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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.

Moshe Bar: We know the world created itself a few billion years ago and not 5762 years ago (according to the Jewish counting). We know that evolution is the culprit for that inexplicably destructive and increasingly contradictory thing called the human, the human was not made directly by G-d.

shawnmelliot: Actually, we scientifically don't know. because we have not actually witnessed it. We had a hypothesis which has become a theory. But we don't know.

Mr. Bar is a wise man, since he can apparently accept both science and religion without compromising either. We may not "know" these things in the sense of having visually witnessed it ourselves, but there is a VAST collection of indirect evidence which leads us to accept that this is what happened. Science is the business of using (often indirect) evidence to determine what is happening in the universe around us. This is why we are quite confident that we understand the fusion processes which cause the sun to shine, for instance. There may be subtleties which we do not know of yet, or we may be radically wrong, but so far, all evidence collected by many different researchers using different methods, suggests the current model is correct, EVEN THOUGH WE CANNOT DIRECTLY OBSERVE THE INTERIOR OF THE SUN. None of this has any bearing on wheither there is a G_d or not.

Please Please Please people, before you must say that we all evolved or that the earth is millions of years old and that those who say otherwise are incorrect remember that you are no more correct than they as far as science is concerned

You, however, are not a wise man. Like most Creationists who claim that the earth is "young" and evolution is an incorrect theory, you have no genuine, rigorous scientific basis for your claims. As far as science is concerned, your only "proof" for your beliefs is... The Bible. A book written by people, supposedly divinely inspired. On the other side, we have years of experiments and observations in the fields of astronomy, physics, evolutionary and molecular biology, and paleontology. See the talk.origins website for a detailed explanation of why Creationism is NOT science. Personally, I'm sick of futilely explaining it to people who really just want to impose their Christian origin myths on the rest of the world, using the word "Science" as a bludgeon.

I am ready to receive the flames I'm certain I will get for my statement but I felt it necessary and felt it to be on topic

On topic, yes. :-)

Hmm, don't have one of my books around, but it mentioned some of the things that affect the rate of C14 in the atmosphere, and how much is absorbed.

Yes, this is well known and calibrated for. This is due to the way that C14 is formed. I believe that if you see a date written as BCE it is calibrated, whereas bce isn't (or maybe round the other way, I can't remember off the top of my head.

Are there any websites of good science lit that undergo a good peer review process? I agree that this is essential to filter rubbish.

To my knowledge there isn't (unless you belong to a university with a online subscription to a scientific journal). Your best bet, when checking up articles is head over to your nearest university and raid their library. While not peer reviewed, a academic textbook can be execellent in get a good overview of a particular field.

As for fraud from the ICR, what are you talking about? Honest mistakes? Evolution has had it's fair share of red herrings, so using that logic I could reject evolution on the basis that scientists have given fraudulant data and red herrings.

No, I'm not talking about honest mistakes. I'm talking about fraud. One on the most well known creationists, Duane Gish, has a very bad habit of having claims refuted to him, and then ignoring the refutation and making false claims to his audiences (who are ususally not particularly scientifically literate). An example of this can be found here.

Anyway, if you have any good websites on information for learning more about physics, chemistry and biology I would appreciate it. Also any sites that publish good quality science lit.

This is differcult, as you've named a pretty massive field, and whereas my chemisty knowledge is pretty good (I'm doing a PhD in it), I wouldn't the best judge on physics and biology.

But ignoring all that, here goes:

The best site on evolution and creationism from a scientific perspective is talk origins.

A site which may interest you is this one from the Christian Geologists, who find that their faith is fully compatible with science. Another interesting geogogy link is this one (it has, to my knowledge, no religon in it).

Answers In Science appears to have a ton of interesting links.

I'm not sure if this is exactly what you where after. If it's general science, then I'll have to know more about your science background to even know where to start looking.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Clem

Hmm, don't have one of my books around, but it mentioned some of the things that affect the rate of C14 in the atmosphere, and how much is absorbed.

Yes, this is well known and calibrated for. This is due to the way that C14 is formed. I believe that if you see a date written as BCE it is calibrated, whereas bce isn't (or maybe round the other way, I can't remember off the top of my head.

Are there any websites of good science lit that undergo a good peer review process? I agree that this is essential to filter rubbish.

To my knowledge there isn't (unless you belong to a university with a online subscription to a scientific journal). Your best bet, when checking up articles is head over to your nearest university and raid their library. While not peer reviewed, a academic textbook can be execellent in get a good overview of a particular field.

As for fraud from the ICR, what are you talking about? Honest mistakes? Evolution has had it's fair share of red herrings, so using that logic I could reject evolution on the basis that scientists have given fraudulant data and red herrings.

No, I'm not talking about honest mistakes. I'm talking about fraud. One on the most well known creationists, Duane Gish, has a very bad habit of having claims refuted to him, and then ignoring the refutation and making false claims to his audiences (who are ususally not particularly scientifically literate). An example of this can be found here.

Anyway, if you have any good websites on information for learning more about physics, chemistry and biology I would appreciate it. Also any sites that publish good quality science lit.

This is differcult, as you've named a pretty massive field, and whereas my chemisty knowledge is pretty good (I'm doing a PhD in it), I wouldn't the best judge on physics and biology.

But ignoring all that, here goes:

The best site on evolution and creationism from a scientific perspective is talk origins.

A site which may interest you is this one from the Christian Geologists, who find that their faith is fully compatible with science. Another interesting geogogy link is this one (it has, to my knowledge, no religon in it).

Answers In Science appears to have a ton of interesting links.

I'm not sure if this is exactly what you where after. If it's general science, then I'll have to know more about your science background to even know where to start looking.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Clem

See http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/woodmorappe-review . tml then bring up one or two points to argue. The entire paper is beyond the scope of critque on /.

> Gentry's halos have been attacked time and time again

I presume it's a waste of time arguing with you, but any lurkers who don't want to be led astry might want to read this explanation.

I don't normally write tributes to recently-deceased celebrities, but I'll make an exception in this case. Gould was about the closest thing I have to a hero. He fought the good fight for quality science education and against closed-minded superstition.

I remember he came to speak at the University of Pennsylvania years ago. This was at the height of the creationist nonsense. So great was the appeal of his topic that the lecture was moved twice—ending up in the largest lecture hall on campus—before he even had a chance to speak. At one point during his talk, which was primarily about his and Eldredge's take on the mode and tempo of evolution, he made a dismissive, off-hand remark about creationism that was rewarded with a sustained ovation. In the middle of the Reagan era, when it seemed that the forces of ignorance were unstoppable, it was beyond heartening to hear one of the world's most famous scientists say, in essence, that Jerry Falwell was full of crap.

Gould was also a prominent humanist and perhaps one of the best ways we can honor his life would be to give our support to organizations like the Council for Secular Humanism, as well as to those groups whose missions more closely mirror Gould's own.

The biggest hook for me is the fact that our immediate solar system is so incredibly well balanced.

I have come to the conclusion that it's statistically impossible for even the simplest life forms to have been thrown together by randomly generated events;

Try the Talk.Origins website, as well as books by Richard Dawkinds and Steven Jay Gould.

Out of interest, I wrote a simple program which creates a random file. [...] It turns out on my systems, and with code ( please don't mock my newbie code :), improve it if you will ), never ever produced any file that could executed properly, let alone do something useful. [...] I just wanted to try and put it in perspective, how unlikely it is that life was created randomly.

If you want to redo your experiment using reasonable methods, check out the field known as "genetic programming".

Natural selection isn't the only process acting, either; there is also self-organization. For a very fascinating theoretical argument (backed up by computer simulations) as to why life might not only be not unlikely, but inevitable, check out Stuart Kauffmann's At Home in the Universe .

So it is STUPID to think that life, which is far more complex than a computer program, happened only by chance.

Out of interest, I wrote a simple program which creates a random file. [...] It turns out on my systems, and with code ( please don't mock my newbie code :), improve it if you will ), never ever produced any file that could executed properly, let alone do something useful. [...] I just wanted to try and put it in perspective, how unlikely it is that life was created randomly.

If you want to redo your experiment using reasonable methods, check out the field known as "genetic programming".

Natural selection isn't the only process acting, either; there is also self-organization. For a very fascinating theoretical argument (backed up by computer simulations) as to why life might not only be not unlikely, but inevitable, check out Stuart Kauffmann's At Home in the Universe .

So it is STUPID to think that life, which is far more complex than a computer program, happened only by chance.

Out of interest, I wrote a simple program which creates a random file. [...] It turns out on my systems, and with code ( please don't mock my newbie code :), improve it if you will ), never ever produced any file that could executed properly, let alone do something useful. [...] I just wanted to try and put it in perspective, how unlikely it is that life was created randomly.

If you want to redo your experiment using reasonable methods, check out the field known as "genetic programming".

Natural selection isn't the only process acting, either; there is also self-organization. For a very fascinating theoretical argument (backed up by computer simulations) as to why life might not only be not unlikely, but inevitable, check out Stuart Kauffmann's At Home in the Universe .

So it is STUPID to think that life, which is far more complex than a computer program, happened only by chance.

I would doubt that the idea of God is verboten among /. intelligentsia, just the idea of Creationism. You might wish to look up theistic evolution. I have little doubt many /.ers believe in God, but I highly doubt many of them are Christian fundamentalists.

and I'm not aware of any speciation that has resulted as a result of those experiments.

Try here

post-human? I paraphrase Richard Leakey, who once stated at a lecture at Stony Brook, that he spent many years looking at the fossil record, trying to answer the question "When did we first break off from the rest of the primates and become human?". He's now convinced this has not yet occurred.

post-"Homo sapien" is more accurate. Genes make a species; they don't make a human being. Maybe we should focus on what it really means to be human rather than focusing on what happens next.

The examples you gave are different - the ways to test it are very unclear, and the ways to disprove it had to be listed, they weren't immediately known.

So science is supposed to only deal with things a simpleton can understand? Maybe the ways to disprove it weren't immediately known to you but you seem bright enough, I'm sure you could have come up with a few if you'd thought about it for a few minutes first.

In fact, the famous trilobite has been found alive in parts of the world - although if this is a very elaborate hoax I would be happy for someone to point it out.

I'd be happy for any proof of it. I'm not finding any on the newsgroups or the web and you'd think there'd be a bit of buzz about it if it were true.

As for vestigial structures, there used to be a list of over 100 in the human body. That list has been almost eliminated as the function of these previosuly "useless" structures became known.

Yay for science! Really though, this does not at all extrapolate to mean we'll find a use for all of them.

And again on the topic of strata - around the world different ages are shown to be in the wrong order. Older ages sitting on top of younger ages when it should be the other way around.

You do jump around, don't you? I'm afraid that geologists have been well able to explain any of these that I've ever heard of through the nifty theory of plate tectonics and erosion.

Excuses like shifting ground are insufficient since the surface area is sometimes quite large, making shifts almost impossible, and shows no evidence of shifts.

Do you have evidence that this is the case or is this just an argument from incredulity?

As for dating methods, there are some which support us, some which contradict. They are a lot based on assumptions that are not always fair. The dating methods that support millions of years have been shown to be especially flawed over and over.

By whom and where? What are your objections to the data collected here? You really need to start providing evidence or cites and not just make these assertions.

The examples you gave are different - the ways to test it are very unclear, and the ways to disprove it had to be listed, they weren't immediately known.

So science is supposed to only deal with things a simpleton can understand? Maybe the ways to disprove it weren't immediately known to you but you seem bright enough, I'm sure you could have come up with a few if you'd thought about it for a few minutes first.

In fact, the famous trilobite has been found alive in parts of the world - although if this is a very elaborate hoax I would be happy for someone to point it out.

I'd be happy for any proof of it. I'm not finding any on the newsgroups or the web and you'd think there'd be a bit of buzz about it if it were true.

As for vestigial structures, there used to be a list of over 100 in the human body. That list has been almost eliminated as the function of these previosuly "useless" structures became known.

Yay for science! Really though, this does not at all extrapolate to mean we'll find a use for all of them.

And again on the topic of strata - around the world different ages are shown to be in the wrong order. Older ages sitting on top of younger ages when it should be the other way around.

You do jump around, don't you? I'm afraid that geologists have been well able to explain any of these that I've ever heard of through the nifty theory of plate tectonics and erosion.

Excuses like shifting ground are insufficient since the surface area is sometimes quite large, making shifts almost impossible, and shows no evidence of shifts.

Do you have evidence that this is the case or is this just an argument from incredulity?

As for dating methods, there are some which support us, some which contradict. They are a lot based on assumptions that are not always fair. The dating methods that support millions of years have been shown to be especially flawed over and over.

By whom and where? What are your objections to the data collected here? You really need to start providing evidence or cites and not just make these assertions.

The examples you gave are different - the ways to test it are very unclear, and the ways to disprove it had to be listed, they weren't immediately known.

So science is supposed to only deal with things a simpleton can understand? Maybe the ways to disprove it weren't immediately known to you but you seem bright enough, I'm sure you could have come up with a few if you'd thought about it for a few minutes first.

In fact, the famous trilobite has been found alive in parts of the world - although if this is a very elaborate hoax I would be happy for someone to point it out.

I'd be happy for any proof of it. I'm not finding any on the newsgroups or the web and you'd think there'd be a bit of buzz about it if it were true.

As for vestigial structures, there used to be a list of over 100 in the human body. That list has been almost eliminated as the function of these previosuly "useless" structures became known.

Yay for science! Really though, this does not at all extrapolate to mean we'll find a use for all of them.

And again on the topic of strata - around the world different ages are shown to be in the wrong order. Older ages sitting on top of younger ages when it should be the other way around.

You do jump around, don't you? I'm afraid that geologists have been well able to explain any of these that I've ever heard of through the nifty theory of plate tectonics and erosion.

Excuses like shifting ground are insufficient since the surface area is sometimes quite large, making shifts almost impossible, and shows no evidence of shifts.

Do you have evidence that this is the case or is this just an argument from incredulity?

As for dating methods, there are some which support us, some which contradict. They are a lot based on assumptions that are not always fair. The dating methods that support millions of years have been shown to be especially flawed over and over.

By whom and where? What are your objections to the data collected here? You really need to start providing evidence or cites and not just make these assertions.

This is absurd, there is always room for improvement, be it physical or mental.

Unfortunately for you, you're attacking a strawman. Nowhere does evolutionary theory say that populations will or must improve. In a large population, it doesn't matter that much if it's you or your brother that reproduces. Without pressure in the form of competition for food, environment or predation you wouldn't expect a species to evolve any faster than what drift would take them (a very slow process).

I gave an example of Australian Aboriginees supposedly living in isolation for 40,000 years. That has to be enough time to see some beginnings of speciation.

No, it doesn't. And man is the worst example of species that you might see this in because of our intellect. This wonderful brain of ours has made it possible to obviate many natural selective pressures that other species face. (Starvation countered by cultivation/group hunting, Environment countered by fabricated shelter, Predation countered by weapons, etc.) 40,000 years is long enough that there may be a speciation event but it certainly isn't long enough that there must be.

I also know that in the Answers In Genesis magazine they advertise their technical journal, with the caption "Don't get caught using outdated arguments!", so it seems to me that it is a priority of theirs to reject whatever is shown false.

Hey! And it only took 10+ years of people constantly correcting them about these particular arguments that got them to finally recant!

Hmm, I wonder about your true knowledge of the integrity of ICR members. You say ICR founder is Duane Gish. According to the ICR, their founder is Henry M. Morris

My humble apologies. Duane Gish was, however, one of the founding members and is currently vice president of the institute. Did you actually read the link I provided that describes some of Gish's problems with honesty? I'm not claiming first hand knowledge but do you believe Joyce Arthur is just making this stuff up?
If you are truly one who wants to understand and know the truth, then read and try to understand the depth of what evolutionary theory is, not just what you think it is.

Your post just irritates me. I get tired repeating myself to five people.

As do scientists to the ICR. We repeat and repeat and the knowledge just bounces off. The ICR repeats its lies. Let's take a look at an example

Radiocarbon dating has been demonstrated repeatedly in the Creation magazine to be wildly inaccurate. They don't date the strata themselves, but send them off to recognised and respected laboratories. I suggest you grab some Creation magazines and read these examples for yourself.

I have. Let's, for example, look at their argument that radioactive decay rates aren't constant This is of course very important since a dozen different radioactive clocks date the earth and the universe to a lot older than 6K years, and the ICR cannot allow that since they must swear that they believe the 6K date.

First, we see that experimental decay rates have a 1% error bar on them. Yep they do: the article then goes on to state that this shows that the rates could vary tremendously since nobody has checked in the last 50 years. That's simply wrong: even without experiments directly checking, people operating nuclear power plants would know. So would biological researchers who work with short-lived isotopes daily.

The first two reasons why to believe in changing decay rates aren't worthy of discussion. Backed by experimental data both would win Nobel prizes when shown true. (There can be slight alterations in some decay rates, most commonly those with k-capture in certain molecules since k-capture involves the electron density around the nucleus, but these don't affect most radioactive clocks.) Why not publish and win fame and fortune?

Radiohaloes: I assume they are talking about Po halos. Old argument

Speed of light changing? Didn't you claim in another post that ICR had given up on this one? Given that c is a fundamental constant, the universe itself wouldn't exist with a large change in c.

Observed values of half lives. He's somehow amazed that thay have such different values for different isotopes. This is such a bizarre comment that I don't even know what to make of it. Is he also amazed at the difference in the strength of gravity and the strong nuclear force?

He now goes on to do some curve fitting. His math is correct, but he gives no reason *why* we should believe alpha and beta are changing: he simply plugs in random numbers until he gets the answer he wants. That's not how science is done.

Now, let's see if there's any good evidence that alpha doesn't change. Oh, here we go. SN1987a happened 170,000 years ago and the isotopes created by the supernova decay at exactly the same rate they do on earth today. Or perhaps the evidence from a natural atomic reactor that atomic physics was the same ~1.7 billion years ago as it is today?

This is pretty typical creationist stuff. The arguments presented make little sense, extrapolate from experimental error into something huge, make up numbers where appropriate and finally don't agree with what we see in the real world.

I'm going to stop here. There's no real point in further discussion: you've decided that the world is 6K years old and that evolution is a sham. If you want to believe that I won't further disabuse you.

Odd that you should choose that example (you're good at this), because the `theory of gravity' only matches what gravity does, it can't actually say why it does what it does. It says `gravity does this' and stops before getting to the `because' part. Same goes for theories of magnetism. The theory of evolution, despite its amazing flexibility, does not explain the data. For example, turtles have nice hard shells that fossilise readily, and indeed we have plenty of turtle fossils - but no fossils at all of proto-turtles, half-formed turtles. Nothing markedly different from the turtles that swim past a few kilometers east of me right now. Pulling the `unlucky' gag about the incompleteness of the fossil record won't wash, because - as I said - we have plenty of turtle fossils... and the same goes for many other species.

Turtles: (from http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/p art1b.html

Here we come to a controversy; there are two related groups of early anapsids, both descended from the captorhinids, that could have been ancestral to turtles. Reisz & Laurin (1991, 1993) believe the turtles descended from procolophonids, late Permian anapsids that had various turtle-like skull features. Others, particularly Lee (1993) think the turtle ancestors are pareiasaurs:

* Scutosaurus and other pareiasaurs (mid-Permian) -- Large bulky herbivorous reptiles with turtle-like skull features. Several genera had bony plates in the skin, possibly the first signs of a turtle shell.
* Deltavjatia vjatkensis (Permian) -- A recently discovered pareiasaur with numerous turtle-like skull features (e.g., a very high palate), limbs, and girdles, and lateral projections flaring out some of the vertebrae in a very shell-like way. (Lee, 1993)
* Proganochelys (late Triassic) -- a primitive turtle, with a fully turtle-like skull, beak, and shell, but with some primitive traits such as rows of little palatal teeth, a still-recognizable clavicle, a simple captorhinid-type jaw musculature, a primitive captorhinid- type ear, a non-retractable neck, etc..

Biology and Geology:

No, I use science to deal with science. You are the one subcategorising everything and wriggling like a worm on the hook instead of giving straight answers. You don't seem to have understood the point about explanatory power. If it explains too much, then it shows that it has really explained nothing. If it is so flexible that it will fit anything, then it is also so weak that it cannot support anything.

Amazing. You don't understand that a theory in biology doesn't need to have anything to do with geology? The theory of evolution predicts X in geology, or the theory of evolution explains Y data in geology?

I like your last sentence. Just replace "it" with God. :).

The Hammer. Hey, you are the one claiming that a 19th century miners hammer is millions of years old. And even some of Baughs supporters believe that it is at the most 700 years old.

Mt St Helens:

Were they indeed carved through hard rock? How do you know? Or is it materialist presumptions again? If Creation theory is correct, the rock the Grand Canyon was carved through was likely to have been not particularly hard at the time.

You mean by the Noah's worldwide flood, disproven 200 years ago by Christian geologists? So you are invoking the supernatural to make the rocks in the Grand Canyon softer?

About biology and geology:

Yes, they are. But biological evolution has certain prerequisites, and these prerequisites can be eliminated by examining geology. Again, you are acting as if reality were partitionable at will to suit your needs. It isn't. It's all interconnected. Which, BTW, is another problem for evolution.

Hmmm. Lets see... Geology indicates that the earh is very old, about 4 1/2 Billion years old. The theory of evolution requires fairly large time frames. So Geology does support TOE.

And don't forget - geology was used to disprove Noah's worldwide flood. (Actually, the Christian geologists were trying to get evidence to support the flood).

-asb

At the risk of doing violence to the positions of some of the people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear No.' -- Roger Lewin, The Neck of the Giraffe (1982), p. 12.

Hmmm. The Neck of the Giraffe was written by Francis Hitching. See faqs/hitching.html

" Hitching believes in the paranormal and has written on Mayan pyramid energy and for some "In Search Of..." episodes on BBC television. The reference work Contemporary Authors, Vol. 103, page 208, lists him as a member of the Society for Psychical Research, the British Society of Dowsers and of the American Society of Dowsers. His writings include: Earth Magic, Dowsing: The Psi Connection, Mysterious World: An Atlas of the Unexplained, Fraud, Mischief, and the Supernatural and Instead of Darwin. "

Gary Parker - you know, he believes that the earth was covered by 9000 feet of water by Noah's Flood. Too bad that a global flood was disproven 200 years ago by Christian geologists.

By the way, do you believe in a global Noah's flood?

On one hand you're saying that I must present to you a theory, and on the other you are ruling any possible theory `out of court'.

No, just satisfy items 1-3. But no hocus-pocus.

Make up your mind: will your faith in materialism (and confusion of it with science) prevent you from examining any theory rationally (so you must forfeit any proof and be honest about your faith), or will you actually reason through a theory if I present one?

My "faith" in "Materialism"? ROTFL. I just don't invoke the supernatural when looking at things, in science or elsewhere. If my car doesn't work, I do not assume it is a supernatural event.

You do not seem to understand the difference between believing that the sun will come up tomorrow, gravity will exist 5 minutes from now, etc. and a religious "faith".

-asb

The fact that living "fossils" have pretty much no change says something important.

It does indeed. It shows that a species may be able to fill it's ecological niche so well as to prevent competition significant enough to make it change. Evolutionary theory doesn't state that species will change at some rate over time but that they change in response to selective pressure. There are other examples of "living fossils" amongst certain species of sharks. The explanation is that they haven't had to change in order to survive so they haven't. At least beyond the standard genetic drift. There are small differences. The presumed extinction was ~70 million years ago, btw.
We are the same the whole world over. Where is the evolution in progress?

We lack the isolation we once did in order to speciate and our brains have allowed us to relieve ourselves of many if not most of the selective pressures faced by our ancient ancestors. Now let there be a world war that sends us back to the stone age and have 9/10'ths of the world's population die and you might see some movement. But maybe not even then. It could be the mere existence of our higher reasoning allows us to alleviate the majority of the selective pressures on our species. I predict we'll be evolving ourselves with genetic engineering long before we significantly change due to 'mere' genetic drift.

How is that possible if recessive traits don't express themselves until the point when a host of harmful mutations have the chance to express themselves?

I'm not sure I understand your question. Why does the expression of a recessive have to wait for a mutation? If the recessive exists in population it just has to wait for two organisms with the same recessive to breed.

I'm sorry, have you looked at all the date samples done by creation scientists (sent off to official, well respected laboratories for testing) and the samples show wildly innacurate dates? I have read many examples of this.

Care to share a few? Something other than this one?

As for using outdated arguments, from what I can see creationists have rejected the idea of the speed of light slowing.

Those were just a few of many and not all creationists have given up the changing speed of light argument. Many Young-Earth Creationists still cling to it in some form or fashion.

I don't know what the moon dust argument is, could you please tell me? I think I can guess.

That the cosmic dust accumulation on the moon should have built up into a layer 20 feet deep (or whatever) if the moon were really 5 billion years old. Long and short, the calculation was based on erroneous suppositions.

Creationists are nowhere near as bad as evolutionary textbooks publishing information long ago demonstrated to be false or a hoax. The peppermoths is a great example.

I beg to differ. Creationists are called to the carpet on a daily basis for some of the things they try to get away with. Peppermoths should have only ever been used as an example of natural selection. If there ever was a textbook that said it was proof of macroevolution, it was wrong. All 3 textbooks I've seen and all I've ever heard of use it as an example of natural selection. Unless you can come up with scores more examples, you don't have a leg to stand on by saying creationists are nowhere near as bad.

If you'd like some reading material, check some of these out. A couple of visits to the ICR museum and some of the inaccuracies and falsehoods contained therein. Take a look at the Creation Research Society's creed that members must adhere to. A list of "distortions" of truth by ICR founder Duane Gish.

I am going along, aren't I? :)
Btw, Kent Hovind still sports the light speed decay theory. You might want to check out Answers in Genesis and TrueOrigins and see if you can spot more errors on your own ... I'd help but it's really getting late and it's not as fun as it was when I started ... :)

The fact that living "fossils" have pretty much no change says something important.

It does indeed. It shows that a species may be able to fill it's ecological niche so well as to prevent competition significant enough to make it change. Evolutionary theory doesn't state that species will change at some rate over time but that they change in response to selective pressure. There are other examples of "living fossils" amongst certain species of sharks. The explanation is that they haven't had to change in order to survive so they haven't. At least beyond the standard genetic drift. There are small differences. The presumed extinction was ~70 million years ago, btw.
We are the same the whole world over. Where is the evolution in progress?

We lack the isolation we once did in order to speciate and our brains have allowed us to relieve ourselves of many if not most of the selective pressures faced by our ancient ancestors. Now let there be a world war that sends us back to the stone age and have 9/10'ths of the world's population die and you might see some movement. But maybe not even then. It could be the mere existence of our higher reasoning allows us to alleviate the majority of the selective pressures on our species. I predict we'll be evolving ourselves with genetic engineering long before we significantly change due to 'mere' genetic drift.

How is that possible if recessive traits don't express themselves until the point when a host of harmful mutations have the chance to express themselves?

I'm not sure I understand your question. Why does the expression of a recessive have to wait for a mutation? If the recessive exists in population it just has to wait for two organisms with the same recessive to breed.

I'm sorry, have you looked at all the date samples done by creation scientists (sent off to official, well respected laboratories for testing) and the samples show wildly innacurate dates? I have read many examples of this.

Care to share a few? Something other than this one?

As for using outdated arguments, from what I can see creationists have rejected the idea of the speed of light slowing.

Those were just a few of many and not all creationists have given up the changing speed of light argument. Many Young-Earth Creationists still cling to it in some form or fashion.

I don't know what the moon dust argument is, could you please tell me? I think I can guess.

That the cosmic dust accumulation on the moon should have built up into a layer 20 feet deep (or whatever) if the moon were really 5 billion years old. Long and short, the calculation was based on erroneous suppositions.

Creationists are nowhere near as bad as evolutionary textbooks publishing information long ago demonstrated to be false or a hoax. The peppermoths is a great example.

I beg to differ. Creationists are called to the carpet on a daily basis for some of the things they try to get away with. Peppermoths should have only ever been used as an example of natural selection. If there ever was a textbook that said it was proof of macroevolution, it was wrong. All 3 textbooks I've seen and all I've ever heard of use it as an example of natural selection. Unless you can come up with scores more examples, you don't have a leg to stand on by saying creationists are nowhere near as bad.

If you'd like some reading material, check some of these out. A couple of visits to the ICR museum and some of the inaccuracies and falsehoods contained therein. Take a look at the Creation Research Society's creed that members must adhere to. A list of "distortions" of truth by ICR founder Duane Gish.

I am going along, aren't I? :)
Btw, Kent Hovind still sports the light speed decay theory. You might want to check out Answers in Genesis and TrueOrigins and see if you can spot more errors on your own ... I'd help but it's really getting late and it's not as fun as it was when I started ... :)

The fact that living "fossils" have pretty much no change says something important.

It does indeed. It shows that a species may be able to fill it's ecological niche so well as to prevent competition significant enough to make it change. Evolutionary theory doesn't state that species will change at some rate over time but that they change in response to selective pressure. There are other examples of "living fossils" amongst certain species of sharks. The explanation is that they haven't had to change in order to survive so they haven't. At least beyond the standard genetic drift. There are small differences. The presumed extinction was ~70 million years ago, btw.
We are the same the whole world over. Where is the evolution in progress?

We lack the isolation we once did in order to speciate and our brains have allowed us to relieve ourselves of many if not most of the selective pressures faced by our ancient ancestors. Now let there be a world war that sends us back to the stone age and have 9/10'ths of the world's population die and you might see some movement. But maybe not even then. It could be the mere existence of our higher reasoning allows us to alleviate the majority of the selective pressures on our species. I predict we'll be evolving ourselves with genetic engineering long before we significantly change due to 'mere' genetic drift.

How is that possible if recessive traits don't express themselves until the point when a host of harmful mutations have the chance to express themselves?

I'm not sure I understand your question. Why does the expression of a recessive have to wait for a mutation? If the recessive exists in population it just has to wait for two organisms with the same recessive to breed.

I'm sorry, have you looked at all the date samples done by creation scientists (sent off to official, well respected laboratories for testing) and the samples show wildly innacurate dates? I have read many examples of this.

Care to share a few? Something other than this one?

As for using outdated arguments, from what I can see creationists have rejected the idea of the speed of light slowing.

Those were just a few of many and not all creationists have given up the changing speed of light argument. Many Young-Earth Creationists still cling to it in some form or fashion.

I don't know what the moon dust argument is, could you please tell me? I think I can guess.

That the cosmic dust accumulation on the moon should have built up into a layer 20 feet deep (or whatever) if the moon were really 5 billion years old. Long and short, the calculation was based on erroneous suppositions.

Creationists are nowhere near as bad as evolutionary textbooks publishing information long ago demonstrated to be false or a hoax. The peppermoths is a great example.

I beg to differ. Creationists are called to the carpet on a daily basis for some of the things they try to get away with. Peppermoths should have only ever been used as an example of natural selection. If there ever was a textbook that said it was proof of macroevolution, it was wrong. All 3 textbooks I've seen and all I've ever heard of use it as an example of natural selection. Unless you can come up with scores more examples, you don't have a leg to stand on by saying creationists are nowhere near as bad.

If you'd like some reading material, check some of these out. A couple of visits to the ICR museum and some of the inaccuracies and falsehoods contained therein. Take a look at the Creation Research Society's creed that members must adhere to. A list of "distortions" of truth by ICR founder Duane Gish.

I am going along, aren't I? :)
Btw, Kent Hovind still sports the light speed decay theory. You might want to check out Answers in Genesis and TrueOrigins and see if you can spot more errors on your own ... I'd help but it's really getting late and it's not as fun as it was when I started ... :)

Evolution and common descent are certainly falsifiable. One way to disprove them would be to show that the Earth is only a few thousand years old. Not surprisingly, many creationists are trying to do just that. One could also falsify evolution by showing that the various forms of life have not changed significantly over time. Finding strong evidence that humans coexisted with dinosaurs or trilobites, organisms that are currently known to have gone extinct millions of years ago, would be one way to do this.

In addition to being falsifiable, evolution makes a large number of verifiable predictions. It predicts that closely related organisms will share a large amount of the same genetic material. It predicts an ordering of the fossil record, in which animals like mammals never appear before the first reptiles. It predicts that isolated regions of the planet will be populated by living organisms that are unique throughout the world. It predicts anatomical similarities between genetically similar organisms. It predicts the existence of atavisms and vestigial structures that were useful to ancestral forms but are much less useful to present forms. And so on.

While it is true that these types of predictions are based on prior observations of the evidence, so are the predictions of any scientific theory. In the scientific endeavor, observations are collected, a theory is built to explain them, and the theory is tested by comparing its predictions with further observations.

Deleterious mutants are selected against but remain at low frequency
in the gene pool. In diploids, a deleterious recessive mutant may
increase in frequency due to drift. Selection cannot see it when it
is masked by a dominant allele. Many disease causing alleles
remain at low frequency for this reason. People who are carriers
do not suffer the negative effect of the allele. Unless they mate
with another carrier, the allele may simply continue to be passed on.
Deleterious alleles also remain in populations at a low frequency due
to a balance between recurrent mutation and selection. This is called
the mutation load.
If beneficial mutants arise infrequently, the only fitness
differences in a population will be due to new deleterious mutants
and the deleterious recessives. Selection will simply be weeding
out unfit variants. Only occasionally will a beneficial allele be
sweeping through a population. The general lack of large fitness
differences segregating in natural populations argues that
beneficial mutants do indeed arise infrequently. However, the
impact of a beneficial mutant on the level of variation at a locus
can be large and lasting. It takes many generations for a locus
to regain appreciable levels of heterozygosity following a
selective sweep.

Deleterious mutants are selected against but remain at low frequency
in the gene pool. In diploids, a deleterious recessive mutant may
increase in frequency due to drift. Selection cannot see it when it
is masked by a dominant allele. Many disease causing alleles
remain at low frequency for this reason. People who are carriers
do not suffer the negative effect of the allele. Unless they mate
with another carrier, the allele may simply continue to be passed on.
Deleterious alleles also remain in populations at a low frequency due
to a balance between recurrent mutation and selection. This is called
the mutation load.
If beneficial mutants arise infrequently, the only fitness
differences in a population will be due to new deleterious mutants
and the deleterious recessives. Selection will simply be weeding
out unfit variants. Only occasionally will a beneficial allele be
sweeping through a population. The general lack of large fitness
differences segregating in natural populations argues that
beneficial mutants do indeed arise infrequently. However, the
impact of a beneficial mutant on the level of variation at a locus
can be large and lasting. It takes many generations for a locus
to regain appreciable levels of heterozygosity following a
selective sweep.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.... I am *so* tired of hearing this.

You see, it's a THEORY, in the same vain that creationism is a theory.

Creationism is *not* a theory. It is not testable. It is not falsifiable. It is not predictive. There is no such thing as a "Scientific Theory of Creationism." Ask any long-time poster to talk.origins. They've been asking for one for years, and noone's ever offered one up that meets the actual criteria of being a theory.

Secondly, evolution is both a fact and a theory.

Sorry if I'm sounding harsh, but I see these same misconceptions all the time, and they drive me crazy sometimes.

Here is a review of Darwin on Trial My Phillip Johnson. There are links to Johnson's home page, other reviews, a debate with Johnson, and an article by Johnson about "The Blind Watchmaker".

-asb

1. Genetic mutations are almost always harmful/harmless, never beneficial (in the sense of different fur). The ratio of harmful mutations is much, much higher than neutral ones. I'm not sure if any beneficial mutations have been observed, but I could be wrong.

You are wrong. We have indeed seen beneficial mutations, including antibiotic resistance in bacteria and bacterial digestion of nylon precusors. One of my personal favorites is tetrachromaticity, as this is a *human* mutation that offers a distinct advantage to a few lucky women.

2. We find the genetic code for the variety of species is present in the parent. With current data we are quite clearly dealing with genetic code that already existed, not through fresh mutations.

Again, wrong. We've seen new mutations appear: nylon didn't exist in nature before the 1940s. Now bacteria can eat it. Other types of mutations scramble existing code and generate new: you can claim that rearranging all the letters in a /. post doesn't introduce new information, but I can take the words in your post above and make it say most anything.

I can't argue your latter bit: I'm a chemist rather than a biologist, so I see a different set of wrong arguments against evolution.

This problem is perfectly consistent with Creation theory though,

Here's the real crux of your problem. What is "Creation Theory"? Is it scientific? Is it testable? Is it falsifiable? "God did it" is none of these.

Please explain the testable, scientific creation theory. The folks on talk.origins have been asking for *years* and have never gotten one.

Eric

Observed Instances Of Speciation
Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution
29 Evidences For Macroevolution

Maybe you should do a little research before you make a greatly incorrect factual statement like that.

Observed Instances Of Speciation
Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution
29 Evidences For Macroevolution

Maybe you should do a little research before you make a greatly incorrect factual statement like that.

Observed Instances Of Speciation
Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution
29 Evidences For Macroevolution

Maybe you should do a little research before you make a greatly incorrect factual statement like that.

Another good link related to this:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/mitoeve.html

It sounds like the technique they used was Mitochondrial DNA Concordance

Mitochondrial DNA is different from nuclear DNA. With the help of mathematics, can be used to determine degrees of relatedness between species, and when two species diverged from their common ancestor. My Human Evolution professor explained this technique in class just yesterday. It was used as evidence that Neanderthals contributed no DNA to the Homo Sapien gene pool.

Incidentally, talkorgins.org is a great site for this kinda stuff.

Talking past issues, erecting strawmen, arguing from false premises, fudging results - these are all of the standard creationist tactics. These are documented at
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-creation is ts.html

I got a kick out of your link above "WISTAR destroys evolution". "Evolutionary theory is a myth". Hmmmm. The value of a scientfic theory is in its ability to explain data, and to make predictions. The theory of evolution is one of the best supported theories in science, so it's hardly a myth.

By the way, trying to point out minor disagreements by scientists in fields related to evolution, and then claiming that it disproves the theory of evolution is dangerous. Someone could also claim that the far greater differences between the Christian denominations proves that Christianity is a myth :).

Oh, and while you are at it, could you please post a scientific theory of creation? It must explain the data, be falsifiable, and make predictions - a standard for all scientific theories. I know that the good folks at the Usenet newsgroup talk.origins have been asking creationists that for many. many years for that, and have never gotten an answer.

-asb

Behe: A list of links to reviews of his book Lets just say his book doesn't look very good.

-asb

Yawn. You really should try harder. Again, go to www.talkorigins.org.
So far, all of your arguements are false.

-asb

Sorry, these so called sources are so discredited, it isn't even funny. Just a bunch of raving loony creationists. Go to http://www.talkorigins.org - there is plenty of info refuting these crackpots.

By the way, most mainstream Christian denominations have no problem whatsoever with the theory of evolution. And the theory of evolution is one of the best supported theories in all of science.

-fm

"yes, this is pretty interesting, this is basically scientific proof of the genesis flood (you know, the one that evolutionists swear up and down "could NEVER have happened!") heh. 8-) my faith in Scripture grows each and every day. "

Uh, yeah

Modern science says there was a global flood.

Whaaaat?

Please, *please* do not let the creationists get away with this.

Modern science most definitely does NOT say that there was a "global flood."

A global flood that would have covered all of the continents is impossible. It is a physical impossibility. Where did all of the water for this supposed flood come from? Where did it go? Read this, particularly "the flood itself."

Perhaps if he's looking for such evidence FOR a flood he should also check out the mountains of evidence AGAINST a global flood. While this document deals largely with the Noah's Ark myth, it has a good deal of information on the geological and logistical problems associated.

I am not a creationist.

Several posters have said this.

I'll be charitable and guess that they are "Intelligent Design" advocates.

How can we know that the odds against life occurring "are too great"? We are talking about a process we don't understand. Any guess regarding odds can only be a guess. And the fact of the matter is that we are all here... Ergo, life was created somehow or other. See TalkOrigins for more on the odds of life et al).

Conclusion 1: All the evidence is that life was created by natural processes. We don't know exactly how.

Nothing in that precludes the existence of "god". If a natural process created life, then surely it would be "his" natural process...

What IDer's attempt to argue is that the creation of life "requires" or "proves" not only (a) that god exists; but also (b) that he is a "conservative" christian god. It does nothing of the sort.

If there was any scientific evidence whatsoever of "design" in the building blocks of life - as the IDer's favorite Michael Behe suggests - it would be like finding a black monolith on the moon (as in "2001"). Behe has found nothing of the sort.

Conclusion 2: "Intelligent Design" theory goes nowhere (a) to proving the existence of god(s); or (b) to proving anything about his/her/its/their nature.

PTET

Oh please, this has gone on far enough. Nebraska man was a figment; starting from a tooth an entire fantasy was concocted. Only it turned out it was an extinct pig's tooth. Even your favorite site admits that. If you're going to be that sloppy, it's not worthwhile to continue this.

If you're going to continue, let's get back to Gentry, the topic that started this thread. Otherwise it's not going to get anywhere.

Could you please produce evidence (peer reviewed, of course) for these claims.

You seem to be using a whole heap of selective evidence. Perhaps you show check out this post from talk origins, from a ex-creationist on his use of selective evidence.

For example, your paragraph on proto-humans is extremely misleading. You when you ignore the fakes (incidently both Java and Nebraska men weren't fakes), you don't get to Neandertals. The source of your information is being highly dishonest. Perhaps you are unaware of Ardipithecus ramidus, Australopithecus anamensis, Australopithecus afarensis, Kenyanthropus platyops, Australopithecus africanus, Australopithecus garhi, Australopithecus aethiopicus, Australopithecus robustus, Australopithecus boisei, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo ergaster, Homo antecessor, and Homo heidelbergensis. For a very good reference source check out this page. As for your orthodondist (could you also please supply a citation to his peer reviewed report), my girlfriend has studied archeology and biology under both Colin Groves (very famous evolutionary biologist) and Alan Thorne (discoverer of the Mungo Man), and from her, I am well aware that the researchers take into account bone diseases. Plus your claim that Neandertals are just heavily arthritic old people is proved false by mitochondria DNA studies, which show them to be very far removed genetically removed from "mainstream" humanity (Check out here and here, as well as Krings M., Capelli C., Tschentscher F., Geisert H., Meyer S., von Haeseler A. et al (Nature Genetics, 2000, 26:144-6) for more information).

Your other points are just as weak as the human evolution one detailed above. If you want, I can go into detail on them.

As for rephrasing the Medal and Darwin comments; when Darwin first proposed his theory, the common held view about genetics (that traits where blended, ie, the child of a small person and a tall person would be of a medium height) provide a theoretical barrier to evolution (at least of the theoretical model of evolution provided by Darwin), this lead to the Darwin's predicting that the genetics was wrong. The answer to this problem came from Medel's work on peas, while this was done in Darwin's time, it was largely unknown (ironically, Darwin had a large book on genetics which included Medel's work, but never made the connection between Medel's peas and his own theoretical problem). This problem was solved by a variety of researchers who combined Darwin's theory with Mendel's, the synthesis of the two being call neodarwinism, which is the currently accepted view of how evolution occurs.

Could you please produce evidence (peer reviewed, of course) for these claims.

You seem to be using a whole heap of selective evidence. Perhaps you show check out this post from talk origins, from a ex-creationist on his use of selective evidence.

For example, your paragraph on proto-humans is extremely misleading. You when you ignore the fakes (incidently both Java and Nebraska men weren't fakes), you don't get to Neandertals. The source of your information is being highly dishonest. Perhaps you are unaware of Ardipithecus ramidus, Australopithecus anamensis, Australopithecus afarensis, Kenyanthropus platyops, Australopithecus africanus, Australopithecus garhi, Australopithecus aethiopicus, Australopithecus robustus, Australopithecus boisei, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo ergaster, Homo antecessor, and Homo heidelbergensis. For a very good reference source check out this page. As for your orthodondist (could you also please supply a citation to his peer reviewed report), my girlfriend has studied archeology and biology under both Colin Groves (very famous evolutionary biologist) and Alan Thorne (discoverer of the Mungo Man), and from her, I am well aware that the researchers take into account bone diseases. Plus your claim that Neandertals are just heavily arthritic old people is proved false by mitochondria DNA studies, which show them to be very far removed genetically removed from "mainstream" humanity (Check out here and here, as well as Krings M., Capelli C., Tschentscher F., Geisert H., Meyer S., von Haeseler A. et al (Nature Genetics, 2000, 26:144-6) for more information).

Your other points are just as weak as the human evolution one detailed above. If you want, I can go into detail on them.

As for rephrasing the Medal and Darwin comments; when Darwin first proposed his theory, the common held view about genetics (that traits where blended, ie, the child of a small person and a tall person would be of a medium height) provide a theoretical barrier to evolution (at least of the theoretical model of evolution provided by Darwin), this lead to the Darwin's predicting that the genetics was wrong. The answer to this problem came from Medel's work on peas, while this was done in Darwin's time, it was largely unknown (ironically, Darwin had a large book on genetics which included Medel's work, but never made the connection between Medel's peas and his own theoretical problem). This problem was solved by a variety of researchers who combined Darwin's theory with Mendel's, the synthesis of the two being call neodarwinism, which is the currently accepted view of how evolution occurs.

In the article, the organisms used were only identifiable via genetic tests. Obviously humans and chimps are different beings, these organisms were not.

You have misread the article in question. While some of the species required genetic tests to tell the difference between them. Many others didn't.

Gentry did rule out long half-life isomers of polonium as a cause of the halos. However, his theory was supplanted in 1989 (Odom, L.A., and Rink; "Giant Radiation-Induced Color Halos in Quartz: Solution to a Riddle" Science 246: 107-109). This new theory completely accounts for all apparent violation of physical laws in a logical manner; thus, it in no way provides evidence for a near-instantaneous creation. Gentry has yet to publish a rebuttal, more than a decade after these new findings came to light. As for his "challenge", it has not appeared in any peer-reviewed scientific literature, which may account for no one bothering to rise to it. More information on this subject may be found here.

Of course, I've made no mention here of Gentry's notoriously sloppy methods and faulty assumptions (nice summary of these, with references, here), as I wouldn't want you to think I'm attacking him personally, rather than his conclusions.

As for the helium, a creationist named Roger Lenard recently re-presented this tired old argument. Unfortunately, he, like most creation "scientists", presented no evidence for this theory. He did state that "a prestigious university" found that the amount of hydrogen in biotite is "too high", but no one ever comes clear on what "too high" is. Nor will he tell anyone where these measurements were performed, the name of the university, or even provide the data he cites as his sole reference. The paper many creationists look to for support here is actually by our good friend Gentry; however, even his statements do more to prove that the levels of helium currently present are exactly right for an evolutionary timescale. The "too-much-helium" argument has been discredited for years. Science cannot help it if creationists choose to ignore this.

However, none of this has anything to do with my original post. You've employed another common Creationist trick, which is to dodge the question by supplying more "proof" that other unrelated evolutionary methods/theories are faulty. So allow me to get back to the subject at hand...

You use inaccuracies in dating Hawaiian volcanic rock as proof that all radiometric dating is flawed. And you are absolutely correct, I find, in stating that wildly inaccurate dates are determined from potassium-argon analysis of this rock. However, you've neglected to mention that geologists already thought that rocks formed under those particular conditions would give unreliable K-Ar ages because they would trap argon before it could escape. The studies in question were performed to confirm this under controlled conditions, and thus to confirm to the scientific community that this particular type of rock (and, by extension, most rock of seabed origin) is unsuitable for radiometric dating.

Oops.

In addition, I'd like to know how this disproves the accuracy of other dating methods (uranium-lead and rubidium-strontium, for example), since these methods will all produce the same results in rocks with well-understood geological context. Confidence in radiometric dating techniques comes from years of careful comparisons to other radiometric techniques and to relative age determinations from biostratigraphy (fossils in layered rocks). In some cases, there are multiple isotope systems that may be analyzed in the same sample. Since these different systems react differently to the processes that disturb age recording, if the systems disagree with one another the age significance of the data is suspect. If they all agree, then there is phenomal evidence for the accuracy of the dating.

As for the accuracy potassium-argon dating having any bearing on carbon-14 dating (the kind used to date organic artifacts up to 50,000 years old), this is ludicrous. The two methods have very little in common, and carbon-14 dating is known to depend on variations in atmospheric conditions.

So where's the leap of faith? The only one I've seen so far is the one that leads to your ghetto of scientific illiteracy.

For more references, information, and general illumination, read this very helpful document: The General Anti-Creationism FAQ
Here are rebuttals, with evidence and references, to all of the arguments you've thus far presented, as well as all of the other major creationist arguments.

Actually micro- and macro- evolution are one and the same. The difference is in degree.

Biologists recognise no fundamental differences between micro- and macro- evolution. However, if it's a speciation event that you want you could look at this page which contains many links to speciation events in the scientific lit.

Actually, evolution, in its most general sense, is simply change in a certain direction. This comes up often when I am unfortunate enough to discuss evolution with a creationist. They are rarely well-informed enough to understand that what they disagree with is biological macroevolution and end up trying to debate whether things change at all, in order not to appear to be giving ground. *sigh*.