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There's no great mystery; all of the chemicals are common, other beetles exist that excrete them separately; and the temperatures and pressures are not really that great (only just above boiling). So what?

Only if you're a creationist.

Remember kids, every time a gap in fossil record is filled, two more gaps are created!

Just because you don't know about the countless intermediary fossils that we've discovered for many species, including our own, doesn't mean they exist. We've got quite a nice progression from our common ancestor with ape to modern man, thankyouverymuch.

The Talk.Origins FAQ Archive

How can there possibly be a moon when the earth is flat.

There used to be a theory of gravity, it is now the law of gravity. It has been proven

No. Nothing is ever 'proven' in science. All we have are theories that haven't been overturned -- yet.

Now, there is a thing we call 'gravity', which seems to cause masses to be attracted to each other. This is a fact. We have several theories that try to explain how it happens. There's the classical Newtonian force theory, there's General Relativity, where gravity is a curvature of spacetime, and some day we hope to have a quantum theory of gravity.

Similarly, there is something called 'evolution', in which species change over time. This is a fact. As with gravity, we have different theories that attempt to explain exaclty how it happens.

So you are saying that you have proof of the three items you mentioned? Would you please post them for our education?

I'm not the original poster, but here is a list of observed speciation events.

But number 2 is not evolution, it is adaptation and that is totally different

No. Adaptation IS evolution.

This might be what you're looking for:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/isochron-dating.ht ml

A few years ago I spent a long time discussing creationism versus evolution online. After too much time spent I grew weary of it, and have ceased. One reason for my growing weary is that I like to see people's positions accurately represented, and knee-jerk responses from both sides of the aisle don't do that. When I finally had reached the point where I had seen the same arguments repeat so often that I was having trouble resisting the knee-jerk responses myself, I bowed out.

Incidentally which poster is the "initial poster" that you criticized? PineHall who pointed out that Behe sees intelligent design at the molecular level? Me as AC who pointed out that he accepts the general outline of evolution? ianscott who was the poster who annoyed you enough to respond? I am curious.

Another reason that I stopped actively pursing evolution vs creationism discussion is that creationists have a strong tendancy to start with a conclusion and then find arguments that support it, rather than to start looking for information about the world and then accept the conclusions that they come to. The result is that often you see major things ignored to get the desired conclusion. (I would that I had a nickel for every time I have seen a quote used to claim that some scientist or another didn't believe in evolution which, when seen in the original context, obviously meant the opposite of what was claimed...) After a certain point the game of figuring out what was missed or deliberately ignored comes to seem pointless.

For instance I haven't read the book that you recommend. Nor am I particularly interested. Instead I go to www.talkorigins.org and look for the first thing they have on the topic. If I was still interested in creationism versus evolution I would look to get your book, read it, read the criticism, and come up with my own critique of both. I would then try to simplify that and boil it down to a coherent opinion of my own that I could give to anyone who asks.

The problem is that having done that a few dozen times already I have pretty good reason to believe that I will find a few details on which the FAQ is unfair to Robert Gentry, but I will agree with the broad sweep of its criticism. And doing so will take me a lot of time, which I have more enjoyable ways to spend. So yeah, this is a pretty lazy way to dismiss your well-intended effort, but I have my eyes on a couple of books on programming and workplace productivity that look more interesting to me...

If you wish to discuss this further I won't be looking for this thread any more, but my email address encoded like yours is is 'moc.liamarepo' 'ta' 'yllit_neb'.

A few years ago I spent a long time discussing creationism versus evolution online. After too much time spent I grew weary of it, and have ceased. One reason for my growing weary is that I like to see people's positions accurately represented, and knee-jerk responses from both sides of the aisle don't do that. When I finally had reached the point where I had seen the same arguments repeat so often that I was having trouble resisting the knee-jerk responses myself, I bowed out.

Incidentally which poster is the "initial poster" that you criticized? PineHall who pointed out that Behe sees intelligent design at the molecular level? Me as AC who pointed out that he accepts the general outline of evolution? ianscott who was the poster who annoyed you enough to respond? I am curious.

Another reason that I stopped actively pursing evolution vs creationism discussion is that creationists have a strong tendancy to start with a conclusion and then find arguments that support it, rather than to start looking for information about the world and then accept the conclusions that they come to. The result is that often you see major things ignored to get the desired conclusion. (I would that I had a nickel for every time I have seen a quote used to claim that some scientist or another didn't believe in evolution which, when seen in the original context, obviously meant the opposite of what was claimed...) After a certain point the game of figuring out what was missed or deliberately ignored comes to seem pointless.

For instance I haven't read the book that you recommend. Nor am I particularly interested. Instead I go to www.talkorigins.org and look for the first thing they have on the topic. If I was still interested in creationism versus evolution I would look to get your book, read it, read the criticism, and come up with my own critique of both. I would then try to simplify that and boil it down to a coherent opinion of my own that I could give to anyone who asks.

The problem is that having done that a few dozen times already I have pretty good reason to believe that I will find a few details on which the FAQ is unfair to Robert Gentry, but I will agree with the broad sweep of its criticism. And doing so will take me a lot of time, which I have more enjoyable ways to spend. So yeah, this is a pretty lazy way to dismiss your well-intended effort, but I have my eyes on a couple of books on programming and workplace productivity that look more interesting to me...

If you wish to discuss this further I won't be looking for this thread any more, but my email address encoded like yours is is 'moc.liamarepo' 'ta' 'yllit_neb'.

I think you're a bit confused, if that's what you were really talking about. This is a rather ancient creationist claim, and indeed a rather silly one. An increase in variation is itself an increase in "information" content if one means unique sequences. But increasing "information" in terms of information theory is the result of selection: not of mutation itself.

Here you go

This states that a species will get stronger, but it cannot explain how a species would turn into another species, such as a lizard into a bird.

I'm not sure whether you're saying that genetic mutation cannot cause species to diverge. If you are not suggesting that, I apologize for the misunderstanding.

The theory of evolution unequivocally states that genetic mutation can cause speciation. It is discussed at length here.

Study talk.origins, go through the various FAQs, articles, and past discussions there, and prepare yourself with answers to the questions presented.

Remember to try to really understand the full context of the discussions because you will not have accomplished what Peter 3:15 tells you to do if your answers are shallow and you are unable to handle obvious follow-ups, leaving your listeners dissatisfied.

These are old objections, that have been answered many times. See, for example, the TalkOrigins Faq

Heh, ask these questions, and you'll get uncomfortable feet-shuffling and red faces. Be prepared to be called a "zealot."

1) Where are all of the transitional fossils?

However, the phrase "all of the transitional fossils" is usually used (dishonestly) by creationsts to claim that no such fossils exist. Of course, every time paleontologists find a transitional species between two other known species, this leaves two transitions to be filled instead of one... The fact that we have evidence of thousands and thousands of intermediate species, and that DNA evidence of living species backs up the morphological family tree to a degree which would be impossible save for common descent, is ironclad evidence that life on Earth evolved and continues to evolve.

2) How can you explain the presence of young comets in a solar system that is supposed to be "billions" of years old?

3) What caused the Big Bang?

4) How do you explain the relative thinness of the layer of dust on the Moon? It should be much deeper if the Moon is billions of years old.

5) How do you reconcile the perfection of Scripture with the hoaxes and embarrassments of science (i.e., Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Lucy, etc.)

6) How do you counter the charge that modern Information Theory (IT) renders evolution all but impossible?

There's a pretty good rebuttal of the IT claim in the Feb. 2001 post of the month. Or perhaps you should just walk your way through some of these Google search results; you might learn something if your mind is open to it.

1) Satan forgot to place transitional fossils in ground while he placing other fossils in the ground to confound us and lead us away from Jehovah.

2) Hmm... How do you explain the presence of the three-week-old bottle of milk in my refrigerator in a solar system that is supposed to be "billions" of years old?

3) The Demiurge was eating Pop Rocks and drinking Coke at the same time, in spite of God's warnings.

4) Angels or Aliens with vacuum cleaners? The fact that the solar system is moving through a galaxy with varying debris densities? Dang! That's a tired out argument, already!!! (See this for more info.

5) How do you reconcile the hoaxes and embarrassments of religion (i.e. Inquisitions, Jihads, Caste systems, Sabbatai Svi, Heaven's Gate, ad nausem) to the perfection (well... maybe not) of Mathematics?

6) Huh?

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob. html

Just to point out how dishonest this story is... check out the real story here.

To summarize, there never was any life size replica, farmer, or any such nonsense. That story is entirely invented (and implausible to begin with: pig's teeth and primate teeth are so similar that experts often have a hard time telling them apart: and everyone at the time already knew this)
What there was was a single drawing that appeared in a popular magazine, that itself never claimed to be any sort of "reconstruction from a tooth" but rather just a fanciful illustration. Here's the text that came with the sketch: "Mr. Forestier has made a remarkable sketch to convey some idea of the possibilities suggested by this discovery. As we know nothing of the creature's form, his reconstruction is merely the expression of an artist's brilliant imaginative genius. But if, as the peculiarities of the tooth suggest, Hesperopithecus was a primitive forerunner of Pithecanthropus, he may have been a creature such as Mr. Forestier has depicted." (Smith 1922, emphasis added)

And that was about the MOST laudable thing ever said about the picture: again, not even in a scientific publication, but rather in a popular article. The scientific community never took it seriously that the teeth even came from an ape, much less a human ancestor.

You have got to be kidding. Evolution doesn't try to explain the origin of life?

As I understand it, the various evolutionary mechanism theories attempt to explain why existing lineages of organisms change over time the way they do. These theories could be said to explain the origin of human from non-human life, which is a different matter entirely.

Examples:
Evening Primrose (Oenothera gigas)
Kew Primrose (Primula kewensis)
Drosophila paulistorum - the fruit fly
Apple Maggot Fly (Rhagoletis pomonella)

and many others - both natural and forced.

please visit
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.htm l "Observed Instances of Speciation" for a lengthy and well written discussion on the topic (that I was forced to read for class and re-visit often).

So we have witnessed one species become another?

Yes.

Way to exhort a population by referring to your audience as fools. I applaud your rhetorical skills. A couple of articles you may find enlightening yourself, assuming your mind hasn't already been made up to the point where you might be confused by the facts ...

An email correspondance between Dr. Edward Max and Dr. Lee Spetner.

A couple of newsgroup articles about him as well, the 2nd of which has a number of other links if you're still interested. You'll also notice that Dr. Spetner is comfortable in posting articles on that bastion of scientific credibility, trueorigin.org.

How about the fact that the oldest fossils are all microscopic organisms? The record is clear: for the first two billion years that there was life on Earth, life consisted only of single-celled organisms.

It was only 500 million years ago that the first vertebrate animals lived (fish), and 400 million years ago that we see the earliest record of life on land (millipedes).

Land-based, vertebrate life has existed only during the most recent 20% of the history of all life, so it just isn't possible that all species were created at the same time, "more or less as they are now".

(source: Timeline of life on Earth)

> So the question begs: What did this crackpot get a doctorate in?

Hovind claims to possess a masters degree and a doctorate in education from Patriot University in Colorado. According to Hovind, his 250-page dissertation was on the topic of the dangers of teaching evolution in the public schools. Formerly affiliated with Hilltop Baptist Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Patriot University is accredited only by the American Accrediting Association of Theological Institutions, an accreditation mill that provides accreditation for a $100 charge. Patriot University has moved to Alamosa, Colorado and continues to offer correspondence courses for $15 to $32 per credit. The school's catalog contains course descriptions but no listing of the school's faculty or their credentials. Name It and Frame It lists Patriot University as a degree mill [3].

I'm not sure what you're hoping for in terms of a "big bang" theory unless you're one of the people who believe that theories on the origins of the universe and evolutionary theory are somehow linked. They're not. The so-called big bang theory could fall apart tomorrow and have no effect on the theory of evolution (unless it fell apart because it was proved that the universe is only a few thousand years old or something along those lines). They're two very separate things. Some people tie them together because they fall into some peoples' single theory of the atheistic origins of everything. So be it, but they're still separate theories from separate disciplines.

You're not going to get an evolutionary biologist talking about "the theory of the origins of everything" and trying to put together a complete string of events from the beginning of the universe to modern time. The general theory of evolution is, quite simply, that thanks to natural selection, new species arise from ancestral ones. Modern animals are related through common descent. It says nothing about the origins of matter. It just seeks to explain why we have so many different species, why most of those species appear as though there was a time when they didn't exist (that is, we can't find a *really* old human fossil next to dinosaur fossils because there were no humans yet), and why most modern animals appear to have vestigial parts and processes that are shared with different species (like, why do some species of whales have a pelvis?). If you're looking for a single theory that covers matter, space, time, genetic diversity, and the origins of life, you're in for disappointment. You have to take each theory separately (something a lot of creationists seem to forget...they argue with the big bang theory as if it's somehow going to change the fact that species are currently evolving).

Yes, I sort of addressed that by saying that the book does not only deny speciation, but all of evolution, which is a much larger claim. It is a lot easier to argue that natural speciation has not occured, but there is mounting evidence of observed speciation.

An excellent place to start would be here. There's plenty more in there if you want to browse a bit. If you have specific questions, their site is indexed by an internal Google appliance and they'll usually respond to feedback and questions through their site or the newsgroup talk.origins. Happy reading.

An important nit to pick is that when you hear the word "macro-evolution," you're usually hearing it from somebody who is trying to move the goalposts for evolutionary evidence (or somebody who is arguing against them in terms they can understand). The trick is that "macro-evolution" is conveniently difficult to define, so as soon as evidence comes up to support evolution, the threshold for "macro" versus "micro" shifts a bit in order to settle that evidence neatly into "micro." The above links refer to speciation, which, while still somewhat difficult to define, is a more concrete way of referring to the phenomenon.

An important nit to pick is that when you hear the word "macro-evolution," you're usually hearing it from somebody who is trying to move the goalposts for evolutionary evidence (or somebody who is arguing against them in terms they can understand). The trick is that "macro-evolution" is conveniently difficult to define, so as soon as evidence comes up to support evolution, the threshold for "macro" versus "micro" shifts a bit in order to settle that evidence neatly into "micro." The above links refer to speciation, which, while still somewhat difficult to define, is a more concrete way of referring to the phenomenon.

Creation scientists claimed for a while the possibility of the speed of light decreasing. They were hammered about this from every quarter. Now it seems that it might be credible.

First off, "creation scientist" is an oxymoron. Secondly, creationists require speed of light decay at rates much, much, much higher than might be indicated. Third, they ignore that you can't just decrease the speed of light without screwing up a lot of other constants and physical laws. If the speed of light had really varied as much as the creationists want, we wouldn't be here to argue about it.

A lot of science done seems to be based on the assumption that the universe is billions of years old, and that the earth itself is around 4.5 billion years old (subject to change).

These are not an assumptions. These are figures arrived at from observation and experiment.

Indeed, a lot of dating methods such as c14 rely on assumptions that can't be verified

You don't use C14 to measure the age of rocks. You use C14 to measure the age of things that were once alive.

At any rate, STOP treating creationists like children.

We'll stop treating you like children when you stop putting your fingers in your ears, jumping up and down, screaming, "I'm not listening, that's not the way it works".

As for your twenty problems, I suggest you just go read the talk.origins archive for starters. You can at least find the answers to the questions that actually have something to do with evolution. For the ones that are really physics questions, and the ones that are outright lies, you will have to go elsewhere. The local public library would be a good start.

> Sure, but evolutionists only ever quote talkorigins.org

That's because talkorigins.org is specifically intended to serve as a clearinghouse to dispense information about the most common creationist arguments. It doesn't do a lot of good to spend a lot of time refuting the same really basic stuff over and over, so the active participants in t.o. write up summaries and add them to the Web site for easy reference. Then when you quote a creationist argument that was soundly refuted 120 years ago someone can merely post the link rather than trying to teach you basic geology in a Slashdot post.

Creation scientists claimed for a while the possibility of the speed of light decreasing. They were hammered about this from every quarter. Now it seems that it might be credible.

An analysis of Setterfield's famous c-decay paper can be found here. Among other problems, it includes a claim that while none of the data points lie on his curve, it achieves an r^2 value of 1.000000000. Is there another, better paper that should't have been torn apart so quickly? Otherwise, I leave the decision as to whether the "hammering" is fair as an exercise for the reader.

A lot of science done seems to be based on the assumption that the universe is billions of years old, and that the earth itself is around 4.5 billion years old (subject to change). Indeed, a lot of dating methods such as c14 rely on assumptions that can't be verified - that would actually be false assumptions if we accept the creationist model including a worldwide flood.

A couple of issues with this statement: First, C14 has nothing to do with dating the age of the earth (it's a short time scale tool). Second, the complaint against these methods is somewhat non-specific, but most of them are addressed in a good paper on the subjects (a number of which can be found here. Really, if the various methods were as fraught with problems as some people would lead you to believe, they would not agree with each other (they do) and scientists using them for other subjects that are not so politically charged would have stopped long ago. Do you really think that the experts in the field haven't thought about Dr. Brown's rudimentary criticisms? Bear in mind that a number of different methods rely on different "assumptions" but give the same answers. Third, we if we are stuck between assuming that a number of things we've observed as long as we've been doing science and assuming a worldwide flood, I'll assume the former.

So anyway, Dr Walt Brown has a challenge [creationscience.com] of a written debate to settle this question. So far argument has been refined to pockets of discussion that don't go far, and books published against each other. This would be a great opportunity if anyone was confident enough in evolution.

Dr. Brown consistently complains that people attack him in forums in which he cannot respond (books, etc.). I've never seen him in the talk.origins newsgroup. It's a written forum, just as he required. A number of the participants have Ph.D.s in their fields, just as he required. In fact, Dr. Brown's questions come up frequently and are usually answered by somebody knowledgable in the field.

The fact is, people with Ph.D.s in natural sciences do have better things to do than spend a huge amount of time rehashing arguments that have long been responded to in other forums (please see the entire FAQ at talkorigins.org for examples). Dr. Brown points out that they have time to write books attacking his ideas. News flash: books are a perfectly valid form of written discourse and people get paid to write books.

Anyway, my suggestion to Dr. Brown is this: If you have a specific complaint about a particular scientific method used to support modern evolutionary theory and or modern geology, write it up and see if you can get it into a real journal with real experts waiting to critique your reasoning. That's what the rest of the card carrying Ph.D.s in the world are doing while you're asking them to devote lengthy periods of their lives to debating under your terms. Remember, we're looking for specific problems that experts have not thought of and addressed already, not "I choose not to look at the extensive fossil record so it doesn't exist."

At any rate, STOP treating creationists like children. I have had many evolution discussions and there is very little evidence for evolution at all. The weight certainly seems to be on the creationist side (and yes I am biased). There is certainly enough evidence for creation theory to make it credible, and not the realm of fairy tales. At least, before you feel tempted to call creationism a fairy tale, consider the following: 20 problems [creationscience.com]

I have to point out that using the talkorigins.org handy dandy search engine, good answers (or at least, reasons why the question has nothing to do with evolution) to most of these questions are readily available. Specific complaints about those documents are more than welcome in the newsgroup.

In kind, Tom Scharle has posted a set of 10 largely unanswered questions for the creationist side of things here. Among highlights are, "Where did all of the water from the flood come from and go?" and "Is there any observation which was predicted by your [creation] theory?"

Anyway, I encourage anybody who is truly interested in complete, scientific answers to most of the questions Dr. Brown and others pose to spend a few hours searching the talkorigins.org archive. It's thorough, it's written by people who know their fields, and it includes complete references to papers reviewed and published in serious journals. They welcome and respond to feedback and if you want a real written debate, a number of the authors regularly post in the talk.origins newsgroup. This is more than can be said for most of the people who run major creationist sites. Perhaps, instead of trying to entice people into a debate on his terms, why doesn't Dr. Brown join the fray in a convenient, international forum where anybody can be heard?

Creation scientists claimed for a while the possibility of the speed of light decreasing. They were hammered about this from every quarter. Now it seems that it might be credible.

An analysis of Setterfield's famous c-decay paper can be found here. Among other problems, it includes a claim that while none of the data points lie on his curve, it achieves an r^2 value of 1.000000000. Is there another, better paper that should't have been torn apart so quickly? Otherwise, I leave the decision as to whether the "hammering" is fair as an exercise for the reader.

A lot of science done seems to be based on the assumption that the universe is billions of years old, and that the earth itself is around 4.5 billion years old (subject to change). Indeed, a lot of dating methods such as c14 rely on assumptions that can't be verified - that would actually be false assumptions if we accept the creationist model including a worldwide flood.

A couple of issues with this statement: First, C14 has nothing to do with dating the age of the earth (it's a short time scale tool). Second, the complaint against these methods is somewhat non-specific, but most of them are addressed in a good paper on the subjects (a number of which can be found here. Really, if the various methods were as fraught with problems as some people would lead you to believe, they would not agree with each other (they do) and scientists using them for other subjects that are not so politically charged would have stopped long ago. Do you really think that the experts in the field haven't thought about Dr. Brown's rudimentary criticisms? Bear in mind that a number of different methods rely on different "assumptions" but give the same answers. Third, we if we are stuck between assuming that a number of things we've observed as long as we've been doing science and assuming a worldwide flood, I'll assume the former.

So anyway, Dr Walt Brown has a challenge [creationscience.com] of a written debate to settle this question. So far argument has been refined to pockets of discussion that don't go far, and books published against each other. This would be a great opportunity if anyone was confident enough in evolution.

Dr. Brown consistently complains that people attack him in forums in which he cannot respond (books, etc.). I've never seen him in the talk.origins newsgroup. It's a written forum, just as he required. A number of the participants have Ph.D.s in their fields, just as he required. In fact, Dr. Brown's questions come up frequently and are usually answered by somebody knowledgable in the field.

The fact is, people with Ph.D.s in natural sciences do have better things to do than spend a huge amount of time rehashing arguments that have long been responded to in other forums (please see the entire FAQ at talkorigins.org for examples). Dr. Brown points out that they have time to write books attacking his ideas. News flash: books are a perfectly valid form of written discourse and people get paid to write books.

Anyway, my suggestion to Dr. Brown is this: If you have a specific complaint about a particular scientific method used to support modern evolutionary theory and or modern geology, write it up and see if you can get it into a real journal with real experts waiting to critique your reasoning. That's what the rest of the card carrying Ph.D.s in the world are doing while you're asking them to devote lengthy periods of their lives to debating under your terms. Remember, we're looking for specific problems that experts have not thought of and addressed already, not "I choose not to look at the extensive fossil record so it doesn't exist."

At any rate, STOP treating creationists like children. I have had many evolution discussions and there is very little evidence for evolution at all. The weight certainly seems to be on the creationist side (and yes I am biased). There is certainly enough evidence for creation theory to make it credible, and not the realm of fairy tales. At least, before you feel tempted to call creationism a fairy tale, consider the following: 20 problems [creationscience.com]

I have to point out that using the talkorigins.org handy dandy search engine, good answers (or at least, reasons why the question has nothing to do with evolution) to most of these questions are readily available. Specific complaints about those documents are more than welcome in the newsgroup.

In kind, Tom Scharle has posted a set of 10 largely unanswered questions for the creationist side of things here. Among highlights are, "Where did all of the water from the flood come from and go?" and "Is there any observation which was predicted by your [creation] theory?"

Anyway, I encourage anybody who is truly interested in complete, scientific answers to most of the questions Dr. Brown and others pose to spend a few hours searching the talkorigins.org archive. It's thorough, it's written by people who know their fields, and it includes complete references to papers reviewed and published in serious journals. They welcome and respond to feedback and if you want a real written debate, a number of the authors regularly post in the talk.origins newsgroup. This is more than can be said for most of the people who run major creationist sites. Perhaps, instead of trying to entice people into a debate on his terms, why doesn't Dr. Brown join the fray in a convenient, international forum where anybody can be heard?

Creation scientists claimed for a while the possibility of the speed of light decreasing. They were hammered about this from every quarter. Now it seems that it might be credible.

An analysis of Setterfield's famous c-decay paper can be found here. Among other problems, it includes a claim that while none of the data points lie on his curve, it achieves an r^2 value of 1.000000000. Is there another, better paper that should't have been torn apart so quickly? Otherwise, I leave the decision as to whether the "hammering" is fair as an exercise for the reader.

A lot of science done seems to be based on the assumption that the universe is billions of years old, and that the earth itself is around 4.5 billion years old (subject to change). Indeed, a lot of dating methods such as c14 rely on assumptions that can't be verified - that would actually be false assumptions if we accept the creationist model including a worldwide flood.

A couple of issues with this statement: First, C14 has nothing to do with dating the age of the earth (it's a short time scale tool). Second, the complaint against these methods is somewhat non-specific, but most of them are addressed in a good paper on the subjects (a number of which can be found here. Really, if the various methods were as fraught with problems as some people would lead you to believe, they would not agree with each other (they do) and scientists using them for other subjects that are not so politically charged would have stopped long ago. Do you really think that the experts in the field haven't thought about Dr. Brown's rudimentary criticisms? Bear in mind that a number of different methods rely on different "assumptions" but give the same answers. Third, we if we are stuck between assuming that a number of things we've observed as long as we've been doing science and assuming a worldwide flood, I'll assume the former.

So anyway, Dr Walt Brown has a challenge [creationscience.com] of a written debate to settle this question. So far argument has been refined to pockets of discussion that don't go far, and books published against each other. This would be a great opportunity if anyone was confident enough in evolution.

Dr. Brown consistently complains that people attack him in forums in which he cannot respond (books, etc.). I've never seen him in the talk.origins newsgroup. It's a written forum, just as he required. A number of the participants have Ph.D.s in their fields, just as he required. In fact, Dr. Brown's questions come up frequently and are usually answered by somebody knowledgable in the field.

The fact is, people with Ph.D.s in natural sciences do have better things to do than spend a huge amount of time rehashing arguments that have long been responded to in other forums (please see the entire FAQ at talkorigins.org for examples). Dr. Brown points out that they have time to write books attacking his ideas. News flash: books are a perfectly valid form of written discourse and people get paid to write books.

Anyway, my suggestion to Dr. Brown is this: If you have a specific complaint about a particular scientific method used to support modern evolutionary theory and or modern geology, write it up and see if you can get it into a real journal with real experts waiting to critique your reasoning. That's what the rest of the card carrying Ph.D.s in the world are doing while you're asking them to devote lengthy periods of their lives to debating under your terms. Remember, we're looking for specific problems that experts have not thought of and addressed already, not "I choose not to look at the extensive fossil record so it doesn't exist."

At any rate, STOP treating creationists like children. I have had many evolution discussions and there is very little evidence for evolution at all. The weight certainly seems to be on the creationist side (and yes I am biased). There is certainly enough evidence for creation theory to make it credible, and not the realm of fairy tales. At least, before you feel tempted to call creationism a fairy tale, consider the following: 20 problems [creationscience.com]

I have to point out that using the talkorigins.org handy dandy search engine, good answers (or at least, reasons why the question has nothing to do with evolution) to most of these questions are readily available. Specific complaints about those documents are more than welcome in the newsgroup.

In kind, Tom Scharle has posted a set of 10 largely unanswered questions for the creationist side of things here. Among highlights are, "Where did all of the water from the flood come from and go?" and "Is there any observation which was predicted by your [creation] theory?"

Anyway, I encourage anybody who is truly interested in complete, scientific answers to most of the questions Dr. Brown and others pose to spend a few hours searching the talkorigins.org archive. It's thorough, it's written by people who know their fields, and it includes complete references to papers reviewed and published in serious journals. They welcome and respond to feedback and if you want a real written debate, a number of the authors regularly post in the talk.origins newsgroup. This is more than can be said for most of the people who run major creationist sites. Perhaps, instead of trying to entice people into a debate on his terms, why doesn't Dr. Brown join the fray in a convenient, international forum where anybody can be heard?

Creation scientists claimed for a while the possibility of the speed of light decreasing. They were hammered about this from every quarter. Now it seems that it might be credible.

An analysis of Setterfield's famous c-decay paper can be found here. Among other problems, it includes a claim that while none of the data points lie on his curve, it achieves an r^2 value of 1.000000000. Is there another, better paper that should't have been torn apart so quickly? Otherwise, I leave the decision as to whether the "hammering" is fair as an exercise for the reader.

A lot of science done seems to be based on the assumption that the universe is billions of years old, and that the earth itself is around 4.5 billion years old (subject to change). Indeed, a lot of dating methods such as c14 rely on assumptions that can't be verified - that would actually be false assumptions if we accept the creationist model including a worldwide flood.

A couple of issues with this statement: First, C14 has nothing to do with dating the age of the earth (it's a short time scale tool). Second, the complaint against these methods is somewhat non-specific, but most of them are addressed in a good paper on the subjects (a number of which can be found here. Really, if the various methods were as fraught with problems as some people would lead you to believe, they would not agree with each other (they do) and scientists using them for other subjects that are not so politically charged would have stopped long ago. Do you really think that the experts in the field haven't thought about Dr. Brown's rudimentary criticisms? Bear in mind that a number of different methods rely on different "assumptions" but give the same answers. Third, we if we are stuck between assuming that a number of things we've observed as long as we've been doing science and assuming a worldwide flood, I'll assume the former.

So anyway, Dr Walt Brown has a challenge [creationscience.com] of a written debate to settle this question. So far argument has been refined to pockets of discussion that don't go far, and books published against each other. This would be a great opportunity if anyone was confident enough in evolution.

Dr. Brown consistently complains that people attack him in forums in which he cannot respond (books, etc.). I've never seen him in the talk.origins newsgroup. It's a written forum, just as he required. A number of the participants have Ph.D.s in their fields, just as he required. In fact, Dr. Brown's questions come up frequently and are usually answered by somebody knowledgable in the field.

The fact is, people with Ph.D.s in natural sciences do have better things to do than spend a huge amount of time rehashing arguments that have long been responded to in other forums (please see the entire FAQ at talkorigins.org for examples). Dr. Brown points out that they have time to write books attacking his ideas. News flash: books are a perfectly valid form of written discourse and people get paid to write books.

Anyway, my suggestion to Dr. Brown is this: If you have a specific complaint about a particular scientific method used to support modern evolutionary theory and or modern geology, write it up and see if you can get it into a real journal with real experts waiting to critique your reasoning. That's what the rest of the card carrying Ph.D.s in the world are doing while you're asking them to devote lengthy periods of their lives to debating under your terms. Remember, we're looking for specific problems that experts have not thought of and addressed already, not "I choose not to look at the extensive fossil record so it doesn't exist."

At any rate, STOP treating creationists like children. I have had many evolution discussions and there is very little evidence for evolution at all. The weight certainly seems to be on the creationist side (and yes I am biased). There is certainly enough evidence for creation theory to make it credible, and not the realm of fairy tales. At least, before you feel tempted to call creationism a fairy tale, consider the following: 20 problems [creationscience.com]

I have to point out that using the talkorigins.org handy dandy search engine, good answers (or at least, reasons why the question has nothing to do with evolution) to most of these questions are readily available. Specific complaints about those documents are more than welcome in the newsgroup.

In kind, Tom Scharle has posted a set of 10 largely unanswered questions for the creationist side of things here. Among highlights are, "Where did all of the water from the flood come from and go?" and "Is there any observation which was predicted by your [creation] theory?"

Anyway, I encourage anybody who is truly interested in complete, scientific answers to most of the questions Dr. Brown and others pose to spend a few hours searching the talkorigins.org archive. It's thorough, it's written by people who know their fields, and it includes complete references to papers reviewed and published in serious journals. They welcome and respond to feedback and if you want a real written debate, a number of the authors regularly post in the talk.origins newsgroup. This is more than can be said for most of the people who run major creationist sites. Perhaps, instead of trying to entice people into a debate on his terms, why doesn't Dr. Brown join the fray in a convenient, international forum where anybody can be heard?

Creation scientists claimed for a while the possibility of the speed of light decreasing. They were hammered about this from every quarter. Now it seems that it might be credible.

An analysis of Setterfield's famous c-decay paper can be found here. Among other problems, it includes a claim that while none of the data points lie on his curve, it achieves an r^2 value of 1.000000000. Is there another, better paper that should't have been torn apart so quickly? Otherwise, I leave the decision as to whether the "hammering" is fair as an exercise for the reader.

A lot of science done seems to be based on the assumption that the universe is billions of years old, and that the earth itself is around 4.5 billion years old (subject to change). Indeed, a lot of dating methods such as c14 rely on assumptions that can't be verified - that would actually be false assumptions if we accept the creationist model including a worldwide flood.

A couple of issues with this statement: First, C14 has nothing to do with dating the age of the earth (it's a short time scale tool). Second, the complaint against these methods is somewhat non-specific, but most of them are addressed in a good paper on the subjects (a number of which can be found here. Really, if the various methods were as fraught with problems as some people would lead you to believe, they would not agree with each other (they do) and scientists using them for other subjects that are not so politically charged would have stopped long ago. Do you really think that the experts in the field haven't thought about Dr. Brown's rudimentary criticisms? Bear in mind that a number of different methods rely on different "assumptions" but give the same answers. Third, we if we are stuck between assuming that a number of things we've observed as long as we've been doing science and assuming a worldwide flood, I'll assume the former.

So anyway, Dr Walt Brown has a challenge [creationscience.com] of a written debate to settle this question. So far argument has been refined to pockets of discussion that don't go far, and books published against each other. This would be a great opportunity if anyone was confident enough in evolution.

Dr. Brown consistently complains that people attack him in forums in which he cannot respond (books, etc.). I've never seen him in the talk.origins newsgroup. It's a written forum, just as he required. A number of the participants have Ph.D.s in their fields, just as he required. In fact, Dr. Brown's questions come up frequently and are usually answered by somebody knowledgable in the field.

The fact is, people with Ph.D.s in natural sciences do have better things to do than spend a huge amount of time rehashing arguments that have long been responded to in other forums (please see the entire FAQ at talkorigins.org for examples). Dr. Brown points out that they have time to write books attacking his ideas. News flash: books are a perfectly valid form of written discourse and people get paid to write books.

Anyway, my suggestion to Dr. Brown is this: If you have a specific complaint about a particular scientific method used to support modern evolutionary theory and or modern geology, write it up and see if you can get it into a real journal with real experts waiting to critique your reasoning. That's what the rest of the card carrying Ph.D.s in the world are doing while you're asking them to devote lengthy periods of their lives to debating under your terms. Remember, we're looking for specific problems that experts have not thought of and addressed already, not "I choose not to look at the extensive fossil record so it doesn't exist."

At any rate, STOP treating creationists like children. I have had many evolution discussions and there is very little evidence for evolution at all. The weight certainly seems to be on the creationist side (and yes I am biased). There is certainly enough evidence for creation theory to make it credible, and not the realm of fairy tales. At least, before you feel tempted to call creationism a fairy tale, consider the following: 20 problems [creationscience.com]

I have to point out that using the talkorigins.org handy dandy search engine, good answers (or at least, reasons why the question has nothing to do with evolution) to most of these questions are readily available. Specific complaints about those documents are more than welcome in the newsgroup.

In kind, Tom Scharle has posted a set of 10 largely unanswered questions for the creationist side of things here. Among highlights are, "Where did all of the water from the flood come from and go?" and "Is there any observation which was predicted by your [creation] theory?"

Anyway, I encourage anybody who is truly interested in complete, scientific answers to most of the questions Dr. Brown and others pose to spend a few hours searching the talkorigins.org archive. It's thorough, it's written by people who know their fields, and it includes complete references to papers reviewed and published in serious journals. They welcome and respond to feedback and if you want a real written debate, a number of the authors regularly post in the talk.origins newsgroup. This is more than can be said for most of the people who run major creationist sites. Perhaps, instead of trying to entice people into a debate on his terms, why doesn't Dr. Brown join the fray in a convenient, international forum where anybody can be heard?

Creation scientists claimed for a while the possibility of the speed of light decreasing. They were hammered about this from every quarter. Now it seems that it might be credible.

An analysis of Setterfield's famous c-decay paper can be found here. Among other problems, it includes a claim that while none of the data points lie on his curve, it achieves an r^2 value of 1.000000000. Is there another, better paper that should't have been torn apart so quickly? Otherwise, I leave the decision as to whether the "hammering" is fair as an exercise for the reader.

A lot of science done seems to be based on the assumption that the universe is billions of years old, and that the earth itself is around 4.5 billion years old (subject to change). Indeed, a lot of dating methods such as c14 rely on assumptions that can't be verified - that would actually be false assumptions if we accept the creationist model including a worldwide flood.

A couple of issues with this statement: First, C14 has nothing to do with dating the age of the earth (it's a short time scale tool). Second, the complaint against these methods is somewhat non-specific, but most of them are addressed in a good paper on the subjects (a number of which can be found here. Really, if the various methods were as fraught with problems as some people would lead you to believe, they would not agree with each other (they do) and scientists using them for other subjects that are not so politically charged would have stopped long ago. Do you really think that the experts in the field haven't thought about Dr. Brown's rudimentary criticisms? Bear in mind that a number of different methods rely on different "assumptions" but give the same answers. Third, we if we are stuck between assuming that a number of things we've observed as long as we've been doing science and assuming a worldwide flood, I'll assume the former.

So anyway, Dr Walt Brown has a challenge [creationscience.com] of a written debate to settle this question. So far argument has been refined to pockets of discussion that don't go far, and books published against each other. This would be a great opportunity if anyone was confident enough in evolution.

Dr. Brown consistently complains that people attack him in forums in which he cannot respond (books, etc.). I've never seen him in the talk.origins newsgroup. It's a written forum, just as he required. A number of the participants have Ph.D.s in their fields, just as he required. In fact, Dr. Brown's questions come up frequently and are usually answered by somebody knowledgable in the field.

The fact is, people with Ph.D.s in natural sciences do have better things to do than spend a huge amount of time rehashing arguments that have long been responded to in other forums (please see the entire FAQ at talkorigins.org for examples). Dr. Brown points out that they have time to write books attacking his ideas. News flash: books are a perfectly valid form of written discourse and people get paid to write books.

Anyway, my suggestion to Dr. Brown is this: If you have a specific complaint about a particular scientific method used to support modern evolutionary theory and or modern geology, write it up and see if you can get it into a real journal with real experts waiting to critique your reasoning. That's what the rest of the card carrying Ph.D.s in the world are doing while you're asking them to devote lengthy periods of their lives to debating under your terms. Remember, we're looking for specific problems that experts have not thought of and addressed already, not "I choose not to look at the extensive fossil record so it doesn't exist."

At any rate, STOP treating creationists like children. I have had many evolution discussions and there is very little evidence for evolution at all. The weight certainly seems to be on the creationist side (and yes I am biased). There is certainly enough evidence for creation theory to make it credible, and not the realm of fairy tales. At least, before you feel tempted to call creationism a fairy tale, consider the following: 20 problems [creationscience.com]

I have to point out that using the talkorigins.org handy dandy search engine, good answers (or at least, reasons why the question has nothing to do with evolution) to most of these questions are readily available. Specific complaints about those documents are more than welcome in the newsgroup.

In kind, Tom Scharle has posted a set of 10 largely unanswered questions for the creationist side of things here. Among highlights are, "Where did all of the water from the flood come from and go?" and "Is there any observation which was predicted by your [creation] theory?"

Anyway, I encourage anybody who is truly interested in complete, scientific answers to most of the questions Dr. Brown and others pose to spend a few hours searching the talkorigins.org archive. It's thorough, it's written by people who know their fields, and it includes complete references to papers reviewed and published in serious journals. They welcome and respond to feedback and if you want a real written debate, a number of the authors regularly post in the talk.origins newsgroup. This is more than can be said for most of the people who run major creationist sites. Perhaps, instead of trying to entice people into a debate on his terms, why doesn't Dr. Brown join the fray in a convenient, international forum where anybody can be heard?

I am member of that educated crowd (Ph.D. candidate in Chemistry, specializing in protein structure and biochemistry, not that anybody cares) who has a negative reaction to what the creationists put out but that's becuase when I was younger I spent about a year reading their books and tracts and comparing them to mainstream evolutionary books and papers while debating the matter on a local BBS. I was able to debunk everything that was thrown at me then and it's rather sad that your 20 questions by Dr. Brown (Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, a discipline not noted for its rigorous requirements in evolutionary or for that matter any biology) is the exact same as the stuff I waded through and debunked ten years ago. As for the Bombardier beetle, check here for the actual truth of the matter. Actually, read the whole talkorigins site to get what is currently believed in evolutionary biology rather than the strawmen arguments that have been fed to you by creationists. Although personal experience tells me that creationists never change their position no matter how much evidence is presented to them or how badly their arguments and even their champions are crushed please surprise me by being different and holding that "critical view" that you believe is lacking in us supporters of evolution.

One more thing: scientists are trained to be skeptical. It's our job to take a critical view of everything we read no matter what journal it got published in or who wrote it. Evolution is still the prevailing view because of its merits not because of some vast conspiracy or adherance to the status quo because if you can't ask original quesitons and attempt to find the answers you're not doing science; this is the very definition of breaking the status quo.

I am member of that educated crowd (Ph.D. candidate in Chemistry, specializing in protein structure and biochemistry, not that anybody cares) who has a negative reaction to what the creationists put out but that's becuase when I was younger I spent about a year reading their books and tracts and comparing them to mainstream evolutionary books and papers while debating the matter on a local BBS. I was able to debunk everything that was thrown at me then and it's rather sad that your 20 questions by Dr. Brown (Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, a discipline not noted for its rigorous requirements in evolutionary or for that matter any biology) is the exact same as the stuff I waded through and debunked ten years ago. As for the Bombardier beetle, check here for the actual truth of the matter. Actually, read the whole talkorigins site to get what is currently believed in evolutionary biology rather than the strawmen arguments that have been fed to you by creationists. Although personal experience tells me that creationists never change their position no matter how much evidence is presented to them or how badly their arguments and even their champions are crushed please surprise me by being different and holding that "critical view" that you believe is lacking in us supporters of evolution.

One more thing: scientists are trained to be skeptical. It's our job to take a critical view of everything we read no matter what journal it got published in or who wrote it. Evolution is still the prevailing view because of its merits not because of some vast conspiracy or adherance to the status quo because if you can't ask original quesitons and attempt to find the answers you're not doing science; this is the very definition of breaking the status quo.

Oh my.
The creationists (Walter Brown & co.) use measurements from 1675 to prove their case.
Here is a site discussing this c-decay

Offtopic reply:

I hate to be pedantic (aw, who am I kidding, I love being pedantic), but in general, saying "it's just a theory" is... well... not a good idea. (The page you referenced has a lot of bullshit new-agey stuff about higher dimensions and so on, but that's neither here nor there. Remember, "newage" rhymes with "sewage". :) )

To a scientist, a "theory" is something that explains all or most of the known evidence, is well-supported by facts, and makes testable predictions. Many well-established things like universal gravitation, aerodynamics, thermodynamics, and so forth, are all "theories".

The word you're probably looking for is "hypothesis", which means "an idea that potentially explains the facts, but isn't yet well-supported and well-tested enough to be considered a theory."

Of course, it's a pretty smooth continuum between the places where an idea is considered a "hypothesis" and where it becomes a "theory" but dismissing a scientific theory as "just a theory" is misguided at best.

Hope that helps, somehow. Check out http://phyun5.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/no de7.html, http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.htm l, and http://www.eugeneres.org/scientificmethod.htm, for they all explain it far better than I do.

Tell me why I should expect an atheist scientist to give credence to creationist theories if they had supporting evidence? Everyone has biases, and a discussion of origins is inherently philosophical and will include people's biases. When I said "I am someone who has to know the truth about everything - so I search for answers. If that truth happens to be that God created the world merely 6,000 years ago, then so be it" I was meaning evidence besides the Bible that affirms the Biblical record, not just the Bible alone. Clearly, if outside evidence showed the Bible dates were wrong I would have to accept that.

What happens when you study the watch and find contradictions? Ice cores [talkorigins.org] indicate an Earth well over 100,000 years old at an absolute minimum.

We either analyse those contradictions to see if they are perceived or literal. If real then we must reject the theory that contradicts the facts. I can quote for you dating methods which produce an earth age of a maximum 60 million years old, or 6,000 years old for our common ancestor, or other dating methods which produce a young earth. More about ice cores later. Follow this link and hit the next button to read various dating methods which produce very young maximum ages (remember that the age can usually be anything younger than this, but shows an absolute maximum). So this shows that the evolutionists watch has contradictions.

Yes, one kilogram of the amino acid arginine has 2.85 x 1024 molecules in it (that's well over a billion billion); a tonne of arginine has 2.85 x 1027 molecules. If you took a semi-trailer load of each amino acid and dumped it into a medium size lake, you would have enough molecules to generate our particular replicator in a few tens of years, given that you can make 55 amino acid long proteins in 1 to 2 weeks (quote from talkorigins.org).

Question: is there any mechanism known (and I am ignorant) by which molecules may be created initially in order to form amino acids? You demonstrated that some amino acids form naturally, but what about the molecules they are formed from - do all 20 amino acids naturally form, or only some?
Comment on this: it talks about amino acids forming long proteins in 1 to 2 weeks, but proteins tend to break down rather than form naturally:
"To form proteins, amino acids must also be highly concentrated. However, the early oceans or atmosphere would have diluted amino acids, so the required collisions between them would rarely occur. Besides, amino acids do not naturally link up to form proteins. Instead, proteins tend to break down into amino acids. Furthermore, the proposed energy sources for forming proteins (earth's heat, electrical discharges, or solar radiation) destroy the protein products thousands of times faster than they could have formed. The many attempts to show how life might have arrived on earth have demonstrated (a) the futility of that effort, (b) the immense complexity of even the simplest life, and (c) the need for a vast intelligence to precede life. "
Reference
There is much more in the reference you gave on probabilities that I don't understand. I don't really want to comment on it because there's a fair bit more I obviously need to learn in that situation.

Of course, that isn't an issue anyway, amino acids can form far more rapidly than that, even in the constraints of a lab experiment, let alone the oceans of Earth or however other similar planets exist. Only one planet in the universe has to end up with life for that life to then wonder how it got there, right? Hey, I managed to get this post back on-topic for the original thread, sort of.

Note that the improbabilities article I quoted said under the best possible conditions with the most favourable temperature - indicating that this improbability was calculated taking into account the natural formation of amin acids - or that's how I see it. I guess we'd have to contact the creation-science author to be sure.

The interactions are not random though - thanks to the structure of the atoms involved, fairly complex carbon-based molecules are inevitable.

Remember that some processes work against evolution - organisms tend to move from complex to simple, proteins tend to break down to amino acids rather than form, etc So while randomness makes evolution impossibly unlikely, and non-random interactions make it likely - something like this tendancy to work opposite to evolution makes it impossible, not unlikely. And we only need to find one step in the evolutionary trail where the trend is the opposite of what is needed to demonstrate evolution as impossible.

Only one had to evolve for life to exist, and to point out its improbability after the fact is meaningless. Like in poker - the odds of drawing any particular set of cards are very poor, but the odds of drawing a 'winning hand' are not.

Agreed, and I try to keep this in mind.

It's just that I believe the design process was guided, not 'miracled', and that it took place in a natural, physical way that we can understand if we study it.

Since I believe that creation 6000 years old earth is true, I also believe that it is logical and understandable, that everything we observe can make sense and fit into that model. Creation was a once off event and the world was set into motion - we were given desire to reproduce so that God did not have to tell us, the earth produced fruit and vegetables for us to eat of it's own power, etc. But we also believe that the existence of the universe is inexplicably tied to our Creator - and without Him nothing can exist. Evolution seems to me to be nonsensical, and to me that creates a world that is irrational and not understandable, but you feel that way about young earth creationism. Again, subjective argument :)

Asking 'why' to evolution almost always yields the answer 'because it helps them reproduce'. Asking 'why' about creation almost always yields the answer 'because it is part of God's plan'. That's just the different nature of scientific reasoning versus religious reasoning.

Really? Some questions for evolution:
* Why do humans shun rape as a sickening act?
* Why do humans practice self-sacrifice for the love of another that is not necessarily their own offspring?
* Why do humans sometimes feel prone to compassion towards the weak and unpriviliged?
These three questions of the human mind and heart seem completely contradictory to evolution. And why would God use one method to create His masterpiece (murder, rape, greed, selfishness, cruelty, etc) and then later declare these attributes to be sickening and morally wrong? It is obvious that those things happened and were necessary for natural selection, yet under evolution you must presume that they were natural and good processes (Genesis 1:31).

I've enjoyed the site you provided - I think I've seen it before but never explored in great detail. I wish they had a search function, because I couldn't find an answer to the ice cores there. If you know where it is, let me know.

From what I could see ice core dating was based on assumptions of other dating methods (such as C14), so you should probably check out the section on the site that deals with those dating methods and then extend the conclusions from that to ice-core dating. On the main site in the bottom left corner is an index which can be useful. Just go to http://www.creationscience.com instead of the links I give you, since the links I give you don't have frames.

I've found some other interesting tidbits on there. Some really aren't good arguments, or are based on theories or measurements that the scientific community has already revised or discarded. Some of them raise legitimate questions, for which I am still trying to find answers. I hope you find the site I linked to every bit as fascinating.

I think if you follow the footnotes you will see that there is more depth than is commonly accepted by evolutionists. Evolutionists tend to say that something has been "debunked" when it really has only in their mind. I think that evolutionists don't fully comprehend the creation theory and consider it. When reading creation information they must think with the mind of a creationist so they can see how everything fits together. I have to think like an evolutionist to fully appreciate their arguments when I read their websites - and I feel that evolutionists often miss this.

I am someone who has to know the truth about everything - so I search for answers. If that truth happens to be that God created the world merely 6,000 years ago, then so be it.

The only source of that truth is in a book, written by people who had virtually no scientific knowledge. Other books, some written before and some after Genesis, give different numbers. Traditional Hindu cosmology indicates that the universe is trillions of years old. Why should an impartial scientist give the Torah/Bible more credence than the Koran or the Rig Veda?

It is the truth, so it must be logical, and therefore we can study and learn the intricacies of the "watch" and appreciate the amazing work of God.

What happens when you study the watch and find contradictions? Ice cores indicate an Earth well over 100,000 years old at an absolute minimum.

Also, did you read my reference about proteins tending to break down into amino acids, the opposite of what is necessary for evolution?

Yes. Proteins were (probably) not formed before the first self-replicating molecules. No self-respecting scientist believes that all the proteins required for modern life spontaneously appeared before the earliest life forms. There are a few tidbits on abiogenesis probability calculations that you might find interesting.

God would have had to have performed a miracle a minute for billions of years for evolution to have occurred - that seems far less logical and unrealistic than the creation approach.

Actually, they both seem equally unrealistic, although good old Occam would prefer the 'couple miracles a day for six days' version. Neither is really necessary to explain the origins of life, and taking the miraculous aspect out of it in no way changes the true spiritual meaning of the first few chapters of Genesis. Anyway, I tend to believe God did have a hand in guiding the processes of evolution, just as I believe He has a hand in the events of everyday life. It's just that I think He works through the natural processes we study in science, rather than around them.

On the website link you provided, a little bit through it talks about handedness of amino acids, so you may be interested in this.

From the site:
No known natural process can isolate either the left-handed or right-handed variety. The mathematical probability that chance processes could produce merely one tiny protein molecule with only left-handed amino acids is virtually zero.

True. But, scientific abiogenesis theories don't require chance generation of complex proteins. The earliest self-replicating molecules were probably simple peptides. Incidentally, the ideas of natural selection can explain pretty well why everything is right-handed now - all it takes is for the right-handed peptides to outnumber the left-handed by a small margin, and their offspring will eventually drastically outnumber the lefties and drive them to extinction by competition for resources.

Because evolution favors slight variations that enhance survivability and produce more offspring, consider how advantageous a mutation might be that switched (or inverted) a plant's handedness.

The right-handed DNA of the parent plant couldn't replicate into a left-handed version of itself even if the left-handed nucleotides were present, which they aren't. That's not exactly a 'slight variation', it is complete restructuring.

Totally off the topic of evolution, but interesting nonetheless: There are a few molecules that exist in both left and right handed versions in life forms. Limonene is one of them. The left-handed version is found in oranges, the right-handed version in lemons. Have you ever had an artifical lemon flavored tea that had a bit of an orange taste? It's because you can't separate the two molecules chemically or mechanically. Good artificial lemon flavor must be derived, or at least filtered, by a process similar to the way taste receptors work, involving molecules of a specific handedness.

Amino acids look pretty simple, and that improbability statement I showed you, when you are doing something a billion times a second for 20 billion years, I think that amino acids would be formed more than once :)

Of course, that isn't an issue anyway, amino acids can form far more rapidly than that, even in the constraints of a lab experiment, let alone the oceans of Earth or however other similar planets exist. Only one planet in the universe has to end up with life for that life to then wonder how it got there, right? Hey, I managed to get this post back on-topic for the original thread, sort of.

I think if we considered that amino acids naturally formed into that equation (if it wasn't already) then the chances would probably still be insanely high.

It's not just the formation of amino acids, it's the formation of any organic molecules. If all the interactions were random, life would be impossible. The interactions are not random though - thanks to the structure of the atoms involved, fairly complex carbon-based molecules are inevitable. Over enough time, more complex molecules can form which start acting as catalysts which cause copies of themselves to form. Once this happens, any idea that all the interactions are 'random' in the sense of probability calculations have to be thrown out. Also, there are innumerable different sets of proteins, nucleotides, etcetera that could have wound up as the basis for life. Only one had to evolve for life to exist, and to point out its improbability after the fact is meaningless. Like in poker - the odds of drawing any particular set of cards are very poor, but the odds of drawing a 'winning hand' are not.

To my mind, it's the ability of the simple carbon atom to form such complex structures that points to a Designer. Deeper than that, the interactions between subatomic particles and the relationships in strength between the four forces of nature seem to be perfectly laid out for life to exist(I'm really more a physics person than a molecular biology person). I'll also agree that the complex organs in modern life form do seem to me to be evidence of Design. It's just that I believe the design process was guided, not 'miracled', and that it took place in a natural, physical way that we can understand if we study it.

One other quote from the page you linked to that caught my eye:
Similarly, why are there not more poisonous plants?

The best answer is, most plants don't need to be poisonous, they survive to reproduce just fine without it. A plant which mutated to become poisonous is at a disadvantage due to the metabolic energy spent to produce the poison. Since a plant can still reproduce after being half-eaten (or more), most of them gain little to no advantage by being poisonous to predators.

Asking 'why' to evolution almost always yields the answer 'because it helps them reproduce'. Asking 'why' about creation almost always yields the answer 'because it is part of God's plan'. That's just the different nature of scientific reasoning versus religious reasoning.

'Why' isn't really a question that science is equipped to answer, because there's always another level. Why do things fall? Because of gravity. Why is there gravity? It's produced by massive objects. Why is there mass? Well, it might have something to do with the Higgs boson, but physicists don't have the tools to explore that currently.

That's what the purpose of religion is - to give an answer to the 'why' we all have asked since we could speak. For Christians, John 3:16 is a nice summary, and the rest of the Bible provides the background of the story of salvation. Treating it as a science textbook, when that is obviously not its purpose, seems unwise.

For instance, the Bible tells us what rainbows are, but I haven't seen anyone trying to debunk the sciences of optics and meteorolgy that explain it in more detail. Optics, you'd obviously have a lot of trouble with, because it's easy to experimentally verify and reproduce. Meterology is more akin to evolutionary biology in that you can't reproduce, you can only observe the evidence and build a theory that explains it. Still, no one seems to dispute that the weather has scientific explanations beyond 'God made it'.

There's another thing that strikes me as odd about the really vocal creationists. If they spent as much energy trying to live according to the teachings of Jesus as they do trying to prove science wrong, imagine the positive impact they could have on people's lives. Don't take that the wrong way; there's a big difference between discussing creationism and evolution on Slashdot during lunch hour, and making a life's work out of attacking science.

I've enjoyed the site you provided - I think I've seen it before but never explored in great detail. I wish they had a search function, because I couldn't find an answer to the ice cores there. If you know where it is, let me know.

I've found some other interesting tidbits on there. Some really aren't good arguments, or are based on theories or measurements that the scientific community has already revised or discarded. Some of them raise legitimate questions, for which I am still trying to find answers. I hope you find the site I linked to every bit as fascinating.

Gee, looks like I've rambled on too much again. :)

I am someone who has to know the truth about everything - so I search for answers. If that truth happens to be that God created the world merely 6,000 years ago, then so be it.

The only source of that truth is in a book, written by people who had virtually no scientific knowledge. Other books, some written before and some after Genesis, give different numbers. Traditional Hindu cosmology indicates that the universe is trillions of years old. Why should an impartial scientist give the Torah/Bible more credence than the Koran or the Rig Veda?

It is the truth, so it must be logical, and therefore we can study and learn the intricacies of the "watch" and appreciate the amazing work of God.

What happens when you study the watch and find contradictions? Ice cores indicate an Earth well over 100,000 years old at an absolute minimum.

Also, did you read my reference about proteins tending to break down into amino acids, the opposite of what is necessary for evolution?

Yes. Proteins were (probably) not formed before the first self-replicating molecules. No self-respecting scientist believes that all the proteins required for modern life spontaneously appeared before the earliest life forms. There are a few tidbits on abiogenesis probability calculations that you might find interesting.

God would have had to have performed a miracle a minute for billions of years for evolution to have occurred - that seems far less logical and unrealistic than the creation approach.

Actually, they both seem equally unrealistic, although good old Occam would prefer the 'couple miracles a day for six days' version. Neither is really necessary to explain the origins of life, and taking the miraculous aspect out of it in no way changes the true spiritual meaning of the first few chapters of Genesis. Anyway, I tend to believe God did have a hand in guiding the processes of evolution, just as I believe He has a hand in the events of everyday life. It's just that I think He works through the natural processes we study in science, rather than around them.

On the website link you provided, a little bit through it talks about handedness of amino acids, so you may be interested in this.

From the site:
No known natural process can isolate either the left-handed or right-handed variety. The mathematical probability that chance processes could produce merely one tiny protein molecule with only left-handed amino acids is virtually zero.

True. But, scientific abiogenesis theories don't require chance generation of complex proteins. The earliest self-replicating molecules were probably simple peptides. Incidentally, the ideas of natural selection can explain pretty well why everything is right-handed now - all it takes is for the right-handed peptides to outnumber the left-handed by a small margin, and their offspring will eventually drastically outnumber the lefties and drive them to extinction by competition for resources.

Because evolution favors slight variations that enhance survivability and produce more offspring, consider how advantageous a mutation might be that switched (or inverted) a plant's handedness.

The right-handed DNA of the parent plant couldn't replicate into a left-handed version of itself even if the left-handed nucleotides were present, which they aren't. That's not exactly a 'slight variation', it is complete restructuring.

Totally off the topic of evolution, but interesting nonetheless: There are a few molecules that exist in both left and right handed versions in life forms. Limonene is one of them. The left-handed version is found in oranges, the right-handed version in lemons. Have you ever had an artifical lemon flavored tea that had a bit of an orange taste? It's because you can't separate the two molecules chemically or mechanically. Good artificial lemon flavor must be derived, or at least filtered, by a process similar to the way taste receptors work, involving molecules of a specific handedness.

Amino acids look pretty simple, and that improbability statement I showed you, when you are doing something a billion times a second for 20 billion years, I think that amino acids would be formed more than once :)

Of course, that isn't an issue anyway, amino acids can form far more rapidly than that, even in the constraints of a lab experiment, let alone the oceans of Earth or however other similar planets exist. Only one planet in the universe has to end up with life for that life to then wonder how it got there, right? Hey, I managed to get this post back on-topic for the original thread, sort of.

I think if we considered that amino acids naturally formed into that equation (if it wasn't already) then the chances would probably still be insanely high.

It's not just the formation of amino acids, it's the formation of any organic molecules. If all the interactions were random, life would be impossible. The interactions are not random though - thanks to the structure of the atoms involved, fairly complex carbon-based molecules are inevitable. Over enough time, more complex molecules can form which start acting as catalysts which cause copies of themselves to form. Once this happens, any idea that all the interactions are 'random' in the sense of probability calculations have to be thrown out. Also, there are innumerable different sets of proteins, nucleotides, etcetera that could have wound up as the basis for life. Only one had to evolve for life to exist, and to point out its improbability after the fact is meaningless. Like in poker - the odds of drawing any particular set of cards are very poor, but the odds of drawing a 'winning hand' are not.

To my mind, it's the ability of the simple carbon atom to form such complex structures that points to a Designer. Deeper than that, the interactions between subatomic particles and the relationships in strength between the four forces of nature seem to be perfectly laid out for life to exist(I'm really more a physics person than a molecular biology person). I'll also agree that the complex organs in modern life form do seem to me to be evidence of Design. It's just that I believe the design process was guided, not 'miracled', and that it took place in a natural, physical way that we can understand if we study it.

One other quote from the page you linked to that caught my eye:
Similarly, why are there not more poisonous plants?

The best answer is, most plants don't need to be poisonous, they survive to reproduce just fine without it. A plant which mutated to become poisonous is at a disadvantage due to the metabolic energy spent to produce the poison. Since a plant can still reproduce after being half-eaten (or more), most of them gain little to no advantage by being poisonous to predators.

Asking 'why' to evolution almost always yields the answer 'because it helps them reproduce'. Asking 'why' about creation almost always yields the answer 'because it is part of God's plan'. That's just the different nature of scientific reasoning versus religious reasoning.

'Why' isn't really a question that science is equipped to answer, because there's always another level. Why do things fall? Because of gravity. Why is there gravity? It's produced by massive objects. Why is there mass? Well, it might have something to do with the Higgs boson, but physicists don't have the tools to explore that currently.

That's what the purpose of religion is - to give an answer to the 'why' we all have asked since we could speak. For Christians, John 3:16 is a nice summary, and the rest of the Bible provides the background of the story of salvation. Treating it as a science textbook, when that is obviously not its purpose, seems unwise.

For instance, the Bible tells us what rainbows are, but I haven't seen anyone trying to debunk the sciences of optics and meteorolgy that explain it in more detail. Optics, you'd obviously have a lot of trouble with, because it's easy to experimentally verify and reproduce. Meterology is more akin to evolutionary biology in that you can't reproduce, you can only observe the evidence and build a theory that explains it. Still, no one seems to dispute that the weather has scientific explanations beyond 'God made it'.

There's another thing that strikes me as odd about the really vocal creationists. If they spent as much energy trying to live according to the teachings of Jesus as they do trying to prove science wrong, imagine the positive impact they could have on people's lives. Don't take that the wrong way; there's a big difference between discussing creationism and evolution on Slashdot during lunch hour, and making a life's work out of attacking science.

I've enjoyed the site you provided - I think I've seen it before but never explored in great detail. I wish they had a search function, because I couldn't find an answer to the ice cores there. If you know where it is, let me know.

I've found some other interesting tidbits on there. Some really aren't good arguments, or are based on theories or measurements that the scientific community has already revised or discarded. Some of them raise legitimate questions, for which I am still trying to find answers. I hope you find the site I linked to every bit as fascinating.

Gee, looks like I've rambled on too much again. :)

Ok, I'll reply the first part of post in a different one, but now onto this post...

Firstly, you have confused evolution with abiogensis (sp?) (creation of life from nonliving matter via. natural causes). As far as Darwin's fine theory is concerned, it is irrelevent as too how the first life got here. Whether it was planted by aliens, created by God, emerged out of a warm pool, or whatever other reason you can think of, doesn't matter one bit. The theory of evolution says nothing about the creation of the first life on earth. What you are argueing against is abiogensis (which is incidently a much weaker theory, which is why I suspect many creationist organisations confuse the two).

Unfortually, your probability calculations are irrelevent with reguards to abiogensis as well as they don't address real abiogensis works (at least the current theories of it). I don't think that any researcher proposes that single celled life arose out of random combinations of peptides. I'm not a expert on abiogensis, but I believe theories such as the RNA world, plus clay catalysised reactions are what you need to rebute, not this strawman. That being said, you may find this essay interesting.

As for Methinks it's a weasel, it isn't meant to be a model of evolution, but rather a graphic illustration about the effects of selection of probability. Until creationist calculations take into effect selection, they mean nothing.

Evolution requires the entire sentence to be complete to be meaningful. It can't work if one character is missing.

This statement is also false. Take the humble protein haemoglobin (it transports oxygen round your body and gives blood it's red colour), did you know that gorrilla haemoglobin is just one amino acid different than mine and yours (and chimp) haemoglobin?

Clearly biochemistry can happly ignore some spelling mistakes.

Creation arguments are very well founded in evidence.

Only if you read creationist websites.

Let's look at one evolutionary assumption:
prediction: Language began as simple grunts

Biological evolution has nothing to do with language.

Using these mutation rates, all women on the earth have a common ancestor around 6000 years ago. Shocked?

Wrong. The mitochondrial "Eve" lived somewhere around 200,000 years ago, according to archaeology.org. Shocked?

Ooh, here's a good evolutionary assumption:
prediction: since the moon is millions of years old, there should be a thick layer of dust on it (after all, there is no wind or erosion for the dust to settle).

Biological evolution has nothing to do with the age of the moon. But anyway, the old chestnut about depth of moon dust has been debunked quite thoroughly.

Now (are you listening carefully? I'm about to destroy a common evolutionists misunderstanding of evolution in action) the one that had all white fur genes would have a much better chance of surviving in a snowy environment.

Wrong. Learn something about dominant and recessive traits. (Are you listening carefully?)

Just so you know, I've barely touched on the surface of overwhelming evidence for creation and overwhelming evidence for the complete irrational nature of evolution

However, you've proven beyond a shadow of a doubt one of two things: 1) that you get all your information from creationist tracts, and outdated ones at that or 2) you are a troll.

After thinking things over a bit, it occurs to me that my earlier post was too focused on your factual errors. While it is important to point out the errors of fact and logic that riddle creationist argument, so we won't end up with yet another generation of citizens who belief this guff, sometimes it's worth stepping back and pointing out a more basic problem that plagues creationist rhetoric, and which your post illustrates very nicely.

> Creation arguments are very well founded in evidence. Creationism makes some predictions about what should be observed, as does evolution. ... So, I hope you understand now. This is stuff that is observed and verified. It is not the realm of guesswork but on solid, verifiable observances. ... Just so you know, I've barely touched on the surface of overwhelming evidence for creation ... As you may or may not guess, I get very tired of idiots pretending that there is no evidence for creation. ... Because it's all out there, you've just closed your mind off to understanding it

Sadly, in spite of the big talk, you did not actually present any evidence for creation. As with virtually every other creationist argument you spend most of your time trying to explain away the evidence for evolution rather than trying to present evidence for creation.

For example -

> fact: Language in it's earliest form is it's most complex form. It has a much larger vocabulary, better formed grammar, and many more nuances in the language. The most recent forms of language have the least complexity, the smallest vocabulary. So, language is sufferring from entropy, it's getting simpler.

Beyond the fact that this simply isn't true, it wouldn't be evidence for creation even if it were true. The creation story offered in Genesis I doesn't give the slightest hint about how language should change over time. It portrays Adam and Eve created as adults - at least that's the traditional interpretation - and portrays them as using language when we first meet them. Other than Adam's role in naming the species, we aren't given any hint as to whether they were created already capable of speech, or taught speech by god, or made it up themselves. We certainly aren't given any model of language that would predict how it changes over time.

Unless of course you want to substitute a more general "biblical literalism" for "creationism per se", in which case your model for language change must come from the Babel story, from which you would predict that -

• language change is catastropic
• language change is the result of direct divine intervention
• all languages are mutually unintelligible
• all languages stand in random relationships to each other

. For a sweeping overview, see here [grisda.org]

Do you have any links that are written by scientists doing real science rather than creationists waving their hands?

One of the things about floods is that they come up, and they go down. The kind of flood postulated here is not the polite little rush of water one envisions when one hears the word `flood'; think of facing a set of tidal waves several kilometers high

Let me get this straight. The entire world is covered by miles of water.... and yet parts of the planet are going to remain dry for weeks at a time? And there is more than one layer with animal tracks. What you are saying is that the Flood washed across Arizona, wiping everything out, then a bunch of animals ran in and left tracks, then another wave came through, and then more animals ran in (from where?), etc.

Why are only certain fossils found in certain layers. For that matter, why are there layers at all? Why didn't the second wave scour away the mud from the first wave? Your wouldn't have distinct layers at all. When the flood receded you'd just have one big pile of sludge.

Here's a nice link about the geologic column and problems with the Flood.

What most people think of as the "Cambrian Explosion" is, in actual fact, not a sudden burst of life, but a rapid increase in the number of fossils found in the fossil record. This is because around this time organisms started to mineralize their exoskeletons using the abundant calcium and carbonate from the surrounding seawater. Previously to this, organisms had entirely organic exoskeletons similar to many insects today. This type of exoskeleton is not easily preserved and usually decays too rapidly to survive as a fossil. The much tougher mineralized exoskeletons preserved far better, resulting in a large increase in the number of fossils.

The second claim usually made about the "Cambrian Explosion" is that most if not all of the major animal groups came into existance at this time. This claim is not correct. It is almost certain that such major groups as annelids (worms), cnidarian (corals and jellyfish), gastropods (snails) and probably arthropods have a pre-Cambrian history. It should be pointed out that almost all pre-Cambrian fossils have no hard parts such as mineralized exoskeletons, and as such they are very unlikely to be preserved.

While there was a rapid (over a 5-10 million year period) diversification of animal life during the "Cambrian Explosion", this was a diversification from an already existing stem stock of organisms, which were soft bodied and thus underrepresented in the fossil record.

What we see in the fossil record are representatives of all the major groups which possess mineralized body parts. This record funnels back to the Early Cambrian where most of the groups apparently disappear. This disappearance does not represent the origin of the group, as some would suggest, but the origin of mineralized hard parts. The groups continue to exist below their occurrence in the fossil record, but they appear to be absent because they have no hard parts and are not fossilised.

The "Cambrian Explosion" represents what we call a taphanomic boundary, that is, it represents a large increase in the chances of organisms to be fossilised (by having hard parts) and hence appear in the fossil record. It does not represent the origin of those groups.

My creator was the process of evolution, so this still applies. It isn't the "creator" I as an athiest have the problem with, it is the insistence that the "creator" is some fucking mythological sadist named "God".

>So why are there fossillized sea creatures on top of Mt. Everest?

You don't need a flood to put fossils on top of Mt. Everest. Mt. Everest formed when the Indian continental plate rammed into the Asian continental plate. That collision raised the sea-bed to the height it is now.

In fact, Mt Everest is still growing (at about 2 cm/year).

>Just from the earth's magnetic field rate of decrease alone,
>there is ample evidence for a very young (~6000 years) earth indeed.

You do know that the earth's magnetic field periodically reverses itself don't you? see http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/ask/amag.html for more information.

>Why object to something that has hard scientific evidence like Po halos [halos.com]?

Mmm, maybe because it is *not* hard or scientific? See: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/po-halos/gentry.ht ml for more information.

-- ITIHBT (I think I have been trolled).

Hogwash.

Why is it hogwash?

I also believe that He gave each animal the ability to adapt to its surroundings, because the world He created is not static, but alive and changing all the time.

Congratulations. That's the definition of evolution. Now: given millions, even billions of years, what's to stop one species changing into another? How far can you change a polar bear before you wouldn't consider it a polar bear any more?

But this is all moot, since speciation has been observed.