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But specifically, in reference to your listing of Piltdown, Nebraska man, and Java man, read the extensive talk.origins FAQs on these very items: (emphasis added by me)

• Nebraska man: "as creationists tell the story, evolutionists used one tooth to build an entire species of primitive man... before further excavations revealed the tooth to belong to a peccary... The true story is much more complex... The imaginative drawing of Nebraska Man to which creationists invariably refer... was done for a British popular magazine... ...Most other scientists were skeptical even of the modest claim that the Hesperopithecus tooth belonged to a primate... It is simply not true that Nebraska Man was widely accepted as an ape-man, or even as an ape, by scientists, and its effect upon the scientific thinking of the time was negligible."
• Java man: "Many creationists have claimed that Java Man, discovered by Eugene Dubois in 1893, was "bad science". Gish (1985) says that Dubois found two human skulls at nearby Wadjak at the same level and had kept them secret; that Dubois later decided Java Man was a giant gibbon; and that the bones do not come from the same individual. Most people would find Gish's meaning of "nearby" surprising: the Wadjak skulls were found 65 miles (104 km) of mountainous countryside away from Java Man. Similarly for "at the same level": the Wadjak skulls were found in cave deposits in the mountains, while Java Man was found in river deposits in a flood plain (Fezer 1993).

  Nor is it true, as is often claimed, that Dubois kept the existence of the Wadjak skulls secret because knowledge of them would have discredited Java Man. Dubois briefly reported the Wadjak skulls in three separate publications in 1890 and 1892. Despite being corrected on this in a debate in 1982 and in print (Brace 1986), Gish has continued to make this claim, even stating, despite not having apparently read Dubois' reports, that they did not mention the Wadjak skulls (Fezer 1993)."

• Piltdown: It took *less* than 50 years and suspicions that they were a hoax existed by 1914. Even so, Piltdown represents a bad episode in science: "...the hoax points to common and dangerous faults. The hoax succeeded in large part because of the slipshod nature of the testing applied to it; careful examination using the methods available at the time would have immediately revealed the hoax."

  In the 90 years since then have we developed better and more rigorous testing methods? Yes. But even during those 40 years it took for the full hoax to be revealed, faults with Piltdown were found, long before testing showed that they were recent skulls: "...It should be remembered that, at the time of Piltdown finds, there were very few early hominid fossils; Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens were clearly fairly late. It was expected that there was a "missing link" between ape and man ... Piltdown man had the expected mix of features, which lent it plausibility as a human precursor.

  This plausibility did not hold up. During the next two decades there were a number of finds of ancient hominids and near hominids, e.g. Dart's discovery of Australopith

The icr is hardly a place to go for any factual information - for that matter, they are well known for their dishonesty.
-MDL

well, if they're the kind of critters most of us usually think of when we hear some talk about "critters". it's not a universal definition, though - it's only valid for organisms that reproduce sexually, and even then you sometimes have to just plain guess simply because it's not practical to find out for sure.

this text wasn't really meant as a definition of what a "species" is, but it gives an overview of the problems with the word anyway, fairly near the top. what it boils down to is, you've got to keep in mind what sort of critters you're dealing with and how they go about making more critters; just what the difference between two species is, depends on how they respectively live.

> Except for species. We do have a hard definition of a species, and thats any group of life forms that can reproduce together (at least with sexually reproducing forms, not sure about asexually reproducing ones).

Actually, even that is somewhat problematic in lots of cases.

I went to this site, and I wondered - what in the world does Florence Henderson have to do with the earth being flat? The mystery is almost too much to bear.

More information on the Flat Earth Society is available here, at a .org address no less.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi

Even if you took all the carbon in the universe, put it on the earth, allowed it to react at the most rapid rate possible AND left it for a billion years, the odds of ending up with one functional protein are 1 in 10exp60.

And your source for this is? This FAQ does a good job at pointing out why assertions like this aren't correct. In a nutshell, reactions don't happen randomly. When you combine certain chemicals, you get certain results. Miller's experiment shows that at least some of the chemicals needed to form life can be easily created, so might that not suggest that the formation of life (or, rather, a self-replicated molecule of some kind) is more likely than you suggest?

Personally, I suspect that the probability of life forming on a planet with conditions like that of the early Earth, given the timespan and energy about, is rather quite likely.

Furthermore, you say:

For those who think I'm rationalizing equally with my limited 100 year lifespan perspective, consider this: they have never discovered fossilized remains of an inter-species mutation; e.g., a creature evolutionarily between A and B. With all the dice rolling and obvious failures along the way, one would expect to find a whole lot of these, no?

Eh? This is rather a case of moving the goalposts to suit your arguments! For instance, people claimed after Darwin that there was no connection between chimps and humans, and then fossil remains of Homo Erectus were discovered in 1891. So what about the inbetween steps? Well, there's Homo Heidelbergensis in 1960 and Homo Habilis a few years later. You could ask for the inbetween stages between, for instance, Homo Habilis and Homo Erectus (Homo Antecessor, discovered in 1996), but surely you must realise by now that we could play this game forever. We've found species C inbetween A and B, but usually that just provides the pseudo-scientific creationists with more fuel; where's the species between A and C, or C and B?

Secondly, there is no 'inter-species' creatures. Either a creature is labelled as one species, or another. Furthermore, fossils are extremely rare, being items which usually don't form, so it's no wonder the fossil record is far from complete.

> Oh, you think your position is so secure. "Every test designed to disprove the theory has failed". What are you talking about? Evolution is not scientific.

All you're doing is showing the better-informed part of the public that your denial of evolution is based on complete ignorance of what it is all about.

If you understood the theory of evolution at the "read one book on it" level you would be able to make a long list of conceivable falsifying observations.

> Tell me how you know the earth is so old (4.5 billion last time I heard). This is not a rhetorical question, I want an answer - and not about space. I'm talking about the earth

Try talkorigins.org for an introductory-level answer. Notice also that it was the first thing to pop up when I typed "age of the earth" into google and clicked the submit submit button.

Next: I don't recall bringing up the age of the earth, but since you ask, there are many ways of measuring the age of geological structures, and thus the earth.

• radiometric dating. This method relies on the radioactive decay of an unstable type of atom (parent isotope) within the rock into another type of stable atom (daughter isotope). In a certain period of time, called the half-life, half of the parent isotopes will have decayed into daughter isotopes; in an additional, equivalent period of time, half of the remaining parent isotopes will have decayed, and so on. The length of the half-life, which can be measured, varies for different isotopes. By measuring the ratio of parent to daughter isotopes, the time that has elapsed since decay began can be calculated; this is equivalent to the age of the rock.
• fission track dating. Certain minerals in rocks contain small amounts of uranium which decay radioactively by the splitting apart of the atomic nucleus (nuclear fission). The two fission fragments produced are highly energetic and highly charged, and they produce a linear trail of radiation damage in the surrounding crystals of the rock. This trail is known as a fission track. Fission tracks can be enlarged by chemical etching until they can be observed and measured under a microscope. The number of tracks is proportional to the time since they started to accumulate, and to the amount of uranium in the rock. The amount of uranium present can be determined by irradiating the rock with neutrons to produce a second set of fission tracks. The ratio of the original tracks to the new ones gives a measure of geological age.
• amino-acid racemisation. The method relies on the fact that molecules of amino-acids, the building blocks of proteins, occur in two different forms that are mirror images of each other. These two forms are referred to as left-handed and right-handed. In living organisms, only left-handed amino acid molecules are present, but once the organism dies they slowly convert to their right handed form. Simultaneously, the right handed forms produced slowly convert back to left handed forms, until an equilibrium is reached (half left handed and half right handed), at which point the ratio remains constant. The time taken to reach equilibrium is known, so by determining the ratio of right handed to left handed forms it is possible to estimate the time elapsed since the organism died.

> I agree that the heavens are several billion years old. The earth, however, is not. You probably think this is twisted. I assure you it is not. Read this book [amazon.com] if you want to know how.

Or save your money, skip the creationist bunkum, and read this instead, while you're waiting for Humpreys' twisty logic to make it to the pages of a peer reviewed journal.

I don't know why I even bother responding to such an obvious Troll, but I'm going to anyway. No doubt, I'll stumble over some specifics (corrections/refinements are welcome), but here goes...

Firstly, you should read more posts; most of them actually make fun of the concept of using The Matrix as any kind of meaningful vehicle for proselytizing.

As to your second point, the bible repeatedly proves itself wrong.

Look, if you want to think that the bible is some kind of repository of moral rectitude, be my guest. But don't make the mistake of believing that it's infallible. The only people I've ever met who think every word in the bible is the literal truth are people who have yet to read any significant portion of it. As to the Noachian flood myths, study some geology. Absent that, read some more informed sources.

Your third point suffers from a number of misconceptions. First of all (and any number of Cosmologists can explain this far better and more accurately than I can), no one says that the Big Bang theory disproves the existence of god; what it does tell us is that the universe has a definite starting point and that the origins of the earth, planet, sun, stars, and other celestial bodies (which, BTW, we are able to observe but whose existence is conspicuously absent from the bible) are derivatives of physical constants set in motion by the big bang, thus eliminating the need for constant divine intervention (as described in Genesis--actually, described twice in Genesis, in accounts that differ significantly).

Additionally, I know of no "two-second rule" in the big bang theory; last I heard, we had refined our knowledge of the big bang process down to a few milliseconds. And there is no mention in any cosmology I have ever read that mentions any atoms rubbing together. In fact, most physical cosmolgies posit a super-dense mass of subatomic particles that is several orders of magnitude more dense than atomic structures. As to the period of time before the big bang, there you enter some interesting territory. Interesting from a philosophical standpoint, not from a physical one, however. There is no way for us to observe what may or may not have occurred "beyond" the "big bang barrier", thus, anything that may or may not have existed "before" that moment is essentially meaningless to us.

And please, please don't ever revert to the 'a theory is not a law' chestnut; it's embarrassing to have to explain something so rudimentary. a hypothesis and a theory are not the same thing. A hypothesis is a guess. In science, a hypothesis is a guess about how something works. A theory is an understanding of how something works, backed up by testing and observation. In science, "theory" and "law" mean essentially the same thing. We prefer the term "theory" because it is more precise than "law." We cannot, for example, know every possible permutation of the Special Theory of Relativity--they're infinite. We can say with a fair degree of certainty, however, that the relativity principle combined with the Maxwell equations demonstrates that E=mc^2. Mass graves in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are testament to this fact.

Fourthly, the existence of religious themes in popular entertainment demonstrates precisely nothing about the extent to which religion was "a great part of the writers' lives growing up." Frankly, I think the Matrix is a horrible example of religious allegory. Neo (and the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar) killed scores of people whose only crime was not knowing that they were victims of an elaborate deception. Now,

Now about evolution. By the stict definition of evolution, no one can logically deiny that evolution is happening right now. HOWEVER, speciation, that is another thing entirely. I am not sure that we have ever witnessed specieation, but i could be wrong about this. Please let me know if i am.

Another set of interesting examples are "ring species"- species where population A can breed with B, B can breed with A or C, and C can breed with B... but A can't breed with C (or produces only infertile offspring.) This can happen when the three populations are semi-isolated but with occasional travel between A and B, and between B and C. By most species definitions A, B and C are one species, as each type can (at least indirectly) share genetic information with the others. The key development which can occur in this situation- if all the B die, there are now two different species A and C. This would be instant speciation.

Now about evolution. By the stict definition of evolution, no one can logically deiny that evolution is happening right now. HOWEVER, speciation, that is another thing entirely. I am not sure that we have ever witnessed specieation, but i could be wrong about this. Please let me know if i am.

Another set of interesting examples are "ring species"- species where population A can breed with B, B can breed with A or C, and C can breed with B... but A can't breed with C (or produces only infertile offspring.) This can happen when the three populations are semi-isolated but with occasional travel between A and B, and between B and C. By most species definitions A, B and C are one species, as each type can (at least indirectly) share genetic information with the others. The key development which can occur in this situation- if all the B die, there are now two different species A and C. This would be instant speciation.

In my opinion, it should be made a law (A natural phenomenon that has been proven to occur invariably whenever certain conditions are met)...

Laws are for mathematics. You mean it should be made a fact or a theory. Oh, wait - it's already both.

I'll accept any evidence against my point of view.

OK, have you read all of this yet?

And whatever other "natural forces" are required. Gee, you almost make it sound like nature is intelligent.

All you need is something which selects certain members of a species over others. A change in climate, getting eaten by predators, depletion of food/water, etc.

The creationist hypothesis says that the world, including the fossil record, is the way it is because God made it that way. The creationist hypothesis fits the observed facts perfectly, by definition.

That's not a hypothesis. It predicts nothing. It explains nothing. It also ignores that fact that the creationists I'm talking about, far from being theistic evolutionists -- a position I have no quarrel with -- believe Genesis 1 to be literal truth, despite the fact that they have no evidence for it. (They also, for reasons I don't fully understand, despite having been one, believe Genesis 2 to be figurative. Only because it's contradictory...)

It seems to me that you're far more prejudiced against people of faith than the average person of faith would be against you.

That's entirely possible. I don't deny it. It doesn't change the facts.

Evolution has never been posed by ANYONE as a "historical fact."

Well, I just did. But I know what you meant. If you really believe that, it shows that you haven't done the slighted bit of research into what evolution is.

The creationist hypothesis says that the world, including the fossil record, is the way it is because God made it that way. The creationist hypothesis fits the observed facts perfectly, by definition.

That's not a hypothesis. It predicts nothing. It explains nothing. It also ignores that fact that the creationists I'm talking about, far from being theistic evolutionists -- a position I have no quarrel with -- believe Genesis 1 to be literal truth, despite the fact that they have no evidence for it. (They also, for reasons I don't fully understand, despite having been one, believe Genesis 2 to be figurative. Only because it's contradictory...)

It seems to me that you're far more prejudiced against people of faith than the average person of faith would be against you.

That's entirely possible. I don't deny it. It doesn't change the facts.

Evolution has never been posed by ANYONE as a "historical fact."

Well, I just did. But I know what you meant. If you really believe that, it shows that you haven't done the slighted bit of research into what evolution is.

This is true, but there is more evidence than that. To me, the most convincing evidence is the fact that all life can be described by a hierarchy that does not change if you use different criteria to build the tree. There is a very good description of this here. There is much more evidence than that, such as the distribution of categories of life in isolated areas of the planet, vestigial structures like hip bones in snakes and whales, and of course the fossil record, but to me, this is the core evidence.

You should really read it, or something like it. There's a lot you don't know.

Here's the link again: http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

No one has to know. :-)

Proving that the earth is indeed old enough to allow for evolution.

Already done.

Proving that time can create new genetic information.

Already done.

Providing a single example of evolution (be sure to differ between evolution and natural selection)

Um. Evolution is the change in allele frequencies over time. One way that happens is random mutation followed by natural selection. In other words, you've asked for an example of evolution that is counter to the definition of evolution.

Every evidence (every one) supporting evolution has been debunked time and time again.

Incorrect. Start here.

Just ask a mathmetician what the chances are of life happening by accident.

I'd rather ask a biologist. But it doesn't matter. Life didn't have to start by accident. The laws of chemistry likely had something to do with it. Either way it doesn't matter, evolution doesn't care how life got started; evolution merely takes over once it has.

and from a mathimatical standpoint (not crocery here, but true math and science) that anything past 10 to the 6th, is impossible, and will never ever happen...

Indeed? Take a deck of cards (I'll let you take out the Jokers). Shuffle it. The chances against the cards being in the order you produced is the factorial of 52, or about 8 x 10 to the 67th. I guess it didn't happen?

Take a random text generator, make one in whatever language you want. And have it spit out random text solid for an entire month. If you can get it to even make a "hello world" in ANY programming language under the sun, I will hand you 10 dollars.

Strawman. Evolution doesn't work that way. Evolution works by saving up what works for the next generation. Will you allow my text generator to save something that looks slightly like a hello world program and use that for the next round?

I don't believe that one species can evolve into another. It has not yet been demonstrated, nor will it ever.

Oh. Really?

Why did man suddenly lose his fur and walk upright?

Well, it wasn't "sudden" for one thing.

I mean, there has been over a century of countless scientists, all very intelligent, and none of them can describe how the evolution of any creature has occured.

Flat out wrong. Stop reading Chick tracts.

Aren't even the simplest organisms far more complex than even the most complicated machines we can build?

What does "complex" mean?

If the motion of sand cannot create a watch, how can any random motion create a living organism, let alone the hosts of living organisms that inhabit and have inhabited this world?

A) Watches do not half offspring, and B) evolution is not random.

We used to believe that we were literally offspring of God. Now we are lost souls, studying science to erase those panging doubts that creep into our minds, that tell us nothing is worth anything, and all is in vain.

What doubts? Maybe you have doubts, but that's your problem. Myself, I'd rather live in the real world, rather than fill my head with fantasies.

We believe that we are nothing, never were anything, and never can become anything more than we are.

Again, that sounds like your problem. What *I* believe is that we are finally, gradually coming to understand that we have our detiny in our own hands; that no magic being in the sky is going to save us; and that we're better off trying to fix our problems than praying for help.

Which doctor would you rather have?

I'd rather have one who would use the best possibly scientifically-determined treatment to help me, rather than one who's stuck in the 18th century with a head full of notions that have long since been disproved. YMMV.

I am not a trained scientist, so I may be describing this inaccurately. Here is a better definition.

Evolution as I understand the term means that life began on Earth four billion or so years ago, and has branched out through descent with modifications up to its present form, with most of the changes happening in the last half a billion years. Or so.

The Modern Synthesis, again in my own probably wrong words, is the integration of the ideas in Darwin's Origin of Species with modern genetics, and includes evolutionary forces such as natural selection, genetic drift, and many kinds of mutations. Here is (again) a better definition. You may get tired of all these links to talkorigins.org. But there is an immense amount of information there.

...does that mean I "have no business practicing medicine"?

I believe this is a valid point of view, and, like I said, shouldn't disqualify you from anything. Holding this opinion means that you are not wilfully ignorant; you do not ignore the evidence, you merely find the usual explanation to be insufficient, and you have an alternative (or additional) explanation.

I am not a trained scientist, so I may be describing this inaccurately. Here is a better definition.

Evolution as I understand the term means that life began on Earth four billion or so years ago, and has branched out through descent with modifications up to its present form, with most of the changes happening in the last half a billion years. Or so.

The Modern Synthesis, again in my own probably wrong words, is the integration of the ideas in Darwin's Origin of Species with modern genetics, and includes evolutionary forces such as natural selection, genetic drift, and many kinds of mutations. Here is (again) a better definition. You may get tired of all these links to talkorigins.org. But there is an immense amount of information there.

...does that mean I "have no business practicing medicine"?

I believe this is a valid point of view, and, like I said, shouldn't disqualify you from anything. Holding this opinion means that you are not wilfully ignorant; you do not ignore the evidence, you merely find the usual explanation to be insufficient, and you have an alternative (or additional) explanation.

No, I didn't say that. That is not the definition of creationism. It is quite possible to believe in God and at the same time also be informed about scientific facts. If someone refuses to investigate the vast body of evidence for evolution and prefers instead to take comfort in a myth with no evidence at all, *that* person is ignorant. You should investigate the actual evidence before assuming that I'm just talking out of my ass. I didn't make this stuff up. :-)

What if God did make the world in 6 days?

If so, then he has deliberately planted evidence to make it look like he didn't.

This is one of the best counter arguments against the irreducible complexity argument I have read. It is clear, detailed without being complex, and cites sources throughout.

Ten seconds with Google could have found it and many others like it (Including more Creationist pages which use the exact same incorrect "evidence" which is clearly shown to be incorrect or outdated in the article I link to, by the way).

Tum te tum.

I don't believe that one species can evolve into another. It has not yet been demonstrated, nor will it ever.

Actually, it has.

It has not been demonstrated, nor will it ever be, that this is how a given species in the world today came about. (unless time machines are invented) This may or may not be relevant.

Creationism is hard to argue for around here, and it's great that you've chosen to do so, but arguing with false statements does not help.

Wow, that took a while to read and recover from.

At first I thought it must be cut and pasted from somewhere on the web, but searching on key phrases doesn't reveal anything.

Note that this anonymous message embodies everything I've said about creationists: It offers no evidence in support of creationism, and even predicts (accurately, no doubt) that there will be none, because God presumably says so, although there is not even any evidence given of that. It consists almost entirely of challenges to evolution. It includes a section attacking the legitimacy of the scientific method and declaring that science is done by peer pressure. (Not a conspiracy theory, but close.)

Note, again, that no evidence, at all, is given in support of creationism.

I especially like the smokescreens... "centuries" compared to "a meager few billions of years".

I will not try to answer each of those points. Instead, I will refer you to the actual evidence for evolution.

There are several facts that have convinced me that evolution has occurred:

The most important, to me, is the fact that all life can be organized into coherent groups based on many different criteria such as body chemistry and anatomy, and changing the criteria doesn't change the groups. All insects have six legs. All mammals have hair. All animals have eyes, a mouth, a digestive system, blood, a heart, bilateral symmetry, breathe oxygen, et cetera. All flowering plants are vascular. All citrus trees are flowering plants. All conifers are *not* flowering plants, but are also vascular. For a better example here (part of the previous link).

Also, there is the geographical distribution of these groups of animals and plants. They are different everywhere in the world, and in fact, many places that have been isolated for a long time have entire groups of animals and plants that only exist there.

The fossil record consists of fossils which only exist in certain strata, and more developed forms typically are not found before less developed forms. Humans, for example, are not found more than a couple of million years ago. Dinosaurs are not found more recently than 65 million years ago.

The age of the earth can be calculated by many independent methods. They agree, within a certain margin of error. This is not evidence for evolution per se, but a very old earth is a requirement of evolution.

Do the research for yourself. But if you persist in refusing to accept science as a valid source of knowledge, to bring this back on topic, I won't support your right to get a recommendation from a professor toward a license to practice medicine. I'll bet you're terrified. :-)

Wow, that took a while to read and recover from.

At first I thought it must be cut and pasted from somewhere on the web, but searching on key phrases doesn't reveal anything.

Note that this anonymous message embodies everything I've said about creationists: It offers no evidence in support of creationism, and even predicts (accurately, no doubt) that there will be none, because God presumably says so, although there is not even any evidence given of that. It consists almost entirely of challenges to evolution. It includes a section attacking the legitimacy of the scientific method and declaring that science is done by peer pressure. (Not a conspiracy theory, but close.)

Note, again, that no evidence, at all, is given in support of creationism.

I especially like the smokescreens... "centuries" compared to "a meager few billions of years".

I will not try to answer each of those points. Instead, I will refer you to the actual evidence for evolution.

There are several facts that have convinced me that evolution has occurred:

The most important, to me, is the fact that all life can be organized into coherent groups based on many different criteria such as body chemistry and anatomy, and changing the criteria doesn't change the groups. All insects have six legs. All mammals have hair. All animals have eyes, a mouth, a digestive system, blood, a heart, bilateral symmetry, breathe oxygen, et cetera. All flowering plants are vascular. All citrus trees are flowering plants. All conifers are *not* flowering plants, but are also vascular. For a better example here (part of the previous link).

Also, there is the geographical distribution of these groups of animals and plants. They are different everywhere in the world, and in fact, many places that have been isolated for a long time have entire groups of animals and plants that only exist there.

The fossil record consists of fossils which only exist in certain strata, and more developed forms typically are not found before less developed forms. Humans, for example, are not found more than a couple of million years ago. Dinosaurs are not found more recently than 65 million years ago.

The age of the earth can be calculated by many independent methods. They agree, within a certain margin of error. This is not evidence for evolution per se, but a very old earth is a requirement of evolution.

Do the research for yourself. But if you persist in refusing to accept science as a valid source of knowledge, to bring this back on topic, I won't support your right to get a recommendation from a professor toward a license to practice medicine. I'll bet you're terrified. :-)

You're also confusing "probability" with "fact". No matter how unlikely it is that you even exist to read this, you did do it. Drop a bunch of coins, and no matter how unlikely that this combination of heads and tails occurs, it did happen.

What is objectively true when youre talking about beliefs? To a fundamentalist christian, the salvation of jesus christ is objectively true, and he cant understand why you cant see that. For a muslim fundamentalist, jihad against infidels is objectively true to them. Its naieve to think that you can argue either side out of their beliefs simply by exposing them to the "truth" Absolute truth does not exist in religion. Is jesus the son of god? if you believe he is. Is mohammed the son of god? if you believe he is. Is zeus real? if you believe he is. Do spirits of nature exist? if you believe they do. If somone is convinced the earth is flat Then to them, thats the absolute truth.

Yawn. Look here troll.

Pfffff..... how can the earth rotate if the earth is flat?!?! The realities of the earth have been established a long time ago; it is a plane board, sort of like a game board mounted on top of an infinate tower of turtles. All this stuff about the earth being round? Reactionary bull shit. Check out the truth:

A flat earth, it's not just a good idea; it's the truth.

---I understand you consider mEve and YAdam theoretical - but remember, in the absence of an eyewitness to this, this is a *hypothesis* put forward to fit the bottlenecking data (and perhaps, it does fit the data).---

No no, not theoretical as in, they didn't exist: theoretical as in conceptually defined. The designation mEve could pass onto another woman tommorow. We could find an alternate isolated lingeage tommorow that puts the designation mEve on an even older woman. You seem to think that it's an almost magical designation. But you're just cherry picking what you want to hear out of these studies and ignoring everything else. That's not the way to do science. The bottleneck itself is also conceptual: it doesn't reflect an actual bottleneck in the population (that is, it's not evidence of the total human population at any time being just 2 or even 5 individuals): it reflects a basic geometric necessity. Even the human population had been around for a billion years at roughly the size the human population has been prior to recorded history, there would still be a relatively _recent_ mEve, who would have nothing to do with early humans.

---Critics thrust back saying techniques like Radio-carbon dating give older ages....---

So, I see. If we pick and choose whatever evidence we need, arbitrarily giving near, unquestioning certainty to those studies that happen to fit into your pre-concieved notions, and casting doubt on all those that don't...
I mean the hundreds of other chains of evidence about age are all found in peer reviewed journals as well: why is "peer-reviewed" a magical veil of protection in one case, but of no worth in another? You don't think genetic studies have assumptions and holes as well that you could scoff at if they turned out not to agree with your theory the way you think it does?
You must know, of course, that radio-carbon dating is harly the only technique used for these various issues, and indeed it is not even the most important for determining key ages of the earth.

---If the amount of radioactivity increased dramatically due to the flood (as described in my earlier post), fossils created before the flood would look artificially "old" since post-flood fossils would have higher amounts of radio-carbon to begin with.---

An increase of such a level would have also irradiated life on Earth, including any Noah. But RC dating isn't simply based on unfounded assumptions: we've done endless experiments on RC under all sorts of different simulated conditions to understand what effects its decay rate, and why levels in living things would be in equilibrium with the atmosphere at certain points. Not to mention methods for spotting and checking the assumptions, including the possibility you are (inexplicably) sugguesting. You're going to have to do a little more than invent an ad hoc theory about how a global flood (which you'd also have to prove) was part of a conspiracy to confuse dating methods.
more here...
But hey, I'm sure it wont pass the "doesn't fit into my theory test" you seem to think is part of science.

---Also, there is also an "eyewitness" account being claimed here -- God's word in the Bible. How do we examine the trustworthiness of this account?---

You're right: but geez, we've got all this alternative testimony from Homer and Ovid. Come on. This is not scientific _evidence_, it's the very claims you're drawing your ideas from.

---Ultimately I can't *prove* God to you without a doubt.---

Why would you need to prove God to me? We were supposed to be talking about literalist Creationism, not the existence of God. The existence of God is an indepedant question.

enough of this prattle. go read this tutorial about radiochron dating and maybe you'll learn something today. or read about isochron dating methods and learn how different dating methods can be used to verify one another. or, heck, why not just start at the beginning: go read about fossils and paleontology.

enough of this prattle. go read this tutorial about radiochron dating and maybe you'll learn something today. or read about isochron dating methods and learn how different dating methods can be used to verify one another. or, heck, why not just start at the beginning: go read about fossils and paleontology.

enough of this prattle. go read this tutorial about radiochron dating and maybe you'll learn something today. or read about isochron dating methods and learn how different dating methods can be used to verify one another. or, heck, why not just start at the beginning: go read about fossils and paleontology.

Most anti-evolution people are simply religious folks too afraid to face the facts. I suggest reading 29 Evidences for Macroevolution. I still do not see any objective evidence PERIOD for the existence of a supernatural deity. But objective evidence for evolution is abundant.

Think about it: man has invented various Gods all throughout history. The ancient Gods (Greek/Roman mythology, etc) were easy to disprove... (no Atlas dude holding up the Earth). The only reason the Christian God has hung around so long is because he is defined as untestable. News flash: You cannot invent something, make it untestable, and put the burden of proof on the opposing side to disprove it.

Evolution is a fact

Obviously not a scientist - nothing is a fact - it's all just a theory.

Here are five links explaining why evolution is a fact.

And just in case you're too lazy to click the links and read the damn text - I know from experience that most of you fundie types are really that lazy - here is a sound-bite that even you can't ignore:

"Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them." [Stephen Jay Gould]

Clear enough? Or perhaps you'd like to claim that the late great Stephen Jay Gould was not a scientist?

When I did my Biology degree (10 years ago) one of the first statements made, when teaching Evolution, was that Chimps have DNA that is up to 98% the same as humans.

Amazing! They've been saying this for years. The problem is that the human genome was only mapped a couple of years ago, and I'd bet they haven't mapped the Chimps - so how did/do they know this?

I claim you are a liar. Even a first year biology student is taught how the similarity was determined. It's an estimate based on the rate of hybridization. It's simply impossible for you to have a biology degree and not know this.

"A quick method of measuring changes in DNA structure is to mix the DNA from two species, then measure by how many degrees of temperature the melting point of the mixed (hybrid) DNA is reduced below the melting point of pure DNA from a single species. The method is generally referred to as 'DNA hybridization.' As it turns out, a melting point lowered by one degree centigrade means that the DNAs of the two species differ by roughly 1 percent." [http://www.netherworld.com/~walkerk1/chap1.html]

And before you make the obvious (and incorrect) claim that hybridization isn't an accurate measure, you would do well to educate yourself on the topic. If you or anybody else could disprove hybridization you would be famous overnight.

I doubt if you'll find much in journals as Behe's work on irreducible complexity is published in popular books and not journals, but several good discussions of IR and ID are found at Talk.origins.

I have read these attacks against creation 'science'. My argument regarding chance does not ignore the concepts of natural selection, but natural selection does not explain how inorganic materials combined in a series of events to form life. There are other explanations needed, and out there to review. The sources you quote also simplify the real issues, and in no way offer proof that we evolved. They actually do a disservice to science. The fact that researchers hold certain aspects of evolution to be fact is not right, that is my point. I have read and enjoyed many of Stephen J. Gould essays, and the argument quoted here is not necessarily valid just because Mr. Gould wrote it. In my opinion the assumption that life came to be without the guiding hand of a designer is impossible to be convinced of. I am not necessarily talking about natural selection, or adaptation, or aspects of speciation, so much as the part of the theory that says that these mechanisms involve and are reliant on a series of chance occurrences. They are. I have listened to and read a number of arguments for evolution and it still seems to me that so much more needs to be explained. Science has a long way to go. I guess I'm still talking, but I never said I was a creationist. I also never claimed any authority in the subjects that I am talking about. I have more authority then you probably think I do, but nevertheless, I am not claiming in these posts to be an expert. It is important that all lay people be encouraged to think critically about ideas, even if if they are said to be fact.

I agree with your response a few levels down. "PD" should type more and I don't think that PD has successfully argued that evolution is a fact. While you have been considerably more polite I don't think you have successfully made your case either.

How about we make sure we are using the same definitions for "evolution" before we get any deeper in to this. A short trip to Google found what appears to be notes for a lecture. It seems likely that this is the definition of evolution that the Steves were in agreement about.

Would you care to comment on the section labeled "1." in the lecure notes? Are you arguing the same sort of case as Michael Behe?

Is there a point in debating this?

No, which is why I don't bother. Creationists purposefully ignore contrary evidence, overstep their area of expertise, fradulently claim skills and knowledge that they do not have, and repeat "arguments" that have already been shown to be false.

As I've said before, I don't debate with creationists. I treat them with the contempt I'd reserve for any religious nutcase who perverts science and attacks education. I ridicule them. I attack them. My purpose is not to enlighten you, but to make you stop talking.

In the end how can you say that evolution is a fact?

Because it is a fact. That you bring up the tired old argument of "evolution is just chance" is exactly why I don't bother with debate. You repeat this refuted argument as if it's still a matter for debate! It is not.

Is there a point in debating this?

No, which is why I don't bother. Creationists purposefully ignore contrary evidence, overstep their area of expertise, fradulently claim skills and knowledge that they do not have, and repeat "arguments" that have already been shown to be false.

As I've said before, I don't debate with creationists. I treat them with the contempt I'd reserve for any religious nutcase who perverts science and attacks education. I ridicule them. I attack them. My purpose is not to enlighten you, but to make you stop talking.

In the end how can you say that evolution is a fact?

Because it is a fact. That you bring up the tired old argument of "evolution is just chance" is exactly why I don't bother with debate. You repeat this refuted argument as if it's still a matter for debate! It is not.

What's going on in the case that you're citing, I have no way of knowing. But you could try sending feedback to the talk.origins website, or preferably post to the talk.origins newsgroup. The regulars are often familiar with AiG claims.

As for your subject line, the answer is probably "You shouldn't, until other scientists have had a chance to examine it carefully." Scientists throw in this kind of idea all the time. Sometimes the ideas survive scrutiny; sometimes they don't.

> 1. There are a few techniques for measuring old dates (say, 4000 years and older, including upwards of millions of years).

There is an excellent summary of relevant dating methods and other matters pertaining to the age of the earth at the talk.origins Website.

> 2. These techniques are not accurate for young objects, such as dates taken from recent volcanic activity

A simple case of garbage-in, garbage-out. If a programmer writes a function and specifies what inputs it works on, you can't expect it to work properly on other inputs. Ditto with most technological procedures that scientists use. If you want to use the Hubble space telescope to measure the distance to a quasar and you point it at the quasar when the sun lies in between, the numbers you get are going to be useless - even if you apply the "correct" calculations to them.

> 3. Because these techniques are only recently employed, they have not been tested on anything we know is old to prove they work.
> 4. They are untestable because we have no objects we are certain are, say, 60000 years old except by these techniques. Therefore we cannot test these techniques on anything within range.

However, they are based on well-established principles (e.g., we understand radioactive decay for reasons completely unrelated to the age of the earth), and they converge on a common answer. Browse the links above if you are curious about this kind of stuff.

Also notice that when a murder occurs with no witnesses, we can often identify the time and manner of the event anyway. People actually investigate this stuff in order to come up with a model of the universe that works. It's not just some mechanism that someone pulled out of their hat.

Finally, notice that geologists had figured out that the earth was far, far older than a literal reading of the bible implies, long before they had radioisotopic methods to work with. (And even before they had Darwin's theory of evolution, for that matter.)

> 5. These techniques are based on the assumption that breakdown, injection of elements, etc, continues at a constant rate.

The thing about science that most creationists don't understand is that scientific assumptions have consequences, and you can increase the confidence in your assumptions by seeing how the consequences pan out. For instance, if there had been any significant changes in the rate of radioactive decay over the past few thousand years then we could see that the stars a few thousand light-years away were "burning" differently than the ones nearby.

Now it may be possible to juggle the parameters and come up with a model of the universe with changing physical constants and make it match all current observations. However, you have to actually do that if you want to offer it as an alternative theory about nature. You can't invoke a non-existent theory to displace an existing theory that actually works.

Remember, the requirement of science is a coherent model of the universe, not a bag of independent and possibly self-contradictory claims.

> So my question is, if K-Ar fails when it can be tested, and produces an age of 0.27-3.5 million years old for something that is _known_ to be young, then why should I trust the dates given in contemporary science?

That's a GIGO issue. See the talk.origins Website's comments on this, which summarizes with -

And now for the Red Herring. Creationists often bring up the example of the Hawaiian pillow basalts with anomalous K-Ar ages, but they neglect to mention that geologists already thought that rocks formed under THESE PARTICULAR conditions would give unreliable K-Ar ages because they would trap argon before it can escape. The studies in question were performed to confirm this under controlled conditions, and thus to confirm to the scientific community that THIS PARTICULAR type of rock is unsuitable for radiometric dating. The misuse of this work by Creationists is particularly despicable, IMHO.

As for your subject line, the answer is probably "You shouldn't, until other scientists have had a chance to examine it carefully." Scientists throw in this kind of idea all the time. Sometimes the ideas survive scrutiny; sometimes they don't.

> 1. There are a few techniques for measuring old dates (say, 4000 years and older, including upwards of millions of years).

There is an excellent summary of relevant dating methods and other matters pertaining to the age of the earth at the talk.origins Website.

> 2. These techniques are not accurate for young objects, such as dates taken from recent volcanic activity

A simple case of garbage-in, garbage-out. If a programmer writes a function and specifies what inputs it works on, you can't expect it to work properly on other inputs. Ditto with most technological procedures that scientists use. If you want to use the Hubble space telescope to measure the distance to a quasar and you point it at the quasar when the sun lies in between, the numbers you get are going to be useless - even if you apply the "correct" calculations to them.

> 3. Because these techniques are only recently employed, they have not been tested on anything we know is old to prove they work.
> 4. They are untestable because we have no objects we are certain are, say, 60000 years old except by these techniques. Therefore we cannot test these techniques on anything within range.

However, they are based on well-established principles (e.g., we understand radioactive decay for reasons completely unrelated to the age of the earth), and they converge on a common answer. Browse the links above if you are curious about this kind of stuff.

Also notice that when a murder occurs with no witnesses, we can often identify the time and manner of the event anyway. People actually investigate this stuff in order to come up with a model of the universe that works. It's not just some mechanism that someone pulled out of their hat.

Finally, notice that geologists had figured out that the earth was far, far older than a literal reading of the bible implies, long before they had radioisotopic methods to work with. (And even before they had Darwin's theory of evolution, for that matter.)

> 5. These techniques are based on the assumption that breakdown, injection of elements, etc, continues at a constant rate.

The thing about science that most creationists don't understand is that scientific assumptions have consequences, and you can increase the confidence in your assumptions by seeing how the consequences pan out. For instance, if there had been any significant changes in the rate of radioactive decay over the past few thousand years then we could see that the stars a few thousand light-years away were "burning" differently than the ones nearby.

Now it may be possible to juggle the parameters and come up with a model of the universe with changing physical constants and make it match all current observations. However, you have to actually do that if you want to offer it as an alternative theory about nature. You can't invoke a non-existent theory to displace an existing theory that actually works.

Remember, the requirement of science is a coherent model of the universe, not a bag of independent and possibly self-contradictory claims.

> So my question is, if K-Ar fails when it can be tested, and produces an age of 0.27-3.5 million years old for something that is _known_ to be young, then why should I trust the dates given in contemporary science?

That's a GIGO issue. See the talk.origins Website's comments on this, which summarizes with -

And now for the Red Herring. Creationists often bring up the example of the Hawaiian pillow basalts with anomalous K-Ar ages, but they neglect to mention that geologists already thought that rocks formed under THESE PARTICULAR conditions would give unreliable K-Ar ages because they would trap argon before it can escape. The studies in question were performed to confirm this under controlled conditions, and thus to confirm to the scientific community that THIS PARTICULAR type of rock is unsuitable for radiometric dating. The misuse of this work by Creationists is particularly despicable, IMHO.

As for your subject line, the answer is probably "You shouldn't, until other scientists have had a chance to examine it carefully." Scientists throw in this kind of idea all the time. Sometimes the ideas survive scrutiny; sometimes they don't.

> 1. There are a few techniques for measuring old dates (say, 4000 years and older, including upwards of millions of years).

There is an excellent summary of relevant dating methods and other matters pertaining to the age of the earth at the talk.origins Website.

> 2. These techniques are not accurate for young objects, such as dates taken from recent volcanic activity

A simple case of garbage-in, garbage-out. If a programmer writes a function and specifies what inputs it works on, you can't expect it to work properly on other inputs. Ditto with most technological procedures that scientists use. If you want to use the Hubble space telescope to measure the distance to a quasar and you point it at the quasar when the sun lies in between, the numbers you get are going to be useless - even if you apply the "correct" calculations to them.

> 3. Because these techniques are only recently employed, they have not been tested on anything we know is old to prove they work.
> 4. They are untestable because we have no objects we are certain are, say, 60000 years old except by these techniques. Therefore we cannot test these techniques on anything within range.

However, they are based on well-established principles (e.g., we understand radioactive decay for reasons completely unrelated to the age of the earth), and they converge on a common answer. Browse the links above if you are curious about this kind of stuff.

Also notice that when a murder occurs with no witnesses, we can often identify the time and manner of the event anyway. People actually investigate this stuff in order to come up with a model of the universe that works. It's not just some mechanism that someone pulled out of their hat.

Finally, notice that geologists had figured out that the earth was far, far older than a literal reading of the bible implies, long before they had radioisotopic methods to work with. (And even before they had Darwin's theory of evolution, for that matter.)

> 5. These techniques are based on the assumption that breakdown, injection of elements, etc, continues at a constant rate.

The thing about science that most creationists don't understand is that scientific assumptions have consequences, and you can increase the confidence in your assumptions by seeing how the consequences pan out. For instance, if there had been any significant changes in the rate of radioactive decay over the past few thousand years then we could see that the stars a few thousand light-years away were "burning" differently than the ones nearby.

Now it may be possible to juggle the parameters and come up with a model of the universe with changing physical constants and make it match all current observations. However, you have to actually do that if you want to offer it as an alternative theory about nature. You can't invoke a non-existent theory to displace an existing theory that actually works.

Remember, the requirement of science is a coherent model of the universe, not a bag of independent and possibly self-contradictory claims.

> So my question is, if K-Ar fails when it can be tested, and produces an age of 0.27-3.5 million years old for something that is _known_ to be young, then why should I trust the dates given in contemporary science?

That's a GIGO issue. See the talk.origins Website's comments on this, which summarizes with -

And now for the Red Herring. Creationists often bring up the example of the Hawaiian pillow basalts with anomalous K-Ar ages, but they neglect to mention that geologists already thought that rocks formed under THESE PARTICULAR conditions would give unreliable K-Ar ages because they would trap argon before it can escape. The studies in question were performed to confirm this under controlled conditions, and thus to confirm to the scientific community that THIS PARTICULAR type of rock is unsuitable for radiometric dating. The misuse of this work by Creationists is particularly despicable, IMHO.

The various dating techniques can be tied together (and are). The geologists talk of the "Geologic Column". Try this link (although it's primarily a debunking of the young earth, rather than a good basic article in geology.) Or this talk.origins FAQ.

Similarly, recent history is well mapped by the intersection of dendrochronology and carbon-14 dating. C-14 techniques are good enough to get C-14 levels from a single tree ring. So, you go to an old but living tree and take a core. Counting tree rings directly gives you years in the past. The oldest trees are around 5000 years old. But! the tree ring patterns in a locality are consistent. So you find the same patterns in the dead trees in the area. With brutal amounts of work (it's called the scientific method - 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration), you can map C14 levels for a lot of time in a number of areas.

Then you can take your dendrochronologically corrected C-14 clock and date, for example, a number of landslides and other disasters from the trees and wooden artifacts in them, under them, and above them.

Young-earth creationists, such as the site you reference, attempt to break down the strong network of interrelated geologic theory with point arguments, mostly spurious. Answers in Genesis has pages like this one which claim that under some conditions, trees have more than one growth ring per year, and various other niggles. They are niggles, because they throw a lot of weight on small details, distracting you from the bigger picture. The trick is, learning enough about things like how chronology is really done is grad school stuff, while making plausible objections is grade school stuff.

I really want to link to the hoax "debunking" of the atom bomb, but I can't find a link.

I guess this is close enough to on-topic.

The earth is only roughly 4.55 billion years old.

But that would just mean the asteroid in your example would only have to hit...say...2 billion years ago.

Have you considered the possibility that *you* do not understand *evolution*? I used to be a creationist, and would refute evolution with what I thought were logical arguments. However, after educating myself on evolution, I have changed my mind. Evolution makes a lot of sense.

At least I believed in "old earth" creationism and not "young earth" creationism. YEC is refuted by an inordinant amount of physical evidence!