around.

Example: You walk into a dark room. It is your "theory" that someone has turned the lights out. It is a "fact" that is it dark. It is not a fact that someone has turned the lights out, even if your brother comes into the rooms and confessess to having done so. Facts are data, theories are explainations. A theory is NOT meant to mean "less than confident" fact.

So anyone who argues against evolution because it is "just a theory" is actually arguing semantics, and is making a fundemental gramtical error. There is no such thing as "just" a theory.

more information here

1. The calculation of odds assumes that the protein molecule formed by chance. However, biochemistry is not chance, making the calculated odds meaningless. Biochemistry produces complex products, and the products themselves interact in complex ways.
   For example, complex organic molecules are observed to form in the conditions that exist in space, and it is possible that they played a role in the formation of the first life [Spotts 2001].
2. The calculation of odds assumes that the protein molecule must take one certain form. However, there are innumerable possible proteins which give biological activity. Any calculation of odds must take into account all possible molecules (not just proteins) which might function to promote life.
3. The calculation of odds assumes the creation of life in its present form. The first life would have been very much simpler.
   
4. The calculation of odds ignores the fact that innumerable trials would have been occurring simultaneously.

1. The calculation of odds assumes that the protein molecule formed by chance. However, biochemistry is not chance, making the calculated odds meaningless. Biochemistry produces complex products, and the products themselves interact in complex ways.
   For example, complex organic molecules are observed to form in the conditions that exist in space, and it is possible that they played a role in the formation of the first life [Spotts 2001].
2. The calculation of odds assumes that the protein molecule must take one certain form. However, there are innumerable possible proteins which give biological activity. Any calculation of odds must take into account all possible molecules (not just proteins) which might function to promote life.
3. The calculation of odds assumes the creation of life in its present form. The first life would have been very much simpler.
   
4. The calculation of odds ignores the fact that innumerable trials would have been occurring simultaneously.

> Mormon archeological claims

See here.

> Christian claims to a global flood.

And here...

Is there room to do science without having any theory of the earth's (and universe's) origin?

Umm nope, any science done in ignorance (intentional or otherwise) or conditions preceding any experiments is bad science to say the least.

As to the age of lake, this is basically a very well educated guess, by taking core samples of the ice above and determining rate of ice growth or shrinkage and comparing against data from the same period, a guess can be made. If you want to check out info on carbon dating go here or for ice core dating try here.

Life has existed on earth 3.45 out of 4.55 billion years.

Nothing "evolves" through the process, merely "adapts".

Nope. This is one and the same thing. E.g. there is plenty of molecular evidence that the blood clotting proteins forked off of pancreatic digestive enzymes by means of gene duplication and mutation. In embryonic development, some muscle cells are chemically activated to turn into bone cells. Archaeopteryx is still a tell-tale example of a gradual transition between bipedal dinosaurs and birds.

Similarly, no code existed in nature for "micro-evolution" to "mutate" lungs, electrical impulse handling, circulatory systems, etc. Either there are properties to "micro-evolution" that have not yet been revealed, or some other (possibly related) mechanism must be responsible.

The first fossil traces of lungs consist of a pair of small pharyngeal sacs in Actinopterygii. They may have populated oxygen-depleted pools and supplemented their oxygen supply by "gulping" air like some extant fish species do. Any slight increase in pharyngeal skin surface area and volume would have been of value to them, even if it just consisted of two tiny sacs at first. Tissue sensitive to electricity is found even in the lowliest of critters. Vertebrate circulatory systems serve to speed up diffusion of oxygen and nutrients, and likely started out as a simple linear transport in chordates (the link between invertebrates and vertebrates).

For example, if humans lack the genome for an exoskeleton, and exoskeletons are "nature's selection" for space survivability, then the "micro-evolutionary theory" says that humans who live in space should eventually experience genetic mutations from which exoskeleton code will appear.

"All too often creationists spend their time arguing with a straw-man caricature of evolution."

Well put.

Natural selection is one of the methods (the other being sexual selection) by which all evolution (macro and micro) proceeds.

Mutation and genetic drift. Also, the term natural selection as Darwin used it included sexual selection (besides ecological selection). The term is used to distinguish these kinds of naturally occuring selection from intentional breeding, which is called artificial selection.

Nah, the earth is flat, see here , so you're wrong.

Before using loaded words like "guesstimate" and making sarcastic references to something being "gospel" don't you think it would be good to actually examine the logic involved? Your reference to carbon dating clearly points out that you haven't done that, so it's hardly fair for you to make such flippant remarks. Having a healthy dose of skepticism will often earn you respect in scientific circles, but a lot of people seem to think that abrupt dismissal of anything they don't understand under the guise of being a "free thinker" works just as well. The "I'm smarter than you because you blindly accept what scientists say while *I* choose to dismiss them without consideration" attitude doesn't make you look smart--it makes you look like a jerk.

You use Isochron Dating, which is generally a better way to date rocks anyhow as it measures the decay of multiple isotopes rather than just one.

Just a theory? You're right! However, you're also very, very wrong.

Regarding the quotes: fair enough. Quoting someone else's opinion on a subject is not proof of anything. We could both come up with quotes all day long that support our respective positions.

Regarding the primary source of your information: yes, I am familiar with the Talk Origins archive; your first two citations came directly from the same page, and the second two involve topics from that same page (I didn't look at all the bacterial flagellum articles to find the other specific articles you cited).

...the appearance of a totally new metabolic pathway for sugar metabolism in the genus Klebsiella is misleading; the pathway was not totally new and no mutation was shown to have occurred. At no time did the researcher point to a new gene and say "this was not here before." A previously unobserved trait was expressed and enhanced by "unnatural selection" in the artificial environment but in no way did the study show that the "new" ability to metabolize D-arabinose was the result of a beneficial mutation. It is against all reason that the one "beneficial mutation" that the researcher was looking for just happened by "faulty repair of genetic damage" or "copying errors," especially since bateria do not reproduce sexually.

...There are plenty of intermediate forms preserved in the fossil record. To name but a few; there are some beautifully preserved fossils of ammonites that show a progression of structures (the curved shells unwinding over millions of years), there are clear stages preserved in the development of flowers, and best of all, there is the evolution of mankind over the past few millions years - plenty of clear intermediate stages. A good website for the convinced skeptic is http://home.entouch.net/dmd/transit.htm, which shows the transition from fish to amphibian.

Wrong. it shows a creature that has some morphological similarities to fish and amphibians, quite a large difference. Taking a few similar forms and artificially arranging them to look like a transition does not mean they are transitional forms. The "progression of forms" you mention has another small problem; the "progression" is in many cases out of order in the fossil record. And the "transitional forms" of man were in many cases contemporaries of each other. The whole idea that organisms that are morphologically similar are therefore related is misleading in any case; is a platypus a transitional form between reptiles and mammals because it shares some morphological features with both? Of course not, and no biologist will tell you otherwise. Similar morphology does not indicate that any two species are related. As an example, a recent analysis of the genetic structure of different species of water fowl has revealed that the flamingo, while morphologically similar to the heron, crane, and spoonbill, is actually most closely related to the grebe (a small duck) than it is to any of the other wading birds.

By the way; the title of the page you referenced is "TRANITIONAL FORMS." Makes one call into question the thoroughness of the author, don't you think?

Then you say...There is no such thing as a 'nascent' organ in 'pre-functional form', and there never has been. At each stage, the change has to be of increased benefit to the organism. Evolution does not have the ability to look into the future and plan the construction of an organ.

I agree. However, the same page you cite categorizes the fins of Acanthostega as "half-evolved legs;" this shows his misunderstanding of the very theory he is espousing; as though evolution had legs in mind but was only halfway there. As for the heat-sensing pits of vipers; talk about a straw man! "Maybe" "someday" it "could" evolve into an eye; how is this a tr

• Descendant organisms are slightly genetically different from their parents
• over time, these changes, coupled with environmental and competetive pressures, create communities of organisms that do not interbreed
• these independently changing groups lead to new species and branches in the descendancy tree

Not that the evidence isn't also compatible with creators / designers... but those designers are not only plagarists, but very bad plagarists. Not only have they never surprised us with original code, the copies / plagarism also include copies of all previous copying errors (like the primates having an almost working- but for a few errors- version of vitamin C manufacturing. Yay scurvy: other mammals don't have to worry about it.)

As always, the talk.origins archive and website should have good info on this or related topics.

Is actually on a shaky foundation. The problem is that the early geologists used paleontologist opinions to date their strata, and paleontologists used strata to date their fossils.

Does anyone see a problem here?

The old "dating methods are circular" argument. Yawn.

In fact, some geologists are taking flak because they've discovered that the strata dating based on uranium isotope decay is fundamentally flawed; they're finding additional isotopes in the samples which indicate that at least some the "decay" isotopes present may have come not from the decay of uranium, but of other heavy metals also present - which have a much shorter half-life.

That doesn't mean that radioactive dating is "fundamentally flawed", it means that the presence of other isotopes has to be taken into account when calculating the age. Clue: this does not shift radiometrically estimated age of the Earth from billions of years to thousands.

As for the killing 80% of multicellular life - well, that's just speculation at this point - the number could up or down

It's an estimate based on how much life we see in the fossil record before and after the event -- the evidence that tells us there was an extinction in the first place.

The problem, as I see it, is that a certain group of people are trying to transform science - which is at best a tentative explanation, and quite frequently wrong - into a religion. They seek science as the ultimate authority in all matters, when such authority is specifically precluded by the use of the scientific method. Modern science is founded on the assertion that we don't know everything there is to know about the Universe

And now he trots out the old "science is religion" argument. Double yawn.

Scientists know that theories are never proven. That doesn't mean that we can't have a lot of evidence supporting a theory. Our theories of gravity could be disproven tomorrow, but that doesn't mean that we don't know an awful lot already about how gravity works; Newton and Einstein aren't going to be completely overturned, they just get subsumed into better theories.

Even given the current accepted age of the Universe, with the currently accepted mass of the Universe, there is simply not enough atoms nor enough time for even one useful protein molecule to stand a better than even chance of coming about through random interaction. A statistician could easily poke holes in the "random chance" model of life's beginnings.

That's certainly false, because a statistician doesn't have a model of how life arose. That's because we don't know yet how life arose yet. Nobody knows how to calculate the probability of life arising, let alone whether that probability is large or small. Certainly creationists produce all kinds of absurd "probability calculations", but none of them have anything to do with even our guesses of how life arose.

If you disagree, feel free to present such a calculation. (After all, it is trivial, right?)

Because it lacks empirical verifiability, abiogenesis isn't a valid scientific theory.

In what way does it lack empirical verifiability? People are experimenting all the time with abiogenesis mechanisms.

I hope you're not going to trot out the old "They haven't created life in a lab" argument. We haven't created stars in a lab either, but that doesn't mean that our theories of star formation are unscientific. They make many predictions, which have been tested and found to be in accordance with the theories.

Even were we to accept abiogenesis on faith, it still provides no deeper insight regarding

The problem is that the early geologists used paleontologist opinions to date their strata, and paleontologists used strata to date their fossils. Does anyone see a problem here?

No. That was then, this is now.

And the dating using radioisotope decay is fundamentally flawed because it assumes that the relative concentrations of isotopes have remained fixed throughout history.

Wrong.

the valid questions and logical problems inherent in abiogenesis are simply left unaddressed by the current theories.

As has been said, evolution does not required abiogenesis.

an Old Earth is required for an extremely small probability to become a reality.

No, an Old Earth is "required" because only an Old Earth fits all the data, unless God is deliberately trying to trick us.

there is simply not enough atoms nor enough time for even one useful protein molecule to stand a better than even chance of coming about through random interaction.

Prove it. (Hint: You're wrong)

A statistician could easily poke holes in the "random chance" model of life's beginnings.

Why should I ask a statistician about biology. And anyway, it's not just "random chance". There are laws of chemistry and physics which take a lot of the randomness out of it. It's not like you just throw atoms into a bucket and shake it, hoping they stick together.

It is far more plausible to posit that we were created by God than to suggest life came about by a highly unlikely chain of events for which the exact mechanisms are not understood.

Oh? So you understand the mechanisms of God then? What was His procedure for creating life then? Be specific. For a followup question: What created God?

The difference, however, is that the first does not claim to be science, yet is logically sound,

Positing the existence of a magical being to explain what you don't understand isn't logic. It's wishful thinking.

whereas the second does claim to be science, but is neither logically sound, nor proper science.

Au contraire. Evolutionary biology is backed by 150 years of painstaking research. They didn't just put it out of the air, you know.

Because science is the authority for their religion, they cannot accept any science which rejects their pre-conceived notions about the existence of God.

Science doesn't address the issue of the existence of God at all. God, by definition, is a supernatural entity and so is outside the realm of scientific inquiry.

When scientists try to explain the origin of life as a series of highly unlikely events for which their is no understood mechanism, it calls into question the credibility of all science.

Does not follow.

It would be better to say, "we simply don't know", than to suggest something which is neither empirically verifiable nor logically sound.

Take your own advice.

The problem is that the early geologists used paleontologist opinions to date their strata, and paleontologists used strata to date their fossils. Does anyone see a problem here?

No. That was then, this is now.

And the dating using radioisotope decay is fundamentally flawed because it assumes that the relative concentrations of isotopes have remained fixed throughout history.

Wrong.

the valid questions and logical problems inherent in abiogenesis are simply left unaddressed by the current theories.

As has been said, evolution does not required abiogenesis.

an Old Earth is required for an extremely small probability to become a reality.

No, an Old Earth is "required" because only an Old Earth fits all the data, unless God is deliberately trying to trick us.

there is simply not enough atoms nor enough time for even one useful protein molecule to stand a better than even chance of coming about through random interaction.

Prove it. (Hint: You're wrong)

A statistician could easily poke holes in the "random chance" model of life's beginnings.

Why should I ask a statistician about biology. And anyway, it's not just "random chance". There are laws of chemistry and physics which take a lot of the randomness out of it. It's not like you just throw atoms into a bucket and shake it, hoping they stick together.

It is far more plausible to posit that we were created by God than to suggest life came about by a highly unlikely chain of events for which the exact mechanisms are not understood.

Oh? So you understand the mechanisms of God then? What was His procedure for creating life then? Be specific. For a followup question: What created God?

The difference, however, is that the first does not claim to be science, yet is logically sound,

Positing the existence of a magical being to explain what you don't understand isn't logic. It's wishful thinking.

whereas the second does claim to be science, but is neither logically sound, nor proper science.

Au contraire. Evolutionary biology is backed by 150 years of painstaking research. They didn't just put it out of the air, you know.

Because science is the authority for their religion, they cannot accept any science which rejects their pre-conceived notions about the existence of God.

Science doesn't address the issue of the existence of God at all. God, by definition, is a supernatural entity and so is outside the realm of scientific inquiry.

When scientists try to explain the origin of life as a series of highly unlikely events for which their is no understood mechanism, it calls into question the credibility of all science.

Does not follow.

It would be better to say, "we simply don't know", than to suggest something which is neither empirically verifiable nor logically sound.

Take your own advice.

[evolution is] Pure conjecture, with no evidence. Yes, a theory, about as sound as the theory of UFOs abducting people.

I can't agree.

Check out Talk Origins to see why.

Also, think about the fact that a book of mine might say a God created the world 5 minutes ago and it just happens to look older. Then try disprove my book.

One would hope that this would but true (dis)believers will say any photo shown as proof of the moon landing is faked. There are people that insist the world in flat and that is alot easier to proove false.

I did read it again; and before you said that you said "To have a planet have *ANY* kind of life requires some very detailed design just to have the proper environment where life could exist." And none of your other statements are even remotely qualified - they all say conditions "must" be thus. So the post is not just describing the limits of our current knowledge, it's making a larger claim about "*ANY* kind of life". You even do it again in this very post: "ALL life needs to have water available in its liquid form ..." If you are only referring to life-as-we-know-it then do not then slide into making blanket statements referring to "ALL life". This is an obvious rhetorical dodge.

Your points about water, temperature, gravity, etc are fair enough - for life like us. But it doesn't have to be just like us. It is possible to imagine life that can exist in the atmosphere of Jupiter (you wouldn't survive in the depths of the ocean either, yet creatures do), and one of the fascinating things to come out of the 1990s was the survivability of microbial life under what was considered to be unsurvivable conditions (eg deep underground).

Even if you are only interested in intelligent life, and so want complex organisms who can make fire or whatever, and so think you need a pretty much Earthlike planet (a respectable position, but unproven), we still don't know how common Earthlike planets are (or, I stress again, exactly how Earthlike they need to be). We have only started discovering extrasolar planets in the last decade and yet you are happy to claim to dismiss the possible results of this research in advance.

You can believe (an act of faith) that everything came together randomly if you wish, but if you do the math, you'll find that the probability of this earth and everything on it coming about by chance is unimaginably small.

You can believe whatever you want to too, but if you do the math properly, you'll find it's not so improbable as you think. In the end you are doing the same thing here as you are above - pre-empting the results of ongoing research to fit your own agenda. Sorry, this is utterly transparent creationist garbage and I'm not buying it.

As I see it, it takes more faith to believe that all the complexity science studies in all fields came about by trial and error than to believe that a transcendent Creator put it all together. Science studied from this point of view is just as exciting and can produce just as many, if not more benefits to humanity.

Rubbish; it's only when scientists explicitly began leaving God out of science that real progress began to be made. It gets you nowhere to say "God did it"; it's the ultimate cop-out and explains nothing. No predictive power, completely unfalsifiable. It's not scientific. If that offends your religious beliefs, tough.

In the end we only have one example of life; we can't just extrapolate from that to say life is possible/common elsewhere or life is impossible/rare. What we need (and the fact that I need to be arguing this on Slashdot staggers me) is more research.

> Oh, my mistake, I must have read the poorly translated bible.
Your real mistake is assuming you know more that you do. Reading books filled with dubious (and contradictory) theories, poor scholarship and wishful thinking don't make one wise.

> If you were to take the Egyptean religion (the one used by the people,
> not the leaders) as of about 100 bc and mix it with Judaism,
> the results would be very much like pre-Roman Christianity.
And I must believe, O hallowed authority, because... ?

> Thats very clear to me and there are many of examples in the bible
> where Jesus introduced concepts that were common in the nearby areas
> that were not common in Judaism. The best example might be dealing
> with sick people.
?
? Miracles were not very common then, neither are they common now.

> As far as other ledgedens. Not all groups in the world do remember
> a global flood however all groups that live near major rivers
> do have flood stories. Most of which have been corrupted by
> well meaning missionaries.
Um, global floods, as in floods that kill all mankind? Like the more than 2500 year Vedic story from Hinduism. I used to be Hindu. Let me tell you my people are no pushovers, and certainly not given to rewriting all copies of (what they see as) scriptures on the say so of a few missionaries. And then, there are the other people groups listed here?

> Also the bird release thing is nonsense considering one
> was a 6 day flood vs a 40 day flood. If you want to check
> out what happens when ground is underwater for 40 days, look
> into the Mississippi flood of 93 since some areas were underwater
> for that length of time.

What! 40 days?!!? It lasted more than a year --
the most precisely recorded year of the Bible. It took months for the waters to recede as written in the Bible. Genesis chapter 7 says the rain started on the "second month, in the seventeenth day of the month". Genesis chapter 8 shows the waters finally receding: "And the waters were going and falling until the tenth month. In the tenth month, in the first of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen" (the mountains being pretty high - the Ararat ranges) (emphasis added).

Does this sound like a global flood or not?

Also, the order of release of birds makes sense. A dove is a clean bird, not a carrion feeder like the raven that is happy to feed on floating carcasses. Once the dove found a place to rest, Noah was sure it is safe for him to go out.

A few years ago somebody tested volcanic rock from Mt. Vesuvius when Pompeii was buried. Since this eruption is well documented historically, this provides a nice validation of radiometric dating techniques.

In other words, this "circular reasoning" claim is false.

Also check out the definitive list of creationist claims, especially "CH400-CH599: Flood" for good answers to the most common creationist claims about the flood.

Going back to the "Major Problems" article, take for example "6. Implications of a Flood," where the author mentions:

• How do you explain the relative ages of mountains? For example, why weren't the Sierra Nevadas eroded as much as the Appalachians during the Flood?
• Why is there no evidence of a flood in ice core series? Ice cores from Greenland have been dated back more than 40,000 years by counting annual layers. [Johnsen et al, 1992,; Alley et al, 1993] A worldwide flood would be expected to leave a layer of sediments, noticeable changes in salinity and oxygen isotope ratios, fractures from buoyancy and thermal stresses, a hiatus in trapped air bubbles, and probably other evidence. Why doesn't such evidence show up?
• How are the polar ice caps even possible? Such a mass of water as the Flood would have provided sufficient buoyancy to float the polar caps off their beds and break them up. They wouldn't regrow quickly. In fact, the Greenland ice cap would not regrow under modern (last 10 ky) climatic conditions.
• Why did the Flood not leave traces on the sea floors? A year long flood should be recognizable in sea bottom cores by (1) an uncharacteristic amount of terrestrial detritus, (2) different grain size distributions in the sediment, (3) a shift in oxygen isotope ratios (rain has a different isotopic composition from seawater), (4) a massive extinction, and (n) other characters. Why do none of these show up?
• Why is there no evidence of a flood in tree ring dating? Tree ring records go back more than 10,000 years, with no evidence of a catastrophe during that time. [Becker & Kromer, 1993; Becker et al, 1991; Stuiver et al, 1986]

On the flip side- one can certainly do a thought experiment of what would happen if a "space ark" landed on a planet otherwise empty of land life. After 10k years- what would one expect to see on this planet?

• The "diversity gradient" of land animals should start near the landing site and fade out from there.
• Even the largest continents- if disconnected from the landing zone- would show signs of "Island Biogeography". That is, there'd be far less diversity of animals relative to the "landing zone continent." A larger percentage of mammals on the disconnected continents would be flying or swimming mammals, or the descendents of tiny mammals that could have arrived on vegetative rafts.
• While non-swimming/flying animals could be brought by humans, one would expect a paucity of non-edible animals. The polynesians brought domesticated animals from island to island: they for some reason didn't bring tigers or Komodo dragons.

Also check out the definitive list of creationist claims, especially "CH400-CH599: Flood" for good answers to the most common creationist claims about the flood.

Going back to the "Major Problems" article, take for example "6. Implications of a Flood," where the author mentions:

• How do you explain the relative ages of mountains? For example, why weren't the Sierra Nevadas eroded as much as the Appalachians during the Flood?
• Why is there no evidence of a flood in ice core series? Ice cores from Greenland have been dated back more than 40,000 years by counting annual layers. [Johnsen et al, 1992,; Alley et al, 1993] A worldwide flood would be expected to leave a layer of sediments, noticeable changes in salinity and oxygen isotope ratios, fractures from buoyancy and thermal stresses, a hiatus in trapped air bubbles, and probably other evidence. Why doesn't such evidence show up?
• How are the polar ice caps even possible? Such a mass of water as the Flood would have provided sufficient buoyancy to float the polar caps off their beds and break them up. They wouldn't regrow quickly. In fact, the Greenland ice cap would not regrow under modern (last 10 ky) climatic conditions.
• Why did the Flood not leave traces on the sea floors? A year long flood should be recognizable in sea bottom cores by (1) an uncharacteristic amount of terrestrial detritus, (2) different grain size distributions in the sediment, (3) a shift in oxygen isotope ratios (rain has a different isotopic composition from seawater), (4) a massive extinction, and (n) other characters. Why do none of these show up?
• Why is there no evidence of a flood in tree ring dating? Tree ring records go back more than 10,000 years, with no evidence of a catastrophe during that time. [Becker & Kromer, 1993; Becker et al, 1991; Stuiver et al, 1986]

On the flip side- one can certainly do a thought experiment of what would happen if a "space ark" landed on a planet otherwise empty of land life. After 10k years- what would one expect to see on this planet?

• The "diversity gradient" of land animals should start near the landing site and fade out from there.
• Even the largest continents- if disconnected from the landing zone- would show signs of "Island Biogeography". That is, there'd be far less diversity of animals relative to the "landing zone continent." A larger percentage of mammals on the disconnected continents would be flying or swimming mammals, or the descendents of tiny mammals that could have arrived on vegetative rafts.
• While non-swimming/flying animals could be brought by humans, one would expect a paucity of non-edible animals. The polynesians brought domesticated animals from island to island: they for some reason didn't bring tigers or Komodo dragons.

Also check out the definitive list of creationist claims, especially "CH400-CH599: Flood" for good answers to the most common creationist claims about the flood.

Going back to the "Major Problems" article, take for example "6. Implications of a Flood," where the author mentions:

• How do you explain the relative ages of mountains? For example, why weren't the Sierra Nevadas eroded as much as the Appalachians during the Flood?
• Why is there no evidence of a flood in ice core series? Ice cores from Greenland have been dated back more than 40,000 years by counting annual layers. [Johnsen et al, 1992,; Alley et al, 1993] A worldwide flood would be expected to leave a layer of sediments, noticeable changes in salinity and oxygen isotope ratios, fractures from buoyancy and thermal stresses, a hiatus in trapped air bubbles, and probably other evidence. Why doesn't such evidence show up?
• How are the polar ice caps even possible? Such a mass of water as the Flood would have provided sufficient buoyancy to float the polar caps off their beds and break them up. They wouldn't regrow quickly. In fact, the Greenland ice cap would not regrow under modern (last 10 ky) climatic conditions.
• Why did the Flood not leave traces on the sea floors? A year long flood should be recognizable in sea bottom cores by (1) an uncharacteristic amount of terrestrial detritus, (2) different grain size distributions in the sediment, (3) a shift in oxygen isotope ratios (rain has a different isotopic composition from seawater), (4) a massive extinction, and (n) other characters. Why do none of these show up?
• Why is there no evidence of a flood in tree ring dating? Tree ring records go back more than 10,000 years, with no evidence of a catastrophe during that time. [Becker & Kromer, 1993; Becker et al, 1991; Stuiver et al, 1986]

On the flip side- one can certainly do a thought experiment of what would happen if a "space ark" landed on a planet otherwise empty of land life. After 10k years- what would one expect to see on this planet?

• The "diversity gradient" of land animals should start near the landing site and fade out from there.
• Even the largest continents- if disconnected from the landing zone- would show signs of "Island Biogeography". That is, there'd be far less diversity of animals relative to the "landing zone continent." A larger percentage of mammals on the disconnected continents would be flying or swimming mammals, or the descendents of tiny mammals that could have arrived on vegetative rafts.
• While non-swimming/flying animals could be brought by humans, one would expect a paucity of non-edible animals. The polynesians brought domesticated animals from island to island: they for some reason didn't bring tigers or Komodo dragons.