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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.

There is no point wasting resources to search for an ark that couldn't have been there. The "great flood" is clearly impossible.

Head on over to the Talk.Origins FAQ archive.

Yeah. like the race of the middle eastern hebrews, or the middle eastern persians, or the middle eastern babylonians, or the middle eastern greeks... etc.

all these societies which have flood myths are from the same trading region (the mediterannian sea area). Find me a mayan or native american, or hell, even a chinese/japanese flood story and you get some kind of credibility, but i refuse to believe something to be even a tiny bit believable because all people who lived in a single cultural exchange area believed it.

Google is your friend

3) It is Noah's ark, we will go on with our regular lives, and the scientists say "Umm... can we have a closer look at that book of yours?"

The Bible is already used as a historical tool. It's one of the few sources of stories from that era and contains many references to locations, people, etc. which existed back then. However, to say then that the whole Bible is true because some historical data have been shown to be true (as Evidence That Demands a Verdict does, for example) is going too far.

For example: "George W. Bush became Ruler of the Land and took up his abode in the Whitehouse. He cried out to heaven and God heard his cries and sent two massive jumbo jets crashing into the World Trade Center buildings, and leveled them."

If someone from the future reads this, they can verify that George W. Bush existed. They can verify that he was Ruler of the Land (aka President of the USA). They can verify that two jets crashed into the WTC buildings and they were leveled. All these are facts, but the story is complete bullshit. Same thing with the Bible. Take a bunch of facts which are passed down from generation to generation. Many books of the Bible weren't actually written down for several centuries after the fact. Ever play the telephone game for a few hundred years? The kernel of truth still survives, but now the stories are marred in legend and embellishments.

So someone just might even find the remains of a large boat. Wonderful. But they'd have to provide a lot more evidence to counter the existing evidence that no global flood ever occurred.

We could spend days listing reasons why the ark as described in the story could never have existed.

Yet you provide not one single reason.

Come on! The Talk.Origins Archive is not that hard search through! Here's the specific FAQ you're looking for: Problems with a Global Flood. Or better yet, try Google's talk.origins archive for archived discussions.

Lesson: Don't pick apart other people's comments when all you provide in return is a troll and even less information or reasoning than the original poster.

My irony meter just exploded!

We could spend days listing reasons why the ark as described in the story could never have existed.

Yet you provide not one single reason.

Come on! The Talk.Origins Archive is not that hard search through! Here's the specific FAQ you're looking for: Problems with a Global Flood. Or better yet, try Google's talk.origins archive for archived discussions.

Lesson: Don't pick apart other people's comments when all you provide in return is a troll and even less information or reasoning than the original poster.

My irony meter just exploded!

OK, here is an excellent site that systematically weighs the scientific evidence regarding just about every biblical claim having to do with geological and biological origins, including the age of the earth, and the world-wide flood of Genesis. I highly, highly recommend this site to anyone who doesn't want to just "take the scientists' word for it." Their several essays which carefully explain evolutionary theory--so horribly butchered by the media and most lay people--is especially remarkable.

OK, here is an excellent site that systematically weighs the scientific evidence regarding just about every biblical claim having to do with geological and biological origins, including the age of the earth, and the world-wide flood of Genesis. I highly, highly recommend this site to anyone who doesn't want to just "take the scientists' word for it." Their several essays which carefully explain evolutionary theory--so horribly butchered by the media and most lay people--is especially remarkable.

OK, here is an excellent site that systematically weighs the scientific evidence regarding just about every biblical claim having to do with geological and biological origins, including the age of the earth, and the world-wide flood of Genesis. I highly, highly recommend this site to anyone who doesn't want to just "take the scientists' word for it." Their several essays which carefully explain evolutionary theory--so horribly butchered by the media and most lay people--is especially remarkable.

OK, here is an excellent site that systematically weighs the scientific evidence regarding just about every biblical claim having to do with geological and biological origins, including the age of the earth, and the world-wide flood of Genesis. I highly, highly recommend this site to anyone who doesn't want to just "take the scientists' word for it." Their several essays which carefully explain evolutionary theory--so horribly butchered by the media and most lay people--is especially remarkable.

• problems with a global flood
• Linux & EAL ratings

Whenever I am reading text and notice it using the word "evolutionist" it's like a lightbulb goes on, and it's suddenly clear why the preceding paragraphs were salted liberally with incoherent bogosity. Calling someone an "evolutionist" in this day and age is a bit like using "geosphericalist" as a pejorative in the 19th century. It's a waste of time arguing -- just smile and nod and back away slowly.

For anyone with legitimate interest in the arguments there's always talk.origins.

My faith consists of two words.

"Empiricism works."

Your faith fills up books with untestable assertions and unverifiable stories.

Which is the more rational?

Followups directed to talkorigins.org.

If you believe that he didn't exist, then how can you ignore all of the evidence that supports his existance? The existance of Jesus was recorded by several different people in different places and at different times. The existance of Jesus is accepted by most scholars, including atheists.

This turns out not to be the case. There is quite a bit of doubt about the authenticity of the bible, especially since the gospel accounts were all written well after Jesus's time and contradict each other.

The problem there lies that the majority of people he interacted with (back then and even now) claimed that he was a healer, a great teacher, and a prophet. I doubt you would get the same response for the cults you refer to.

The majority of people who interacted with Hercules (according to the Greek writings we have) described him as a great hero. Is he real? Superman always seems to get good press in his various books. Do you see the point? All you have to describe Jesus's supposed actions is the bible, the authenticity of which is in grave doubt (since it contains many errors, inconsistencies and tales of things that didn't happen).

This is very much untrue. The authenticity of the Bible has been proven by many scholars. I would suggest you read the book "The Case For Christ" by Lee Strobel. It contains several scientific references to why the bible is authentic.

It certainly has not been proven that the bible is divinely inspired or a true history. I suggest you read the various rebuttals that have been written to Strobel's book.

They did know right from wrong, and we still do... by our conscious. But we "choose" to do wrong by our free will.

Reread Genesis; it was the Tree of Knowledge of Right and Wrong that they ate from. God said they'd die, the snake said they wouldn't. Gee, they didn't die. But that's not the point; the point is that they didn't know right from wrong until they ate of the tree. And that's what pissed god off, that they learned right from wrong. Even though, being all-knowing, he knew in advance that this would happen.

God wishes that none shall perish (John 3: 16). All we have to do is to accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour which saves us from our debt of sins and therefore we do not go to hell.

If he wished that none would perish, none would perish. All-powerful, remember? The christian god is the ultimate mafia boss. "Gee, that's a nice soul you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it."

Jesus had to die not to change the rule, but to keep the rule. The consequence of sin is death (spirtual death) and therefore there has to be payment for our sins. And with Jesus's death, He pays the debt for us so we do not have to die.

The consequence of sin (according to christian beliefs) is only death because god wants it to be. If he didn't want that to be the consequence, it wouldn't be (all-powerful, remember?) God creates the rule, creates the consequence, creates beings that he knows will break the rule, then threatens to torture them for all eternity unless they jump through his hoops. If the christian god existed, by definition nothing would happen in this universe in anything other than the precise way in which that god wanted it to happen (all-powerful, remember?)

You are right. But not for the reasons you state. It's because people don't want to believe that we are sinful and not perfect.

This is an interesting theory. I assume you have evidence that atheists consider thems

Wood can stay preserved for thousands of years underwater. Take a look at this page which talks about the anaerobic deep water wrecks found in the black sea which was a large freshwater lake until a few thousand years ago. The flooding of that region is suspected to be the genesis of the biblical flood story (and of the Gilgamesh legend before it was co-opted by the Israelites) In particular look at the "mesolithic settlement" link where the same man that found the Titanic discovered a 7000 year old house which predates the epic flood and is very well preserved.

On a side note, I'd like to present my personal theory regarding flood and creation myths. I believe this narratives to be the oldest traits of human collective memory, representing oral tradition originating deep in the stone age. Most creation myths put a golden age at the beginning - this is the original hunter/gatherer society located in a benign climate and not suffering from overpopulation. The subsequent fall from grace and deterioration described in most creation myths is the beginning of overpopulation, leading to the end of abundance and requiring severe adaption and a lot of suffering, leaving behind the golden age where nature alone could provide for anyone without effort - a time never to be reached again.

The flood stories, present all across the world, could be (at least partly) actual oral traditions describing the end of the last ice age, the melting of the glaciers. This might not be true for the meditarranean flood, which most probably is a later event, possibly enforcing social memory of the older one. But the omnipresence of these myths all across the world hints to an event covering the whole world - the ice age.

*sigh*

But you have seen new breeds of dogs, and new strains of the flu virus, and new antibiotic-resistant bacteria, right? The exact same principles apply to us -- only many humans are way too arrogant to acknowledge that, yes, we are subject to the same forces of any other animal. Natural selection is still alive and well, thank you, and along with its friends 'Variation' and 'Mutation', evolution is still chugging along.

The underlaying rules behind evolution are testible, and have been proven as well as any scientific fact can be (see the Problem of Induction in any philosophy textbook), which is why evolutionary modeling techniques are used in any field that requires predictions about complex molecules. This includes chemical engineering, medical research, and even computer software design.

Go read talkorigins.org; it explains a lot, and it answers a lot of common misconceptions about evolution. Also note that evolution says nothing about religion, and many religious people believe that God put the rules in place to let us evolve -- which is a much more reasonable concept than assuming that what happened in the Bible literally occurred, and that God just put all these fossils and all of that radioactive material around 'just to confuse the unworthy'.

Creationism is supernatural -- it completely contradicts pretty much every piece of scientific knowledge in almost every field, from anthrpology to quantum mechanics. Thus, proving creationism *would* earn one the million dollars -- and, yes, people have tried to do it, and failed.

I think that was Piltdown man!

"Peking Man", Homo erectus (was Sinanthropus pekinensis)

Look here

I'd have to look it up, but it's on the order of 10^26 against,

Don't bother. Read this instead.

This depends. If you search in the right spot it's actually very easy. When I was a kid, my dad and I used to visit Solnhofen where they found the Archaeopteryx.
They have digging sites for tourists. With my nine years old it took me about half an hour to find a fossil there wich I still possess. If you know where to look they are all over.

Lispy

There is no evidence that man and dinosaur lived together except in cartoons.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy.html

Because we would see evidence for it.

Instead, we see miles and miles of sediments stacked up on top of each other, many full of animal burrows, others requiring deposition in still water, others are deserts, others have dessication cracks.

There is a difference between what you say and the evidence. God sure did a good job of making the earth look old.

I don't know if you're trolling, but I'll assume you're not.

But the theory of evolution says that, given enough time, ants evolve into birds. (Not exactly, but you get the idea.) We've never seen anything like that. We've never seen a species evolve into another species through natural selection.

Give that this takes tens of thousands or even millions of years to happen, and human beings have only been around at most for 200.000 years (with only a few thousand years of recorded history) this isn't so surprising.

You should look as closely at the argument of evolutionary scientists as you do at those of creationists. Most creationist arguments I've seen attack older, no longer held, views of evolutionary scientists, and therefore are very bogus, even though they sound very convincing.

Take for example, the comparison between this account of fossil horse records and this criticism of fossil horse records. Note how the criticism only attacks the earliest held views, and handily dismisses any advances in knowledge made since then. I know, I know, anecdotal, like always, but I find this is an often reoccurring phenomenon among creationist arguments.

We're never going to have a perfect fossil record. Therefore we're never going to be able to prove evolution from the origins of life to human beings. This is a fact. However, it's just too big of a leap for a sane person to claim all the species we DO have in the fossil record not only share no evolutionary history, but all were created by God (even though they all appear in defined periods, and no species is available throughout the entire fossil record history) and most just died off due to natural selection.

Anyway, do a google search on "evidence evolution" 3.6 million results. Have fun reading. This seems a good resource.

"Whaa? How can that be?" It's like this: evolution refers to the process of change over time as a response to natural pressures that results in speciation.

False. Evolution has been observed. The professional Creationists no longer make this claim. These days, they accept that species can arise by Darwinian mechanisms, but insist that a new "kind" cannot arise. This puts them on safe ground, since "species" has a scientific definition, but "kind" is scientifically meaningless.

How this got modded insightful is beyond me.

Evolution happens. That is a fact. It is a scientifically observable fact.

The mechanisms of how things evolve is a theory.

You can read all about this here. One more time: evolution has been observed many, many times and is now accepted as fact by the scientific community. However, many scientists still disagree about how evolution happens, and we only have a theory to describe this mechanism.

What really irritates my about this post is how bloody confident the poster is that his parent was wrong. How can a person be so sure and so clueless at the same time?

Taft

There is no such thing as the "fact of evolution". You should really check your sources on that one. It's called a theory for a reason.

No one but trolls and "intelligent design" kooks throw out this canard any more. Actual scientists call it an actual observed phenomenom. Whether you want to call it a "fact" or a "theory backed up by emperical observation" is up to you. Technically YOU only "theoretically" exist unless you've got some kind of cosmic theorem prover that goes beyond A=A (wow I managed to insult both creationists AND randroids). ...rest of obvious trolling deleted. Gee wiz, I guess we haven't invented test, observation, and measurement to come up with any numbers.

First off, speciation is not the only form of evolution, and even if it were true that we had never observed it (it is NOT true however), that would not be a disproof of evolution. It's one of the many false disproofs that pseudo-scientists love to use, but it has no basis in the actual, erm, science.

Evolution has occurred, and that is a fact. And my face is straight.

All of these predictions are testable. If we find life that isn't related to that life we know about, we'd need to change or abandon the theory. If there are large gaps we can't explain, we would need updated theories, like punctuated equilibrium, to explain how A can evolve into B. Evolution would be hard-pressed to explain life without self-preservation instincts or without proteins. But there haven't been, to our knowledge, any contradictions like this.

All of these predictions are based on historical evidence, which is expected because most evolution happens very slowly. But there really isn't anything wrong with "reactionary" theories - they're better than cop-out answers, which I consider creationism to be. But evolution predicts other things which can be verified in the lab - the natural selection of moths, development of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria, and even speciation in fruit flies and the like.

Most interesting to me, evolution as a process can be applied in more ways than simply to explain life on earth. You can use it to describe market economics. You can even use it to design circuits, programs, and robotics.

I must be having a hard day, I can't help coming back to this thread for a little fish-in-a-barrel action.

I have seen human footprints that date to be 150 million years old, they have been found in Utah, Kentucky, Missouri, and in the country of Tanzania

Give me more details and I can probably show you where these "footprints" have been carefully debunked.

Fossil shoe prints with a crushed Trilobite under the heal were found in Utah by William J. Meister.

Aha! that's enough detail: Its a trilobite, but it's not a shoe print Frankly, your uh, "dedication" is impressive. Most creationists gave up on this one in the 80s. If you do a bit of searching you can find the pictures that made them do so; the ones that show a whole bunch of similar formations all over the area where someone carefully snapped the ones that looked most shoe-like. (And frankly, it's not all that shoe-like in the first place)

I always ask why these are disregarded.

It's disregarded because it's been carefully examined and found wanting.

The best thing I can come up with is a conspiracy

What would be the possible goal of such a conspiracy? Heck, I've looked at the evidence and concluded evolution makes sense, so I would have to be part of the conspiracy. But I have not received a secret decoder ring. You'll have to take my word for it: I won't participate in any conspiracy that can't spring for a secret decoder ring.

Please show me a living trans-species

Find a mirror.

So they are overtly evolutionists and would be unlikely to publish something in their FAQ that disputed the evolutionist position. This is no different to what AiG do with TJ.

There you go. This is what makes any appeal to a deity a non-theory.

Not at all... my appeal to a deity is one the assumptions to my creationist 'theory'. Just as you would assume the non-existence (or non-interference) of a deity as one of your assumptions. Now that we've each developed theories based on those assumptions, we test our theories against observed evidence and change our theories (but not our assumptions) to suit.

There is no observation that cannot arguably be consistent with creation by a divine power.

Sure there is. If the world didn't run by a series of rational, definable rules (science) then this would seem to indicate the absence of a rational, ordered creator. Finding intelligent life on another planet would seriously rock my assumptions as this doesn't make sense in the biblical framework. An anthropological record stretching beyond the biblical record would rock my assumptions. There are lots of other things.

Similarly there might by other things that may disturb your assumptions. A young universe would. The lack of intermediate fossils might.

Science can explain why grass is green, but creation science can as well: God willed it to be so.

Creation science would say that grass is blue, not just because God willed it to be so, but because it was appropriate for the grass (i.e. photosynthesis etc). However I don't agree with special pleading... e.g. arguments where a creationist might suggest that light was created en-route to the earth, or that God buried the fossils when he made the Earth, these are not scientific arguments in my mind.

Is there any testable hypothesis that could result in the rejection of creation theory?

IMO, I don't believe there is. But I ask you back, is there any testable hypothesis that could result in the rejection of evolution theory?

I'll take a look at talkorigins and will consider posting there if they seem open to an equitable discussion. I guess what creationists are asking for is not so much for belief to believe our theory, but rather for people to admit that it is as much a valid science as is evolution. Scientists assumptions are influenced by their world-view and while the majority of scientists would believe evolutionary theory now, and not creation theory, this is not necessarily due to a lack of evidence for the creationist argument, but rather because of the humanistic world-view present across the world at this time. Those scientists who are brought up with a Christian world view that choose to believe creation are not necessarily any less educated, intelligent, biased or closed minded than those on the other side of the argument.

Enough from me... off I go to talkorigins.

The institute for creation research (icr) is a place that has nothing to do with science. They just try to claim they do.

-MDL

Ok. Biological evolution is a theory, and a pretty darn good one too. Talk Origins is a great place to start if one want to learn more about this part of real science. Evolution is a theory and fact. It is supported by the fossile traces as well as real life and lab observations. It's real science. Deal with it.

Creationism, on the other hand, is NOT a theory in any scientific way, shape or form. It explains nothing, it violates Ockham's razor by adding even more unexplained stuff, and it predicts nearly nothing. It is based on an old mythology, written thousands of years ago when not even the most wise men knew even a fraction of what we know today. When it DOES predict something, it's thoroughly debunked.

Introduction to the scientific method

I guess not only nerds come to slashdot.

True, there are a number of creationist scientists, but I challenge you to find any of their work on "specified complexity" (or creationism in general) referenced in any of the standard peer reviewed journals. I've done some digging on the topic, and as best I can tell, it's a term that only sounds like a hard, measurable critereon. Lots of references are thrown out to "specified complexity" these days, but a way of measuring and detecting it is clearly still in the works.

There is not enough space here to lay out the theory of creation in full (just as you couldn't do justice to the theory of evolution in a single paragraph), but I'm sure google will explain it to you.

The problem is, it must be possible to find evidence that refutes a theory. Creation theory lacks this as any observation can arguably support creation by an omnipotent being. A classic example is the dichotomy you bring up: young universe vs. old universe. Young universe theorists need to explain how light from distant stars has arrived for us to observe in such a short period of time. The physics has historically confounded them, but an appeal to light being "stretched" or created "in place" by a divine creator still works. The problem is, at that point, the tools of science fail and we move into the realm of philosophy and speculation. That's not to say that it can't be true. It just can't be considered a scientific theory as it is completely untestable.

A good place to start looking at the nested hierarchy stuff is: here.

That whole document is fascinating, but you'll probably want to focus on Part I.

First off, evolution isn't about speciation. It's just about change. But speciation can eventually result from change.

But if you want examples of speciation:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.htm l
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html

First off, evolution isn't about speciation. It's just about change. But speciation can eventually result from change.

But if you want examples of speciation:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.htm l
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html

By all means.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Just like the Theory of Evolution.

Yes, exactly. That evolution occurs is a fact which can be demonstrated. On the other hand, the theory, which tries to explain how evolution works, could be inaccurate/wrong. The theory itself may change many times and might be completely overhauled for some new radical explanation. However, regardless of whether or not we understand the mechanisms behind it, nothing can change the fact that evolution exists.

See: Evolution is a Fact and a Theory

The problem with evolutionists is that well It is simply an attempt remove any reference to GOD in life and project arrogant people as "gods".

I'm not going to dignify that with an answer. It's just too stupid for words.

The fact is there is NONE absolutely no evidence at all of the BIG BANG.

Some people like to check their facts before arguing a point. Other people like to pull things out of their ass and pass them off as facts. You seem to be shaping up to be the latter.

It took google 0.05 seconds to return 208,000 results for "evidence for the big bang". Here's the first link: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmology_faq.ht ml#BBevidence.

Scientists have not yet explained the big bang other than it may have happened but don't know where the original mass came from and that is where every evolution, big bang, small bang, spread theory, alien theory, big suns theory, super mass theory, goes wrong.

Uhuh... So let me get this straught. Your argument is, as follows:

1. Science doesn't adequately explain why the big bang occured.
2. ???
3. Therefore I'm right!

Perverting and bastardizing the laws of physics to prove a point for selfish reasons is not science. It is false diseased conjecture and it belongs with all of those religious fruitcake cults you seem to have the misfortune of running into too all the time.

Isn't that what you were doing with the "Second Law of Themodynamics" argument you rattled on about for so long?

Religious relics are false(what?).

Oh, I was just talking about all of the pieces of wood and nails and such that were passed off as religious artifacts in the middle ages. I was just pointing out that there have been far more faked religious artifacts throughout history then there has been faked scientific evidence.

No offence intended, at all. Any scientist that fakes evidence is no more a scientist than a priest who fakes a religious relic is a priest.

One of the reasons Creationism is plausibleto me is it has a scientific explanation of what was, is, and is to become with no gaps. no postulating. Any questions can be answered. Any other theory I have read major has problems.

There's a large problem with Creationism as a scientific theory. It's not.

You can believe in Creationism, yes. Go ahead. Knock yourself out. But it's not science. It's not a theory that can be disproved through observation. Ergo, it is not a scientific theory.

One BIG one that you hit upon was the bridging hominids Where are the hominids? Where are the skeletons? Where are the bones in the opposable thumbs of the hominids?. There has not been a single skeleton found or partial one found.

Um, yes there has. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/specimen.html

Meanhwile there have been thousands of skeletons found of humans.

Skeletons. Not fossils. Skeletons decay; they're biological. When preserved in a pyramid or in a grave, they last longer, but they still decay. Skeletons don't last a million years, so obviously there are no skeletons of early man/ape.

There are, however, fossils. Fossilisation is a very rare process where the bones are gradually replaced by rock. How many fossils of humans are there? No more proportionally than earlier species.

But go ahead if you want your 10^1000th great grandfather to be a chimp. Be my guest. My oldest ancestor had no belly button and named chimps.

I don't think it's a matter of "want" on my part. More that it's a fact of life. The majority of the evidence points toward me having an ape-like ancestor. Of course, I'm not directly descended from chimps, and nor do I believe that's the case. However, the overwhelming evidence points to me and the

Wow, this guy's site is great. He even blows the lid off the hidden Star Wars/Mars connection!

On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

Macro-evolution, on the other hand, is that which has no reliable undisputed evidence...

Here are 29 different pieces of evidence for macroevolution

....such as primordial goop turning into puddles of proteins

Yup, the origin of life is still a sticky question. However, "evolution" != "abiotic genesis of life". Evolution is a change in genetic compostion of a population, nothing more, nothing less.

Humphreys' (this is the correct spelling) "theory" has a couple of odd bits in it. The biggest is a requirement that God created everything initially out of water with a fraction* of the molecules aligning their magnetic moments, with the resulting field decaying exponentially as these water molecules come out of alignment after the moment of creation. Of course, all this water would also magically transform into other compounds at some later date as we are all well aware of the fact that the Sun and Earth are not composed entirely of water, but the magic gets trickier still by leaving the exponentially decaying magnetic field due to those water molecules intact after the magical transmutation event. *The actual fraction of initially aligned water molecules itself is important, as it of course cannot be computed independently. The faction just kind of floats and can be modified at will by Humphreys to make a magnetic field fit with whatever strength he so chooses. As such, Humphreys' ability to "compute" the strength of various magnetic fields is meaningless. talkorigins has the details.

There is nothing special about this particular bug, except that it was used to gain some insight on how these kinds of bacteria work their magic.

The whole battery idea comes from how we now understand that the "c-type cytochromes" add electrons to the heavy metal ions to newtralize them, and create a small electrical current in the process.

Yes, in theory I would imagine any bacteria that has similar mechanics could be used.

This little fella jsut happened to get the spotlight because it was the first to be studied in depth.

Ref. http://www.geobacter.org/ for some more info

You might also want to read through the talk.origins archive, since I think you might not fully understand how evolution works. (Hint: "survival of the fittest" is a really poor way to describe it.)
=Smidge=

Hmm... I think you're asking for evidence.

Yes, you cracked the secret code in my message.

Let me first say - you need faith to please God - that is how he sorts out the wheat from the chaff.

This is putting the cart before the horse. There's no point in discussing methods of pleasing an entity for which there is no evidence of existence.

Firstly, read about the Bible - how it describes history, read how, in the past few hundred years, multiple scholar were proven wrong and the Bible was proven right as archological evidence was gathered. How the Book of Job describes the earth as a sphere. How Genesis describes a supercontinent.

Which scholars? Which peer-reviewed journal describes these archeological finds? Why would think that a book that describes the world as a sphere or describes a supercontinent in earlier times would automatically be non-fiction? Are you honestly claiming that you believe that any book that describes the world as a sphere is non-fiction or are you simply being disingenuous and hoping I was too stupid too notice?

Next look up at creation.

Describing everything as "creation" before you've proven that it was created is an error.

See yourself - see how you're put together. See a worm. Note, we still have been able to create even a worm.

I assume you meant we have not been able to create a worm. Five hundred years ago we couldn't fly. Only an idiot would think that this meant that it required divine intervention for a human to fly.

Note that theories of evolution are in constant flux, trying to account for new information - how bats, birds, and one more species evolved flight separately.

Scientific theories are constantly refined; this is nothing new. What is it about bible-thumpers that makes them think that scientific theories are required to be absolutely correct in every detail the first time they are proposed in order to be correct? Newton's laws have been discovered not to be completely correct at the quantum level or at high (near light) speed. No one with a brain calls them wrong; they're just recognized for what they are: an accurate description of physics in a subset of all cases.

Of course, you're defending a book that thinks bats are birds.

How many species evolved various body parts simultaneously. How there is a genetic bottleneck - all of us trace back to one man and one woman (as in "one") - see how this is the position of mainstream evolutionary geneticists.

Geneticists claim to have found the earliest known ancestors of humanity. They do not claim that these are the first humans; merely that they are the earliest ancestors we've found. Nice try though.

Does this remind you of Noah and his progeny after the flood?

You mean the flood that didn't happen?

See the sun. See the moon. See how the mooon perfectly covers the sun during a full solar eclipse. Ever wondered about the exactness in apparent size? The Bible says God gave the sun and moon for signs and seasons.

The bible says a lot of dumb things for which there is no evidence. Why are you claiming that the seasons involve solar eclipses?

But all this is evidence isn't directly personal.

None of what you've posted is objective evidence.

The most important step is when you, having noticed the evidence does not contradict God, take a leap of faith, and pray to him to help you out. You'll see how a *lot* of very very *personal* evidence accumulates and how that helps you.

Actual, the universe repeatedly contradicts

If we limit the age of the universe to 13.7 billion years, that puts some fairly tight constraints on the evolution of life, especially advanced civilizations, in the universe.

If the universe is older by a older by a small amount or perhaps a few billion years, or even greater (which an eventual solution to the age paradox might bring us to), the possibilities for extra-terrestrial life become more and more possible.

Given enough time, even "kooky" theories like the panspermia hypothesis become more and more likely, since distance, lack of speed, and survivability drastically cut the probabilities of anything resembling viable life making it across the vast tracts of space, but time increases it.

(Not to say that it happened, of course - run-of-the-mill abiogenesis could easily have happened instead... or as well.)

Panspermia is a bit worrisome a possibility, in some ways. It would mean that some/many/all alien civilizations might share anything from RNA to DNA to histones to mitochondria. Depending on how advanced the 'seeded' lifeform was (could be anything from a fragment of proto-RNA to a whole eukaryote), we might have to worry about not only bacteria on our future journeys to the stars, but viruses as well. On the plus side, chirality may be conserved, so we don't end up starving to death eating left-handed sugar (L-sucrose) and starch on alien worlds when some layabout gardener on staff mixes salt and Roundup in the fertilizer in the Earth terrarium.

There, that's my fun little bit of tinfoil hat speculation :)

Klaatu berrada nicto...

Er, I mean, back to your irregular program...

can it really be said to exist in any practical way?

"Practical way" subtly implies an observer, so it can't exist in a practical way. It can't exist in a non-practical way either, because that implies that there is a practical way, which implies an observer. It would have to exist in a way that is completely independent of practical. I have no idea what that means, but it's logical.

'irreducible complexity' problem WRT the eye. Can you point me in the right direction?

First the ID side, which I think is wrong, but probably not maliciously so:

Home page of Michael J. Behe. For more info, pick up books or writings on the web by Behe, and William A. Dembski. Google is your friend, there's a huge amount of stuff out there.

Now, for the skeptical side:

The talkorigins website

When someone puts forward the idea of irreducible complexity, remember two things: first, it's up to the person saying that the eye is irreducible to prove that it is. The argument must satisfy the skeptic. Second, irreducible complexity sounds a lot like the fallacy of argument from lack of imagination. Just because one cannot imagine how something could happen is not a reason to believe that it did.

The talk origins website has a lot of information on there, hope you enjoy reading some of it.

I'm not convinced any hypothetical "design" at work is all that intelligent to begin with. Nature is not without flaws, and lots of them. We just accept it as normal because we don't know any different.

How can you miss a point that is so simple?

How can you continue to ignore the explanations? A more complete reference if here.