User talk:Bonesiii

Please feel free to ask me any questions here. :-) --Bonesiii 21:00, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Huh?
What's up with this comment?
 * Format error. The paragraph was pushed down by the added tag. It just needed to be at top. --Bonesiii 19:07, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Brilliant!
Bravo, Bonesiii, bravo! Your Origins Essay was absolutely incredible! Very well thought out, and well worded also. It was a joy to read and presented itself respectfully, and I'm sure it will appeal to Evolutionist and Creationist alike. You seem to have put a lot of work into it, and it has more than paid off in my oppinion. It has lead me to have far more respect for your writing talent, though I still think that your posts on BZP are pleasant as well. I agree with you on most of the issues adressed, and I think that you should most certainly finish the essay. Respectfully, Gravitan 22:49, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Hello, Gravitan. I'm glad you liked it--just as long as we all take note that it's nowhere near finished and seriously need sourcing at the moment. :) (To be clear, sources for all that do exist, and I have read them.)--Bonesiii 23:11, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it looks like it needs a little sourcing. And I understand that it's not close to being finished; I simply wished to convey that, while it is a rather small article for the subject, it has the makings of a great essay (which I am sure you will be able to mold it into). (Though one thing that I must point out is your reference to God as "he" or "his", rather than "He" or "His". And while different religions have different perspectives on that issue, I believe that most favor the latter of the two. So just something for you to consider.) Respectfully, Gravitan 23:58, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, I considered capitalizing, however, most non-Christians today don't follow that tradition and may not understand it, and this is written with them in mind as readers too (if they should so choose to read it, heh). I might change it, not sure... It does look jarring, to me, to read it lowercase, but maybe that's mostly just me and you and some others, dunno.
 * Update note: I've added a few new sections, and set up the reference section (I'm using footnoting, which I'm still relatively new at here so figuring out format as I go, lol). Only one reference (two links to one site) is added so far; it's one I only found out about this morning; "Dissent from Darwin." A list of scientists that doubt evolution, basically, though unlikely to be a complete one. Also reformatted to hopefully be a little more readable (the problems list, that is). --Bonesiii 03:19, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Your essay
Hi, Bonesiii, I saw your comments on Talk:Dinosaur regarding your essay and came over to have a look. I'll incidentally note that saw you were a logician and am curious what your area of expertise is. Now as to the essay: I don't have time to commnet on every detail in the evolution section. The section on a whole is full of problems. Since my time is limited I will only address the most serious problems with the essay except to note that I think you meant to refer to the Talk Origins Archive rather than talk.origins. First your comment that you are only comparing YEC to "Without God Evolution" misses to a large extent the entire reason that there is an issue. The majority of people who accept evolution(at least in the United States) also believe in a Deity. In that regard, you have set up what is essentially a false dichotomy. Now, regarding a few of your specific points:
 * The Talk Origins FAQ conclusively refutes just about all of his points anyway. They're recycled ideas from like 10 years ago. I came here expecting to have to do some research. : ( Sheep81 08:22, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

A large part of this section seems to be based off of some misunderstanding of "transitional form" means. I've never seen the term "complete species" before and all the google hits for it turn up just using it to mean "complete species list of Genus X" or something similar. What I am able to piece out of this section seems to be that you are claiming that we should see many more of what amount to morphological transitionals in the fossil record. In fact, we see many morphological transitionals. One nice example of this is whales where the fossil evidence was so good that it essentially forced scientists to accept the unintuitive hypothesis that whales came from land mammals. The fossil sequence of Sinonyx, Pakicetus, Ambulocetus and then the roughly contemporaenous Basilosaurus and Dorudon shows a gradual progression from a wolf-like mammal to a well-ocean adapted mammal. (I've omitted a few other fossils that make this sequence even more fine grained since they aren't that relevant).
 * "Missing links."
 * Not to mention two things. 1) The most powerful thing about the fossil whale phylogeny is that it corroborated the molecular data. DNA analysis first suggested that whales were related to artiodactyl mammals, a fact which was then beautifully confirmed by the later discovery of artiodactyl ankle joints in those early whales. 2) A very large number of fossil species, including most land vertebrates, are known from one specimen. There is no way to tell if these specimens don't represent "transitional forms" even if you use the ludicrous definition of a transitional individual. Sheep81 08:22, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

"No increase in genetic information."
This section seems to conflate somewhat abiogenesis issues with evolution so I'm am going to ignore the abiogenesis related issues for now and only deal with the more direct problems. You state that "Creation... predicts decrease of genetic information, and speciation and natural selection, as results of the Curse, as well as variation within kind as a part of the original creation, and that is what we find. Evolutionists choose on faith to believe that increases have occured, despite it never being observed, and despite it arguing against common sense; information comes from intelligence." First, it is interesting to note that it wasn't until the 1940s at the earliests that creationists began to accept that speciation could occur and even now AIG lists the argument that speciation cannot occur as an argument creationists should not use. Thus the claim that "Creation" predicts speciation is at best a very post hoc claim. I would discuss in more detail the problem of increase in genetic information but I can't since you (and indeed, AIG or almost any other creationist) hasn't defined what they mean by "information". Now, my main area of interest in mathematics is number theory and so I may be wrong but as I understand it there are two basic ways to measure information in mathematics; Kolmogorov complexity and Shannon information theory. Now, it isn't at all hard to give examples of fairly common mutation types that will in general be likely to increase the Shannon information density or the Kolmogorov complexity.

(A small aside- in fact a short thought problem should convince one that any non-trivial defintion of information will allow some mutations that increase the information level. Argument: Premise 1) Any mutation is reversible although some are unlikely to be reversed. Premise 2) For any reasonable defintion of information any two identical strings (substance doesn't matter but for our purposes say DNA) have the same information value, regardless of how the strings were formed (so for example, if we had mutations taking string X to Y to Z and had also string X to Z, at the end both Z's have the same amount of information). Now, suppose we have some mutation that results in a loss of information taking X to Y. Then by premise 1, the mutation Y->X is possible, and by premise 2, this mutation must be an increase in information).
 * There are numerous, numerous examples of mutations creating new traits, even beneficial ones, anyway:


 * Nylon-eating bacteria - Nylon was not invented until 1935 and there is nothing remotely close to it in nature. However, by 1975, bacteria were discovered that had evolved whole new enzymes able to digest nylon. And not just one enzyme, but THREE different enzymes. DNA analysis showed that the new enzyme was a result of a deletion mutation in a pre-existing gene that created a frame shift, resulting in the new gene.
 * B. safensis and B. odysseyi, new species of bacteria that evolved in NASA's spacecraft construction facilities.
 * A single-gene mutation in Japanese snails that produced reproductive isolation by changing the direction of coil in the shell.
 * A study in E. coli that showed 12% of insertion mutations sampled (3 out of 26 genotypes) resulted in improved fitness (you can read this paper in its entirety at the link - check it out, even the authors were surprised).
 * lots of others
 * Sheep81 08:22, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Your other sections are similarly flawed, and I don't have the time to go through them all at the moment and furthermore would prefer to do so by email if possible rather than take up Wikipedia resources. I will however, note that you ignore the best evidence for evolution indeed, evidence so strong that even if we had never dug in the earth it would still be the most reasonable hypothesis- the phylogenetic tree. There is no reason to at all expect such a tree to work if species or even groups of species were individually created. The most common retort of "common designer, not common ancestor" or something similar in fact doesn't deal with it at all since designers don't make things in convenient trees (if for example you looked at the history of cars or computers and attempted to make such a tree one would be stuck with an obscene amount of horizontal transfer of traits). Genetic evidence which corresponds closely to the morphologically derived tree only reinforces this conclusion. In summary, you start off with a false dichotomy, then use flawed arguments and you don't even address the strongest evidence for evolution. Regards, JoshuaZ 04:42, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Nail in the coffin. Sheep81 08:22, 21 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Sheep, remember what I said about many debaters of worldviews having made up their mind beforehand and not willing to consider the other side, and thinking in short, one-liners? That last comment there is one of them. I thank both of you for taking the time to reply, though. The most important question in response to you, though, Sheep (and in general, to Joshua, etc.) is this: Are you willing to consider that you might actually be wrong? It doesn't sound like it, Sheep, and there's several points where I would think that if you were, you'd have caught some logical mistakes talk origins (and you yourself) were using. But you didn't, and even went so far as to post what amounts to a "gotcha" post. I'm not interested in "gotchaism", I'm interested in truth-seeking debate. All that said, I very well might be wrong.
 * Specifically, then, and I'll respond to Joshua then Sheep point-by-point (in case it's not obvious, I've been working on this reply for several days). --Bonesiii 00:13, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Reply to Joshua

 * Joshua--well, not being a scientist, I'm not sure "area of expertise" is what you meant (or if I'm understanding the question correctly). If you mean what aspects of science am I interested in, other than origins, I really don't like to limit what I study, but I'm interested in astronomy/astrophysics, physics in general, geology, paleontology, and genetics. I'm especially interested in temporal/spatial/causal mechanics, chaos theory, and plant and animal anatomy. If you mean any area of expertise, history (and logic, obviously), and I'm also a writer and artist. I may have forgot things, lol, and that is certainly nowhere near the extent of subjects I study. Understanding everything is a very wide-ranging endeavor. :)


 * Both are worth linking to, but yes, the archive would be better.


 * False dichotomy -- Actually, you brought up a debating mistake (probably without realizing it) that I need to address in its own section -- a type of Hasty Generalization fallacy. I call this the "Dichotomophobia Fallacy" --it's essentially the opposite of the Either/or fallacy, in which you assume that there are never any "either/ors" (figuratively, in which you are afraid of dichotomies or afraid of logically testing alleged dichotomies). For the record, I was using neither fallacy. (You'll find that I tend not to use fallacies--identifying them is what I do. :P) It's one thing to automatically state that a dichotomy is false just because you see a dichotomy being discussed--it's another to show how it is false or consider that maybe it's a "true dichotomy".


 * You didn't do that, notice--and I'm also curious as to what the "reason that there is an issue" is, that you mentioned? A "Without God Evolution" that conflicts with a "God Creation" is the most oppositional the debate can get. I addressed the idea already in the article. Genesis claims that death came into the universe only after Adam sinned, therefore the evolution model, which depends on death before human development, cannot fit with Genesis. What defines a false dichotomy is not popularity, but logic. Logically speaking, a hermeneutical reading of Genesis (YEC) cannot fit with Evolution. It doesn't matter if many people don't know that, or if many people choose to read Genesis metaphorically in order to facilitate that worldview mixing--the simple fact remains that Genesis cannot fit with Evolution.


 * Also, while there are compromise views (as I mentioned in the essay), the most activist evolutionists are atheists. To me, to use the false dichotomy argument as an argument against one of the two views is oxymoronic. A false dichotomy should be able to show that the two views can both be correct at the same time, and that's not the case with this view. A YEC view cannot be wedded to a OE view, regardless of whether it is evolution or creation. What you're doing here is assuming that all religious views of creation are equivalent. They are not. Only the YEC is supported by the hermeneutics of Genesis (and in my judgement only the Bible, read hermeneutically, has the whole "God thing" right). I can understand the appeal of mixing, but I also see the logical problems it has.


 * Missing Links -- The basic concept of transitional forms is relatively simple. The evolutionary view is that a type of creature that lived in the past evolved into a new type of creature, with many differences between the original creature, and the new creature, so in the fossil record we should see at least a few (if not many or even a majority) of fossils that are a "transition" between one past creature and the new creature, that hold up to careful analysis. The creationist view is that within a created "kind", there is plenty of room for variation and speciation, so we should see varied and even very similar creatures, but no creatures that, upon careful examination, make sense as transitional species (like Archaeopteryx). Instead, what we see are a mere handful of "alleged" links, the vast majority of which have been shown in analysis to be no link at all but a seperate branch or "type of species" (sometimes just a variation in kind, sometimes a new kind). In fact, more and more are being "demoted" to non-transitional creatures, such as Archaeopteryx, Lucy, etc. etc. And regardless of whether they get "demoted" or not, there are far too few for evolution to fit with the fossil record. The media, and even evolutionist scientists themselves, encourage the misconception to spread that there are (a) transitional fossils that have withstood careful analysis, and worse, (b) plenty of them.


 * Yes, I'm about to quote Gould. :P Gould said this, "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology."


 * A good concise definition of transitional form would be "A fossil that is shown to be a transition between a past established creature, and a different established creature afterwards (that is, lower in the fossil record and higher, respectively), and that passes rigorous analysis." Also note that while evolutionists have so far done much of the "demotion", their bias has prevented them from acknowledging much of their own "demoting" in the media or in education, and obviously they dismiss any creationist analysis, so a "truth seeker", if you will, must look carefully at both evolutionist and creationist analysis and consider them. There's no easy name-tag on any fossil, so the term is obviously hard to define, but that definition makes the most logical sense to me. By that definition, unfortunately for evolutionists, there are no transitional forms. There are a shrinking handful of possible transitional forms, however, so the key right now is, to me, to begin analyses of those.


 * I'm well aware of the variation in whale types--those are not transitional forms, however, and that has been well-known for years in the origins debate. Frankly, there's a lot of circular reasoning that evolutionists like to use, like with this example -- whales are known to be mammals, so we should expect to see similarities between them and land mammals, regardless of whether we are creationists or evolutionists. This is akin to the ape-human genetic similarity argument -- evolutionists like quoting a percentage of similarity in the 90-range, as if that proves something -- apparently without realizing that genetics causes appearance. Apes look like humans, so of course they're similar. Neither the genetic similarities, nor the physical appearance results of them, are relevant to this debate (creationists see similar design as hint of a common designer). Essentially, the evolutionist whale argument is this: whale evolution is true, therefore whale/land-mammal similarities indicate evolution, therefore evolution is true. It's circular reasoning.


 * By the way, that example is one of the reasons there's a "true dichotomy". Genesis says water creatures came before land creatures; thus whales before the mammals evolutionists think they evolved from. The two views cannot wed; one or the other is wrong.


 * "Complete species" -- Well, it's probably not the best wording (and no offense, but I find it hilarious that you googled it, lol). "Species" is better worded as "type of creature" -- i.e. a bird is not a dinosaur (despite however much wikipedians lately have enjoyed saying so or posting featherified drawings, lol), and no transition between the two has ever been found (some have been alleged but did not withstand analysis). It is very possible for a single type of creature to "speciate", hence the term "speciation" in the first place. Creationists call the concept "kind". Horses, for example, have always been horses, and they appear in the fossil record with no previous transitional fossils, but at the same time, we see much variation and likely speciation in the horse kind, including cool creatures like Hyracotherium. The problem is that evolutionists want to see varied creatures as an evolutionary line, and so group them that way without actual evidence of it, and as more study is done, the vast majority are "demoted" to a seperate branch. --Bonesiii 00:13, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * "Logically speaking, a hermeneutical reading of Genesis (YEC) cannot fit with Evolution. It doesn't matter if many people don't know that, or if many people choose to read Genesis metaphorically in order to facilitate that worldview mixing--the simple fact remains that Genesis cannot fit with Evolution." - No, this is STILL a false dichotomy. A true dichotomy is "a division into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or entities" according to Merriam-Webster. Two entities. But you just put forth a third entity in that very sentence! It's not a title match between young-Earth creationism vs. evolutionary theory, it's battle royale: young-Earth creationism vs. old-earth creationism vs. progressive evolution vs. theistic evolution vs. evolution by natural selection vs. Lamarckian evolution vs. several combinations of the above vs. any other possible hypothesis you could come up with. Even IF you somehow falsified evolution by natural selection (which you haven't and won't), it wouldn't prove young-Earth creationism based on a literal reading of Genesis any more than it would prove Lamarckian evolution! Evolution by natural selection and young-Earth creationism could potentially BOTH be falsified! THAT'S why it's a false dichotomy. I'm forced to conclude that either a) you don't know what a dichotomy is, b) you do know what a dichotomy is but aren't thinking as logically as you claim, or c) you do know what a dichotomy is and are thinking logically, but are intentionally trying to obfuscate things. Sheep81 17:50, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Polychotomy :D Sheep81 18:25, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
 * You missed the point, Sheep. ;) I said right in the introduction of the Problems section that I was comparing Genesis creation with evolution. Between the two, there is a dichotomy. Just as there is a dichotomy of good and evil, etc. Rather than understand this, your argument above amounts to this: "Creation and Evolution aren't the only two options, therefore Creation must be wrong." That's a non-sequitar. And regardless, I clearly stated that they are the two options I was looking at in that section. ;) Therefore, in that context, it is a dichotomy, just as you cannot disprove the dichotomy of good and evil by saying that there is also cheese. Compromise views are not in the same category as Creation and Evolution, because they are not consistent with the founding principles of either "pure" worldview. As I said, death could not both come only after Adam, and also before him at the same time.
 * The point being, that considering the third (and fourth, and fifth, etc, Hinduism, Islam, various views within religions like that, etc. etc.) is a different question than the one I'm looking at. Since I have already found what I consider to be glaring problems with them more so than evolution or creation, my task is now to narrow the consideration to only one of the two. :) That is the dichotomy. --Bonesiii 00:43, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I know you are only comparing two options. You have created a dichotomy, yes, but you can create a dichotomy between any two things you like. However, the problem we have here is that after choosing the two things to compare, you then proceed to assume that those are the ONLY two possible options, when clearly they are not. It's a false assumption. Hence, "FALSE dichotomy". It's a dichotomy that doesn't apply to the real world, so you can talk about it all you want, but the fact remains you can't prove Creationism by disproving evolution, any more than you can prove evolution by disproving Creationism. And I said nothing like "Creation and Evolution aren't the only two options, therefore Creation must be wrong" either... in fact I pretty clearly said the opposite of that. Sheep81 03:06, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm glad to hear that is not how you intended it. As I cleared up above, however, nowhere did I "assume" anything about the other options, so your "hence" does not apply, and it it thus not a false dichotomy, by your own logic. I simply did not address them in detail (I did address the main problems with mixing the two I have referred to, however). Also, if I choose strawberries, and choose oranges, and considered that a dichotomy, you would be correct that it is false. However, I chose ideas that are mutually exclusive. This is necessarily a dichotomy. Anyways, it's really rather irrelevant, since my origins essay is in support of one particular worldview. Nobody said that only evolution competes with that worldview (I said the opposite right in the essay); however, evolution is quite obviously the one that is the mainstream view of the scientific community about origins, therefore it is the one that was most important to discuss (and it's also the one that was in question in previous debates that were off-topic on other talk pages, of which you should be aware because you participated in at least one). :) The question is if evolution, or any other worldview-based logic, can show clear problems with creation. I can show, and did, many problems with both evolution and OEC/ID/Theological evolution (that is, many of the problems with evolution also are problems with those worldviews, and the key Genesis-related problems for those worldviews present serious logical hurdles they so far have not been able to leap over). --Bonesiii 03:49, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

To Sheep

 * It's interesting that you believe Talk Origins "refutes" everything I have said, and yet I myself recommended talk origins as a site to check out and explore. Have you been open-minded about this and read the countless articles at AIG that "refute" things evolutionists are saying, including countless arguments used by talk origins? Doesn't sound like it. It's easy to link to a source that "refutes" a viewpoint you want to be wrong, and just generalize that "it's all disproved over there". It's another thing to actually have logically studied whether the refutations do disprove the viewpoint, and then post, using your own words, or at least quotes or links, and reference how the viewpoint is wrong. (Not to mention it's another to avoid fallacies. :P)


 * I am placing "refute" in quotes because it's an interesting word choice. Defensive debaters often use a type of "refutation" that has nothing to do with "debunking" or "disproving" or even "logical analysis, and that is what talk origins excels at. That is, when your viewpoint has been shown to have serious logical flaws by opponents, but you wish to be defensive rather than admit you were wrong, you simply write lots of text, regardless of how logical it is or is not, and hope that most people (who, let's face it, aren't logicians) will assume your extensive or fancy-sounding words mean you are right. (See Proof by verbosity. That's often how defensive debaters use the word "refute"--I've seen it countless times. So I would agree with the statement that talk origins "refutes" many of my points. However, logic is still on the side of my points, as I see it. I believe whatever is most logical to believe, and exactly nothing else.


 * See above reply about the whales. You illustrated perfectly the sort of circular reasoning I'm talking about. Genetic similarities were found, so you assume this means something only for evolution. You then procede to assume that only evolution predicts that genetic similarities should fit with physical similarities. Then, when it's found, you say "this proves evolution." That makes no sense at all, lol. Genetics causes physical appearance, Sheep, and both sides agree on that. Again, your argument takes the form "whale evolution is true, therefore whale/land-mammal similarities indicate evolution, therefore evolution is true" but this time with an even worse subargument:


 * 1) Whale phylogeny agreeing with DNA analysis proves evolution.
 * 2) Whale phylogeny agrees with DNA analysis.
 * 3) Therefore, Whale phylogeny agreeing with DNA analysis proves evolution.

Circular reasoning! Besides, if you had done any research into this, you would have found out that the initial premise is not just part of an invalid argument, it's also clearly false. Creationists also would expect whale phylogeny to agree with DNA analysis. Why? Because evolutionists decide whale phylogeny by appearance--it's another way of saying "Whale DNA matches whale appearance." Of course!


 * In order to have a true transitional form between whales and land mammals, you would need to find a form that is clearly no longer fully inside the whale "kind" or in the corresponding mammal kind, and that could also not possibly be a seperate kind altogether. The whale example fails this test.


 * As for your second point, I'm not even sure how it makes sense. Perhaps you're not familiar with Baraminology (a rough equivalent in evolution is Cladistics though it is rarely subjected to the high critical analysis standards of creationist studies and essentially assumes evolution to be true, rather than attempting to judge evolution's soundness as a theory), but by studying the specific features of a fossil, its similarity to other fossils can be determined (this is part of the analysis mentioned earlier), and thus it can be determined whether it is consistent with simply variation within kind, or not. So far, all the examples fit with variation within kind. Archaeoperyx, for example, is simply a bird, Lucy is simply an ape, etc.

Will continue later with a reply to the second half of Joshua's/Sheep's reply. :) And BTW, Sheep, it would be helpful if next time you reply one-after-the-other, rather than splitting up someone else's reply, okay? --Bonesiii 00:13, 24 May 2007 (UTC
 * Suggestion noted, I will avoid splitting in the future. See below for my reply to your reply!


 * I have read a few of the AiG "answers" to the talk.origins refutations of creationist arguments, and each time I had to suppress a giggle. I then went and read some of the talk.origins refutations of the AiG "answers" which I considered to a lot more convincing.


 * I'm going to concede the the semantics of "refute" because I don't really care about semantics, so you might be right, and I am certainly not an expert on disputation (ooo another big word!). However, I would ask: are you as open-minded as you seem to request that I be? In my experience, most young-Earth creationists aren't, simply because they wouldn't be young-Earth creationists in the first place if they hadn't already accepted the literal truth of Genesis. However, you could be one of the lucky few! (By the way, I am just going to use "creationists" in place of "YECs" from here on out, because I am lazy).


 * As far as my whale comment, here's where you're wrong: today's whales have no similarity with artiodactyls. You can barely find anything similar about them, aside from their common status as mammals. So no, creationists wouldn't have predicted genotypic similarity between whales and artiodactyls because there is no phenotypic similarity. There were no creationists out there proclaiming "whales are in the artiodactyl baramin!" before these molecular studies came out, and I haven't done research on the topic but I suspect there weren't many afterwards either. In fact, whales and artiodactyls appear so different that even paleontologists thought the molecular guys were nuts when they said they were related. That changed when early whale fossils (Ambulocetus, Pakicetus, etc.) were found in Pakistan and other places that clearly showed an artiodactyl ankle joint, and now (most) of the morphological workers agree with the molecular workers. The point is that only an evolutionary framework predicts this. We had done the genetic studies, and from that it was possible to predict that fossils would be found to support the phylogenetic hypothesis derived from the molecules. Likewise, if we had (hypothetically) found these fossils in the 1950s, it would have been possible to predict that genetic studies would confirm the relationship. A creationist framework would never have predicted this, because creationists will only admit that, in your words, "[g]enetics causes physical appearance" and refuse to concede that genetics could also indicate phylogeny. Phenotypically, is a whale more similar to a hippo than a hippo is to a pig or a camel? No. So why is a whale more similar genetically to a hippo than a hippo is to a pig or a camel? Hint: there's one simple answer, and we're playing science here, so it doesn't involve God working in mysterious ways (necessarily at least... not to state that He isn't, since that's unfalsifiable pretty much by definition). (Here is a free PDF of an article showing the morphological phylogeny uniting hippos and whales, and if you look in the first paragraph below the abstract, there are references to literally 20 different molecular phylogenetics papers with the same hypothesis).


 * "In order to have a true transitional form between whales and land mammals, you would need to find a form that is clearly no longer fully inside the whale "kind" or in the corresponding mammal kind, and that could also not possibly be a seperate kind altogether."


 * Let me see if I understand your definition here.
 * You're saying that if land mammals have features ABC, and whales have features ABCEFG, a form with ABCE would be a transitional form? But if it had ABCDE, it wouldn't be, by your definition?


 * That's pretty much a ludicrous definition of transitional forms that you could use to deny any creature anyone could ever throw out there. Because animals don't just GAIN traits over time, they can also LOSE traits (phenotypically at least). Think about it. If an animal exists in great enough numbers to actually be preserved, then almost by definition it has to be an abundant species, and a species can only become abundant if it is uniquely adapted to its environment, which means that it will have unique features. However, these unique features would not necessarily be selected for as the environment changes (this is the main catalyst for speciation after all), and if they aren't, they will disappear over time. So given the incomplete fossil record, it would APPEAR that they had a unique feature not shared by their purported descendants, which by your definition would exclude them as transitional forms, even if they were. A record of traits that were found in ancestors that are no longer expressed can often be seen in the genetic code and may even be expressed in embryonic development (not as clear-cut as "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" but still). For instance, dolphins exhibit the buds of hindlimbs early in development, but another gene stops their growth and they are reabsorbed(another free PDF). Sometimes they aren't reabsorbed properly and then you see full-grown dolphins with hindlimbs like this! Also, chickens still have genes that allow them to grow teeth, but they are normally suppressed (yet another free PDF). If a mutation removes the suppression, teeth will grow, like in this chick! If genetics only encodes appearance and not phylogeny, why are there unexpressed genes for traits that animals don't have? Again, there's one simple answer, and it's not "God works in mysterious ways."


 * In any case, we actually do have some examples of anagenesis (one species evolving directly into another) out there in the fossil record, especially in ammonites. But that wouldn't impress you because it's just one species evolving into another very similar species over a (geologically) short period of time, which you already accept anyway (same baramin or whatever). You seem to be wanting us to find the entire chain of life from the beginning to every single organism that ever existed, which is never going to happen. In fact, I COULD show you plenty of fossils with no defining features of their own, because they are so incomplete, but I wouldn't claim any of them as potential "transitional forms" (your definition) because I would just assume that unique features would be seen on other body parts yet to be found. That's just a consequence of an incomplete fossil record, sorry. Even creationists agree that the fossil record is far from perfect, otherwise they would have to argue that only one Antarctopelta or Eoraptor ever existed.


 * I am in fact familiar with baraminology. It was invented to allow creationists to backpedal once it became very apparent how obvious natural selection was and what its results would be over time, not to mention that there were just way too many types of animals to fit on one boat. Basically because creationists wanted to cut their losses and say "Evolution happens a little bit, but only to a point! We're still right!" There are several major problems with baraminology, aside from the fact that not even all creationists believe in it, and that many actually believe God sat down and created all 5 million species of beetle independently (since He has "an inordinate fondness for beetles" - Haldane).


 * The first is that the concept of "baramin" is basically used to say that "Noah didn't have to get all the different types of extant and extinct types of dogs on his Ark, he just got the archetypal DOG and all the other types of dogs appeared after the Flood ended." This would mean that the ancestral DOGS dispersed all over the world and dozens of different types of canid evolved in only a few thousand years -- even FASTER than "evolutionists" would suggest! If evolution really acts that fast on the phenotype, why don't we still see new species of dog evolving every couple hundred years? We've killed off several species of wild dogs, so why haven't new ones evolved to fill their niches already?


 * The second is simply: how do you define a baramin? Definitions of groups of animals in an evolutionary framework are simple: a bunch of animals that are related. But where does a baramin start and end? To use one of your examples: what baramin is Archaeopteryx in? You seem very confident that it just a bird. So is "bird" a baramin? Isn't that kinda broad? Did Noah just bring two Archaeopteryx on his Ark and then all the other birds evolved from there? I already have trouble believing that three dozen dog species could evolve that fast, let alone tens of thousands of species of birds.


 * So Archaeopteryx would be in its own smaller baramin, I assume? That would have made sense in 1870, when Archaeopteryx was obviously a bird because it had feathers, but so different from other birds because of its teeth, fingers and bony tail. Not so today, when there is a whole spectrum of animals on both sides that show only incremental differences from Archaeopteryx. What baramin is Shenzhouraptor, which has feathers, fingers, teeth, and a bony tail, but slightly more birdlike features of the skull and wings? What about Confuciusornis, with teeth and fingers but no long bony tail? What about Hesperornis, with teeth but no fingers? And then what about all the birds between THOSE animals? On the other side of Archaeopteryx, there are a legion of theropod dinosaurs preserved with feathers, are those birds too? Asymmetrical flight feathers essentially identical to those of modern birds are preserved in dromaeosaurs like Microraptor and the undescribed specimen BPM 1 3-13. Symmetrical feathers unsuitable for flight are known in the oviraptorid Caudipteryx and several others. Long filamentous structures similar to the rachis of feathers are known in Sinosauropteryx, Dilong and many others. This progression from filamentous "protofeathers" to modern feathers corresponds exactly to the phylogeny hypothesized from skeletal elements. Meaning that even if the feathers are not taken into consideration at all, paleontologists would STILL find the same general phylogeny (there are smaller nitpicky differences of course, depending who you ask). Speaking of skeletal elements, the reversed pubis of birds, as well as modifications of the arm and shoulder that allow the flight stroke are present in dromaeosaurs, the semilunate carpal bone that allows wing folding is present in all maniraptorans, the furcula ("wishbone") is known as far back as Coelophysis, the three-toed foot with hallux is found in all theropods, and the cavities in the vertebrae and other bones that accommodate the air sacs of an avian-style respiration system are known in all saurischians! And honestly I could keep going, and going, and going, back to the beginning of Chordata, probably further if I knew anything about invertebrates at all.


 * Surely both biologists and creationists agree that all of these features had their functions in the animals they were found in, they weren't just stored there to get ready for birds. So you could argue that God created those features in those animals specifically, but that would ignore the fact that those features don't happen in isolation. You don't find an animal with a semilunate carpal and no furcula. You don't find an animal with a bird-like foot that doesn't already have pneumatic cavities in its bones similar to birds. These features accumulate, so that there is a whole spectrum of animals that, taken as a whole, progressively appear more and more similar to birds, but still retain some "non-bird" features. Then you get to Archaeopteryx and there is another spectrum of animals that progressively appear more and more similar to today's modern birds but still retain some characteristics of more primitive forms. So the main problem for baraminology is that as our knowledge of the fossil record improves, the gaps that baraminologists rely on to demarcate their "baramins" will simply get smaller and smaller until they close altogether and you just have Baramin Biota, exactly the same as the "evolutionists".
 * Sheep81 17:04, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, thanks for your in-depth reply! I wish I had time to reply to all of it, but for now, some of the points.
 * As to the question of whether I'm as open-minded as I ask you to be, yes, I am. To be clear, though, I'm certainly not demanding it of you. I can't read minds, so I can't even know for sure if you are. (Benefit of the doubt, obviously.) It's just that if you aren't willing to consider changing your mind if logic dictates (as I am), then it's probably better if I spend my time doing other things. :)
 * Also, please don't take this as an accusation, but maybe you should think about your response while reading AIG points. You giggle--is that really an open-minded response? I'll admit freely that I find myself rolling my eyes sometimes when reading talk origins, and maybe I shouldn't either. But when I do so, it's usually because I see a logical fallacy, something that really shouldn't be on a scientific website. Many other times I simply read a point they're making, and think "that is actually a good argument; I'll look into that". So far I've always found reasons that debunk it, but I'm willing to consider it.
 * Also, you need to realize that with both AIG and talk origins, the approach is not always an actual debate between two entire worldviews based on evidence, but often it's simply taking one aspect of the opposite worldview ("out of context", as it were), and showing how it does not fit inside their own worldview. To someone who is approaching the debate already accepting evolution, for example, what talk origins may seem to make a lot more sense than it does (or same with AIG). It's a fair reaction, don't get me wrong, but what I'm driving at is this. I've spent time reading extensively on AIG, and on talk origins and many other evolutionist websites, even OEC and ID sites, arguments, etc, and what I have found is that YECs like AIG tend to do the best job of showing real logical problems with the evolutionist worldview itself, in context, and talk origins (and others, but talk origins is the most in-depth I've found) on the contrary rarely looks at creationism in context (if ever), and merely shows how each point doesn't fit within the evolutionary view.
 * That's a big part of what has convinced me AIG has it right (at least on the biblical issues). Admittedly, that's a big project, and not saying you need to do all of that work, but if you try to see past the "out of context" arguments, perhaps you could come to see what I'm seeing here. :)
 * One example, to illustrate, quickly. This one, for example, is riddled with obvious logical errors. "Therefore, errors in an inerrant interpretation of the Bible can never be fixed." (Need I comment, lol?) Or look at number four. From the evolutionist perspective, that argument makes sense, but it can only fly if we don't actually study the Bible, and what it itself says--nowhere did Jesus declare the old law errant. He simply declared it no longer required. He was the author of it (according to the Bible), therefore he can suspend his own rules at will. Also, many of Paul's letters debunk the point as well. Number two is especially disturbing; apparently the writers of this response are unaware that the Bible forbids hate and requires that Christians leave judgement to God; it is those who believe things unsupported by the Bible who are guilty of things such as the Holocaust. Just to name a few mistakes.
 * The whole argument misses the point; those who have tried to disprove any claim in the Bible have failed, alleged contradictions have all been debunked (notice their list in #7; I've personally studied much of what they list there and have seen clear disproofs of those being "contradictions"; they are simply misunderstandings or twisting of meaning just like the fulfillment of the law concept), and what "Some people believe" the Bible says is irrelevant; what matters to the issue in question on that page is what the Bible actually says. This section is 1,056 words long (by Microsoft Word's count, which is not infallible :P), and not a word of it acknowledges these key points. There is no actual sound logical argument against the point (it fails in both soundness and validity on many points, in fact). However, with that many words, and many arguments that seem convincing, those who are coming at this from an evolutionary perspective already are very likely to miss this aspect, and walk away thinking the page disproved the creationist claim.
 * To be fair, AIG and other YEC sites certainly do the same on many of their pages, or in parts of pages. And I highly doubt they always include every relevant detail. Neither side is perfect at this debate, certainly. But Creationists can and do show fundamental problems with evolution, that pass the logic tests. That is huge.
 * Anyways, I haven't responded to any of your other points yet, lol. To the whale one:
 * "That changed when early whale fossils (Ambulocetus, Pakicetus, etc.) were found in Pakistan and other places that clearly showed an artiodactyl ankle joint, and now (most) of the morphological workers agree with the molecular workers. The point is that only an evolutionary framework predicts this."
 * This is the key part of your argument there, as I'm reading it. Again it's falling back on the idea that genetic similarity manifests itself in appearances; both theories agree on this, as I said. The last sentence in this quote is simply not true. Firstly, because you yourself admitted that evolutionists did not accept it universally themselves, and secondly, because it is not even close to logically inconsistent with the creationist worldview.


 * I don't think you understand the meaning of the word "predict". It does not necessarily mean that every detail of what a theory's basic concepts would mean is known and talked about. It does mean, however, that as new information is discovered, the evidence fits with the theory logically. What you are talking about fits both with evolution and with creation, so really isn't relevant to the debate. Several times, you use wording such as "that was invented in order to" or the like, which implies that the point is invalid, simply because nobody thought of it hundres of years ago, essentially. If this was a valid argument, creationists could simply point out that evolution itself (at least Darwin's variation of it) was not thought up until recently, and evolutionists frequently amend. In science, theories frequently do (and can) go through revisions as we learn more information. When this happens, the new "updated" theory is also testable (and could possibly be disproven, or confirmed; this happens both with evolution and with those aspects of creation theory that are not explicitely stated in the Bible). "Predicts" means that the evidence fits with this theory. I can see how you might assume I was referring to chronology with a word like that, so I concede my wording may have been confusing. Generally, that is one of the words to describe this aspect of the scientific method, however. :)
 * "Hint: there's one simple answer, and we're playing science here, so it doesn't involve God working in mysterious ways"
 * Evolution is one possible answer, yes; Creation is another. Your argument here amounts to "Hint: The evolution answer is the right one, because you're not allowed to consider the Creationist answer." I hate to say this, but I just caught you in a clear example of close-mindedness. That's unfortunate. I could easily simply respond like this: "Hint, there's one simple answer, and we're playing science here, so it doesn't involve chance working in mysterious ways" and pretend it's a valid counterpoint. Problem is, neither argument would be valid. You cannot disprove a conclusion simply by saying "you're not allowed to come to that conclusion."


 * "(necessarily at least... not to state that He isn't, since that's unfalsifiable pretty much by definition)"
 * "And you repeat the fallacy here. Who wrote the definition you're referring to? Evolutionists!

Well, how do you define "features", and on what basis do you say that whales would overlap with land mammals ABC? This is an "if" hypothetical, which is not what I'm talking about. It's also far too simple; for example, if we found reptile scales transitioning into feathers, how could we categorize it in such simplistic ways as "ABC"?
 * Let me see if I understand your definition here. You're saying that if land mammals have features ABC, and whales have features ABCEFG, a form with ABCE would be a transitional form? But if it had ABCDE, it wouldn't be, by your definition?"
 * If you want a super-simple definition, this would be it: If evolutionists could prove that any single fossil makes logical sense to be in an evolutionary chain involving increasing genetic information, that would be a transitional fossil. But if we look at an example like the supposed "scale-feathers", we find out that instead the fossil has been disproved as a transitional form. Lucy's knees, etc.
 * But a less abstract definition might be this: If we saw features appearing in a transition that could not possibly be part of variation within kind, that would be a transition. To go back to the alphabetic example, pretend there was a creature called "ABC", and a creature called "XYZ". We might find examples of "ABC" who had lost the C trait, and we might find examples of XYZ that had lost Y. We might find creatures that could be labelled "A" or "B", etc. And A is similar to X but is not X, etc. Now, evolutionists would arrange these as a line; A, AB, ABC, then X, then XY, then XYZ (for example), and consider any other variants to be seperate branches.
 * Creationists on the other hand would consider A, AB, ABC to simply be within one "kind", and "XYZ" be a kind as well, that are seperate.
 * Now, the question of transitional fossils. It is not as simple as finding a creature ABYZ. That could potentially be a transitional form, but none of the features in that case are transitional; it could also simply be a seperate kind. What you'd need to find is features such as MNO, and find creatures such as ABC, ABO, ANZ, MNZ, XNZ, XYZ. You would NOT need a complete cycle, either, for a single fossil to count as transitional. A half-feather, half-scale, for example; this could not simply be part of a reptilian kind. This instance could also technically be a seperate kind that has never been established, of course, but it could also be claimed to be a legitimate transitional form, because it could not be disproved as transitional. We don't see that; we see Lucy, Archeopteryx, and whales and land mammals that all fit totally within established "kinds" and can be (and most have been) disproved as transitions.
 * Running out of time, but real quickly, let me simply recommend you read the wikipedia page on Baraminology; it explains the various subtypes of baramin and such. Also, you ask specifically which creatures fall under which baramin; I'm not aware that specific categorizations have been determined yet. I'd recommend you look into that on your own time, but be aware that baraminology is a new science, and it will likely undergo recategorizations just as phylogeny does. I could also ask you, for example, where exactly Lucy fits in the evolutionary tree of man; but your answer today would vary from what was said a few years ago (if you're up-to-date on it, that is). Just glancing through, however, most of what you mentioned are simply complete features, that fit perfectly well within one or the other kind (or others, etc; don't get caught up with dichotomy confusion again :P). With Shenzhouraptor, for example, you listed feathers, fingers, teeth, and a bony tail. All of these things are consistent with birds we know of today, or are not neccessarily transitional, such as the bony tail. If, on the other hand, Shenzy featured half-feathers, then we could seriously consider it to be transitional. As we run down your list, we see the same general traits, but in varying orders and arrangements.
 * "Did Noah just bring two Archaeopteryx on his Ark and then all the other birds evolved from there? I already have trouble believing that three dozen dog species could evolve that fast, let alone tens of thousands of species of birds."
 * I don't think you caught an important part of what I was saying earlier. You're again confusing increasing information evolution with natural selection, varying arrangements of existing material, and loss of some information. With dogs, your ignorance of this vital concept is especially obvious. Dogs do not "evolve" into varying breeds by millions of years leading to new information developing. Rather, they are bred, or "naturally selected" as you will, seperating or losing genetic information that was already there beforehand. This is known to happen in mere years/decades/centuries, not millions of years. This process is well-documented by dog breeders throughout history. It did indeed happen rapidly, and without any new genetic information needing to evolve.

Anyways, enough for now. Homework piling up... And man, I guess I did respond to most of it, lol. Didn't think I'd have time... (Yes, yes, ironies abound. :P) --Bonesiii 02:21, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * An original dog "kind", to put it in the "ABC" context, might have traits "AbCdEfGhIj", capitals being dominant, lowercase recessive, and as dogs reproduce, the natural variations inherent in the reproduction process cause puppies to be born AACdffGhII, and bbddEEGhIj (let's say 20 puppies are born, ten of each type, and five of each type female, to keep this simple). This is not new information-evolution. This is simply variation within kind. Notice also that both kinds of puppy lost information. From here on out, different breeds could be formed, or the two could be mixed to form "mutts". This process need only take a few years; however fast the dogs reproduce! Loss can also occur in ways that cause us to end up with AACdff only, for example. With enough differences and reproductive isolation, speciation can also occur by this method, so that one type cannot reproduce with another type, simply because of too much loss of information. "New" traits can also seem to appear, when recessive genes pair up and thus allow the trait to "emerge" even though it was there in the genetic code all along. None of this is evolution; this all fits perfectly in the Creationist worldview. Not only is it reasonable to believe it occurs rapidly, we know for a fact that it can and does.
 * By the way, you appear to have become confused or perhaps misinformed about the feather situation; you state several times that feathers or protofeathers are known to have been found in dinosaurs--this is not true at all (see the reference linked above, if you did not already). I know you could get that impression if you look at a lot of artistic sketches that put feathers on dinosaurs on Wikipedia lately, lol, but that's not scientific. All the known examples of feathers are on bird fossils; and the best alleged example of "protofeathers" so far has just been debunked. This is exactly what I am talking about--this leap to conclusions with alleged evidence, rather than being cautious and examining possible transitions before announcing them as transitions. The problem is, every time the alleged transition is disproven eventually, so I'm not surprised evolutionists have abandoned this scientific caution. It's unfortunate, though.

The Trouble With One-Liners
In response to an off-topic comment on Origins essay by Jim62sch on the Talk:Dinosaur page which is copypasted here: --Bonesiii 00:13, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I read it...I missed the logic though, unless it was, to paraphase, "God exists, science is wrong". Anyway, this is not the place for rebuttal.   &#0149;Jim 62 sch&#0149;  21:43, 21 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Remember what I said about quick-one-liners, Jim: "too often 'debates' online or in real life on these issues [worldviews] seem to demand quick one-liners in answer to points, usually worded defensively or combatively. That's just not the way to get to the bottom of these matters." Origins is too complex an issue to be encapsulated in a mere five words. ;) Also, you probably did not realize it, but you just used a Straw man fallacy. What I am really saying was stated in the article. :)
 * One of the most important parts of my approach is that I concede that I could be wrong. Do you concede that you could be wrong too? If so, and we're both interested in finding the truth above all, then we can have a productive discussion. :)
 * So I'm open to learning what the logical errors you believe I made were. If, as a logician, my logic is lacking, I definately want to know. --Bonesiii 00:13, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Anyone can be wrong. Nonetheless, that was not my point (speaking of strawmen).  Logical error #1 is that you preface your argument with "assume god".  It goes downhill from there.  &#0149;Jim 62 sch&#0149;  01:19, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, speaking of one-liners, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." You seem to be cool with that one when discussing such a deep topic as origins.  &#0149;Jim 62 sch&#0149;  01:35, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Could you point to where I preface the argument that way? Because that is not my approach, nor did I describe my approach that way. My approach is, "assume nothing; investigate everything."
 * I thank you for admitting you could be wrong -- the next step that I would ask for is reasoning as to why you think that my conclusion is wrong. :) However, your emotional tone sounds somewhat combative... maybe almost bitter? I don't know why, and I can't speak to what in your life makes you see things the way you do, but please understand that I'm not trying to insult anyone here. Your last comment there sounds like one of those almost bitter "comebacks." If you think it through, you can easily see how neither a bible verse nor (for example) a quote from Darwin or an evolutionist is a "quick-one-liner" of the sort I'm talking about (I'm talking about combative, mud-throwing "debates"), and both examples generally have greater detail surrounding them. If I was to apply your logic, I could simply take the first sentence of Darwin's book, and call that a one-liner. You're obviously missing the point, I'm afraid...
 * Again, I repeat the request to show me logical errors I made. To do so, you have to show flaws in arguments I actually made, not straw men, like the "assume God" straw man you used this time. I'm listening. :) --Bonesiii 16:11, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Emotional? Hardly.  Tired of Aquinian-type pseudo-logical arguments?  Definitely.  When you do some research into why man created the gods, then we'll talk.
 * Oh, read your own section here.
 * How do you mean, Jim? I wrote it, so I know what it says...
 * Also, is it not possible that man invented evolution as well? I'm curious how you would answer this question; this is a big one that convinced me. If man invented the gods, including the God of the Bible, how do you explain Jesus fulfilling all the prophecy he did? How is that possible? --Bonesiii 00:43, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
 * "how do you explain Jesus fulfilling all the prophecy he did?" Did he now? Did he fulfill them in the context in which they were intended?  Bah.  &#0149;Jim 62 sch&#0149;  20:18, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
 * "Bah"? You said earlier that you are open to the idea that you could be wrong about this... I understand frustration, but it sounds a little like you're dismissing the possibility outright. You didn't answer my question--you merely asked more questions you did not provide an answer for. You tell me--how do you answer both my questions and those you raised, and on what reasoning do you base it? If you have none, maybe you should look into it? --Bonesiii 00:12, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * @Jim: At the risk of butting in, I would like to comment that yes, Christ did fufill all of the prophicies in their original context. A reading of the Old and New Testament together will show you that the entire OT itself is a illustration for Christ (just to name a few examples: The lamb that God provided in place of Isaac, the Exodus from Eygpt, the sacrificial system, and the life of King David). Moreover, the prophecies by Isaiah and the other OT prophets speffically mentioning the Messiah were fuffilled in Christ, and I am wondering in which way do you think that He fufilled them out of context. If you could provide examples, I would be able to better address this.TLhikan (talk) 13:06, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Greetings
Hello, bones, I have greatly observed both your articles on the wiki and BZP, and I must say, you seem to be fairly intelligent for your age, and I would love to debate with you in one way or another on several matters discussed in your sections.(for lack of a better word at 3 A.M.)

Up for a debate
I can't promise to answer swiftly to everyone of your responses, but I do promise that my answers will be duly researched. You can reach me at Dracontes(AT)gmail(DOT)com. Dracontes 16:21, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Notice from bones
Homework's clogging my schedule for now so all updates and replies are on hold for now (probably at least through 2007). Just wanted to say I haven't forgotten about this and still want to update it (especially working on the references) in the future. :) But thanks to the above commenters. Feel free to add any detailed debate-type comments here, as for now email's probably not the best route as it might get buried in page after page of spam, given my schedule (I know that takes wikipedia resources so it's best avoided but I can't do long emails justice in the time I have now). Anything posted here I will try to reply to eventually. :) If emails are short though I can try my best to reply right away. (I'm anon for the moment 'cuz I lost my password and I'm too rushed to find it for now, sorry.) --bones —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.240.143.249 (talk) 01:54, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Abortion
Hey Bones, what do you belive on abortion, I, myself is a pro-lifer. What are you? BTW I am Zyglakky Shark from BZP. Shark112 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 03:51, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Again sorry for the anon-reply -- this is bones. Personally, I am pro-life. I was once concieved and born -- I could not in good conscience support the taking of someone else's life when I lived. Also, where does it stop -- if killing a human is okay even just after conception (when genetically we become unique from the mother), why not when they annoy us as adults? I am always confused when I see pro-choice individuals acting shocked when we see a dumpster infanticide on the news or the like, or someone they know is murdered. Why are they not pro-choice, logically, for infants, if they are for slightly younger babies? Everybody is dependant to a degree on others -- should an employer have the right to choose to terminate employees? It just doesn't make sense to me. Anyways... Forgive me if I am ranting. :P --bones —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.241.207.10 (talk) 17:49, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Hullo!
Hey bones, Ikki here! -- aye, been gone for a while, but I pick the most unusual times to make an appearance. =P Very sorry for not continuing our (now old) email conversation, but I didn't want to jump into anything without having examined relevant data. Should've let you known... again, I apologize for that. =|

First, I'd like to say I very much appreciate your stance on openmindedness and scientific examination -- far as I've seen, that's rare among creationists (no offense meant by that =P). I myself think understanding how the universe works is one of the best things human beings can do with their existence, apart from simply enjoying it, and I agree wholeheartedly views on 'truthism debate' (or however you word it xD). Having said that, I have come to vastly different conclusions than you, but I've done my best to make sure these are based on scientific data and no preset worldview -- and I'm continuingly testing my conclusions to see if they hold water, as it were.

As you may remember (or prolly not, heh), at the time of our short email correspondence, I was leaning towards a creationist worldview, based on personal experience as well as, admittedly, lack of knowledge in any scientific area whatsoever. =P Now, I have not had the opportunity or time to study in-depth biology, geology, astronomy, or any science relevant to the origins debate -- I'm basing my conclusions mainly on scientific stuff released by research institutes and professionals trained in these things. It is my opinion that no scripture should be accepted as truth until the world it describes it examined -- and, as I said, I hope to study these things more thoroughly when I get the time. =)

You have prolly guessed by now that I'm what you call an evolutionist, lol -- I'll elaborate on that shortly, but I'd like to provide the background for my conclusions first. To cut short the chase and get to the point, I'll try to address the problems with evolution you bring up in your origins essay, in a hopefully accessible manner. Here we go. =)

Missing Links -- First off, biologically speaking, all fossils and species are transitional, since evolution (assuming it is true) is a constantly ongoing process. Second, fossilization is an extremely rare occurence; as you prolly know, dead organic matter decomposes relatively quickly, so the vast majority of animals who have died out in the open will simply disappear. Usually instant sedimental burying or exposure to dry or arid climate is required, which explains why many fossils found are from the same creatures, as such occasions which would fossilization usually take place on a large scale, hence affecting many contemporary creatures. Third, we do actually have a large number of fossils showing the transition between species -- again, it is important to note that ALL species are transitional, as evolution has no goal. For proof of this, check out these lists -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_evolution_fossils http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_Cetaceans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_horse And do not just accept these on faith (I know you won't =P) -- although the representations of these forms are drawn, individual pages have links to the actual fossils and the scientific examition and conclusions of them. There's much, much more on the subject out there, but in short it's safe to say that the fossil record is a pretty good demonstration of evolution at work. Don't take my word for it -- there are plenty of academic sites (and books!) with very good introductions to evolution and adressation of the common issues brought up creationists.

No increase in genetic information -- Not true, I'm afraid. =P Mutations in the DNA sequence can definitely duplicate sequences, thus increating the information in a genome. If these duplicated sequences are thn mutated, guess what -- a whole new function appears while leaving the old intact! Sorry, but this definitely happens. Also, be careful not to confuse evolution with abiogenesis, which is the study life's origins. Evolution merely describes what happens once life is around and how -- abiogenesis is a field of much less certainty, as I understand it.

Age of the Earth -- There are a plethora of dating methods utilized by geologists and biologists, and they all point to an Earth billions of years old. Radiometric dating is prolly the best known of these, and is definitely valid -- check it out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating. An interesting point is that all these seperate studies and methods point towards the same ol' age of the Earth; not a single bit of scientific data supports a young Earth, i'm afraid. Evolution doesn't suggest these ages 'give time' for changes to occur; rather, they do it based on what the dating shows. This includes examination of fossils, layers, plenty of stuff. Not well versed in the specifics myself, but the dating seems pretty secure. Oh, and the RATE project was carried out by creationists with no scientific training. Sorry, but I'll take the words of professionals over wishful amateurs any day. =P

Statistics -- Sorry, but this is simply not true. :P This has more to do with abiogenesis -- but it is a well known fact that mutations do happen from generation to generation. As I said above, these mutations can often duplicate DNA sequences and further mutate those, so increase of gentic information is in fact a fact. =P Bacteria have been observed to evolve entirely new enzymes, which is prolly the closest we can get to directly observing evolution. And contrary to popular belief, there is no difference whatsoever between micro- and macroevolution -- these are outdated, manmade terms that describe the same phenomenon. :P

Mutually-exclusive needs for chance-forming of life -- such proteins have likely adapted to become co-dependant -- life has changed, evolved, so what is needed for life today is prolly not the same that was needed to bring it into existence.

Irreducible Complexity -- Not an expert on this myself, so I'll just link you to http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/icdmyst/ICDmyst.html =P Hope you don't mind, lol.

Catastrophism needed for most fossilization -- We agree on this! :D However, there is tons of evidence of countless larger and smaller disasters throughout time, namely the K-T event. Evolution has certainly evolved, if you'll excuse the bad pun -- we've come a long way since Darwin's ideas, and fossilization is a well-understood process. I should add here, I suppose, that so is evolution -- it is regarded as fact in the entirety of the scientific community (the guys who research this stuff, lol), and is far better understood than gravity! I hope I won't see you arguing against gravity, though. :P

Harmful Mutations -- beneficial mutations are common. Sorry. =P They happen all the time -- otherwise, we'd all look like our parents and each other. XD To put it bluntly, this doesn't fly. :P

The Bible -- first off, check out this list: http://www.evilbible.com/Biblical%20Contradictions.htm =P Pretty long, but you get the gist, I hope, lol. In fact, a literal interpretation of the Bible is an extremely recent thing, and there's tons of evidence of the Bible being a collection of older myths and local folks stories. That is not to say that it's not a historical document -- but the bare fact is that is portrays a rather selfish and hateful God, which i cannot bring myself to worship, even if I believed he existed. All biblical prophecies are filled to the brim with metaphor and unclear stuff, and not a single one has ever been proven to have come true. Here are some interesting points: Satan was not originally evil -- this is a rather recent misinterpretation now well known to scholars. The New Testament mistranlated the Greek word for a young girl to mean virgin -- changes a lot, huh? =P Of course, there's also the absolutely overwhelming body of scientifically examined data that goes directly against a literal biblical worldview. But there's too much to list here, lol.

Living Fossils -- this could turn into a rather lengthy discussion, lol, but simply put, man could've never survived alongside millions of dinosaurs. The legends and descriptions of dragons almost show these to be in nearly all cases based on such things as comet, exaggeration of current animals, composite creatures, ancient fossil findings, and so on. A lot of ancient dragon depictions show simply a snake fused with a bird or a cat -- as a way to unify the indidually impressive traits of each creature into one, super-terrifying beast for whatever reason. Only after the discovery of dinosaur fossils did dragons become more dinosauresque. I could o more into this, but I'm running outta time, lol. Would love to have a discussion of this later, though! :D

Aliens -- as I've said, life has been shown to have rather simple building blocks, and the current theories in abiogenesis studies makes it likely that there's life out there somewhere, prolly loads of places. Also, let me ask you this question -- if God only intended for life to exist on one planet, why did he make a universe that consists of trillions upon trillions of stars, so vast that Earth looks like a mere speck of dust within it? Why this incomprenshibly huge vastness? Seems rather useless to me... =P

'''Best Evidence? "A gazillion scientists say so."''' -- This one is ironic. =P I could shoot the same argument back at you -- creationism is based on the one argument that "one book says so", and that's that. These people have been trained for years and performed exhaustive experiments, data collection, theorizing, scrutiny, peer review, and rigorous testing of theories. Science is a battleground -- any hypothesis that has a single bit of evidence against it is readily torn apart by other scientists. This is how they arrive at their conslusions: logic and research. They don't go into it with their minds made up, but rather, they make up their minds based on the results. If new evidence shows up -- same process all over again. BTW, Christ's resurrection is hardly an accepted fact -- lots of people even doubt that he existed, and you won't find any contemporary sources outside the Bible speaking of him rising from the dead. If anything is undeniable, it's evolution and a universe billions of years old. =P

Dark Matter -- For the record, evolution deals ONLY with the changes in allele frequencies between generations -- i.e., how life changes over long periods. Has zip to do with astronomy. =P Dark matter, as I understand it, is a way of explaining the fact that the universe is expanding. But not at all an expert on that, so won't go into it more than that, lol.

"Fact, not theory" -- Evolution is both a fact and a theory, actually. The fact of evolution is the observable phenomenon, backed up by such things as the fossil record, DNA, and observation. The theory of evolution explains how it happens. As I said earlier, evolution is a process much better understood than gravity -- it is only controversial among creationists who refuse to acknowledge the wealth of scientific data against their worldview. Sorry, but creationism has not a single ounce of evidence -- evolution and billions-year old Earth, does. I suggest that if you are this intent on proving evolution wrong that you take a BA in biology or at least read some professional books on it. This is a process we've come to understand thanks to over a century of extremely rigirous testing. Wouldn't you call that more scientific than basing everything on an old book and some claims by people with no relevant education? =P Sorry for the harshness. 8-)

Whew, that's all I can do right now. Hope you'll read it all and at least consider it -- after all, an open mind is, as you say, one of our greatest assets. And please, do yourself a favor and read some books and academic websites that explain evolution and why it's an accepted fact. If only to know the thing you're arguing against. =)

Finally, let me ask you again -- if God intended for life to exist solely on this insignificant speck of dust, why bother creating an infinitely vast universe around it?

Thanks for reading, and hope to hear from ya again --- don't take as long as I did, lol! =P

--Ikki, fully responsible for any and all silly spelling and grammar errors, as well as a cumbersome layout, in the reply above.

Izzly (talk) 16:35, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Bones' reply to Ikki
Hi, Ikki. No need to apologize. :) Starting (at least one) new header for my reply because this is going to be novelistically FREAKYLONG. I'll try to reply paragraph-by-paragraph to your intro:

No offense taken. As far as I've seen, human beings period rarely share my stance on openmindedness, etc. Most people just don't think it through, at least not fully. Though I think most people get at least the basic idea of letting the evidence "speak" for itself. (Not to reify evidence, but you know what I mean.) And I agree, understanding the universe (or trying to anyways) is the ultimate adventure. :D

Alright, here I gotta depart from paragraph-by-paragraph. It was worth a try. :P

Before I get to your specific responses to the bolded subjects, let me reiterate that most of that is not the key problem I have with evolutionism (and all other alternatives to the Bible). The key to me is with the laws of Causality and the basic logic of the different worldviews. According to the laws of Causality, an athiestic (evolutionary or otherwise) universe is literally impossible. And evolution was original imagined not because the evidence "spoke to" it, but because people like Darwin wanted to have an athiestic alternative to creation, especially biblical creation. It was made up long after the actual origins of the universe, and contradicts most other conclusions about the universe.

That said, a theistic evolution is technically logically possible with the basics of Causality. My problem with that is, the laws of Causality also seem to "speak" to the nature of God. He would seem to HAVE to exist in ways that are consistent only with the Biblical portrayal (and Jewish and perhaps Islamic, though I don't know much about the Koran at this point).

There is also the matter that (despite what you said later on this; I'll get to that), not a single contradiction has ever been legitimately found in the Bible, and over and over again, though humans and "science" specifically have held opinions that they "know the Bible is wrong", the Bible always ends up being right. Examples of the Bible being belatedly proven right

So, personally, I am at the point where in order to be honest with myself, I have to believe the Bible. Hermeneutics ambiguity as to specific meanings of some details come up of course, but the basic idea of Creation as literal six day (at least according to Earth's time frame) appears to be the only correct interpretation of Genesis. For that and other reasons I have to conclude that biblical Creation is correct.

Then, of course, the question is, exactly what is meant by that? This is what creation scientists try to find out, among other things. Including the Flood, Babel, etc.

So, I just want to be clear that that is mainly where I'm coming from. That's the conclusion I reached and how I came to it that really made me decide to truly believe creationism. Not the various side issues I listed and that you reply to (the bold headers). But of course, those things are still relevant as far as which basic worldview they best "argue for".

In terms of that, let me repeat briefly my view of how evidence should be handled. This is a major point of contention and confusion, and I think very few people, not even Answers in Genesis, do a really good job of summing it up.

I think that evidence and the basic worldviews should be considered to be two separate things. The evidence must be understood as accurately as it can be without any bias towards a particular worldview. Then, all evidence together should be compared, fully, fairly, honestly, with the different worldviews. The worldview that fits with the evidence with little to no "patches" required to make it logical is the truth. (A patch being something like dark matter or some other minitheory or speculation that has no or virtually no actual evidential support but exists to explain away an apparent contradiction of the evidence with the worldview.)

So anyways, for the sake of the debate we'll simplify this to consider only evolution versus biblical creation. And note, I'm not specifying theistic versus athiestic evolution. The question is, which of the two -- evolution versus biblical creation -- actually happened in the history of Earth/Universe? Obviously those aren't the only two possible worldviews -- so that I'm not misunderstood. But for other reasons I think all other worldviews have even larger internal inconsistencies than evolution, so these are the two most relevant IMO.


 * gasps for breath*

Okay, moving on to your third paragraph. :P I think I pretty much agree with you about how the Bible should be treated, but lemme say it in my own words: The Bible must be factored in one way -- what it is actually intended to say must be factored into the "biblical creation" worldview. This is why I don't buy long-age creationism and the like; they have hermeneutical problems and other issues that do not fit the Bible. Of course, it would be silly to quote the Bible against evolution and leave it at that. If the Bible's not God's Word, then what it has to say about origins is irrelevant.

Another use for the Bible, though, is once someone has accepted the biblical worldview (hopefully, accepting Jesus Christ as their savior, for the forgiveness of sin and granting of eternal life, which is far more important than knowing exactly how the world came into being!), using the Bible to figure out what is reality in the real world. If you accept the Bible as true for other reasons, then it becomes the most important thing you must consider. So in terms of me forming the details about the worldview once I've accepted it, the Bible becomes the starting point.

On the issues of how the Bible should be treated and the roles of evidence, presuppositions, and logic, I essentially agree with Answers in Genesis, but unfortunately I think they use a lot of clumsy, hard-to-understand ways to explain it, that can easily be misinterpreted. So, just wanted to make that stuff clear before I continue.

Alright, on to the fourth paragraph -- making progress! XD BTW, it would be accurate to call me an evolutionist too, under a definition of the word it's possible to imagine. I do, after all, believe that God exists in symbiosis with the laws of Causality, and everything that happened in Creation, from the first moment Timespace began (in any form that could legimately have the word "began" :P) basically 'evolved' in a complex, causal way. I'm not one of the creationists who foggily adheres to the typical misunderstanding of "miracle", who might deny the necessary, all-encompassing role of Causality. (Of course I also believe in multiple timelines, but for causal reasons. :P)

Alright, on to the specific subjects:

Missing Links -- @ "all fossils and species are transitional" -- I'd take it a step farther and say that every atom of every body of every specific individual, whether single-cell or multiple, is transitional, because life is constantly in motion, all its intricate parts. :)

The question is, do we see fossils that are transitional in the sense of an molecules-to-man (to borrow AiG's favorite phrase) evolution as opposed to biblical creation of complete beings in kinds? Both evolution and creation include natural selection, gene drift, mutation, and such things that rearrange or lose DNA from existing creatures, resulting in a new creature that is slightly different. And, of course both include genetic combination differences between each individual.

All these things we see in real life, and are consistent with both evolution and creation (though many uninformed evolutionists think creation doesn't include natselect and the like, and unfortunately many uninformed creationists think that too lol which certainly doesn't help). So the question must be, do we see transitional fossils that clearly fit only evolution and creation?

This is the part where I have to say as an aside, this particular subject has lost virtually all relevance to this issue. The fossils appear to support creation, but frankly, all fossils prove is that dead things were rapidly buried and then fossilized. There are much better subject in which clear differences between creation and evolution can be seen; I think both creationists and evolutionists make a minor mistake when they think fossils are their best evidence.

That said, what we see in the fossil record is fully-formed types of beings with many individuals clearly of the same "type" (creationists would point out the kinds; evolutionists tend to focus on species but generally understand that species is not the most fundamental difference between basic types; i.e. a dog is clearly not a cat). We don't at all see what Darwin predicted, and even evolutionists are at a loss to explain this.

Evolutionists have their few examples they claim as transitional fossils (remember the above clarifications on what I mean by that; not including transitions creation accounts for which are a nonissue), but this only makes it less believable, to me. According to the theory, there should be so many they couldn't help but find them, all over the place. Some ideas like the Hopeful Monster theory have been floated, but frankly they don't cut it in terms of scientific realism. No known genetic mechanism can produce such an effect; evolution appears to require gradual change.

BTW, note that from here on out, I'm going to use "evolution" to refers specifically to the theory of "molecules to man" evolution, and assume it's understood I'm NOT talking about natural selection, mutation, etc. The forming of new genetic information (the key thing that has never been observed, the mythical golden nugget evolution is founded on, the equivalent of special creation of fully finished kinds in the creation worldview). I'll also use it to refer to Big Bang and other theories distinct from creation or to the overall fusion of all those theories. Point is, I won't use it to refer to adaptive causalchange in general, because many forms of that are agreed on by both sides.

Moving on... @ fossilization being rare. Well, here we've got an issue between the two basic worldviews. According to both theories, fossilization in normal circumstances is essentially impossible. According to both theories (though creationists have known this for a long time before evolutionists began to admit it en mass), cataclysms or cave-ins or mudslides or the like are necessary, causing rapid burial, or the dead thing would rot away.

However, creationists believe that during the Flood fossilization was commonplace, and therefore the vast majority of the fossil should be a pretty full picture of life at the time, with minor incidents both before and after accounting for a few fossils (mostly after since the Flood would have destroyed much that was there before).

Whereas, evolutionists believe that fossilization was never that common during a period of time; they believe it is a long string of unlikely local disasters that accounts for all fossils, with a few larger scale disasters, but no global flood.

So, to help answer the question of whether fossils happened during a Global Flood or not; i.e. whether transitional fossils should be found, we must look at other evidence for and against the Flood. For it, the whole surface of the planet, and a major thing that's beneath it, shout global flood (again, not to reify). Against it... I have never found any evidence against it whatsoever. Many people don't believe it, but for other reasons. In recent it is appearing to be even more strongly supported, almost proven, with cases like rapid canyonization being admitted even by evolutionists, and the sheer requirements to produce that effect to create the Grand Canyon and others, as well as layer bending, etc. AiG had another example recently, which I haven't had time to properly study, something about plumes in the rock, can't remember the details off the top of my head.

@ Dry, arid climate -- That explanation might work for some fossils, but fossils of intact plants and other things that should shrivel in such climates cannot be explained that way. This includes much of what is believed to have been laid down by the Flood.

@ Rarity of fossilization explaining why many fossils are found from the same creatures. No, this doesn't work, because many of the same creatures are found all over the world. It's just not plausible that local disasters would happen to bury certain types, and not the obviously transitional ones, if gradual evolution is the case. The only way I could see that working is if there some as-yet-unknown mechanism for transitional species to avoid all local disasters (or at least ones with a statistical balance).

For example, transitional species could have been contained by natural boundaries in local ecologies. This is perfectly plausible, except for the obvious flaws -- why would certain kinds of animals evolve here and escape the boundaries and others not, and why would geologically separate ecologies not be more subject to land/mudslides and the like, instead of [i]more[/i] likely as would seem to be the case, due to the higher ground of the mountain walls and such?

Evolution has no answer for that. In addition, often times fossils are found in mass graves of such size that there appears to be no plausible source of a local disaster. It would seem to have to be a global one.

@ Affecting many contemporary creatures -- see, this is one of the biggest problems for evolution. Multiple local disasters on different continents / parts of continent must be accepted to explain how the same species can be found fossilized so far from each other. It would seem that at least some transitional creatures should survive long enough and be plentiful enough that this should not occur. There should be a fairly equal representatation, statically, of these types with the transitional types. That's not what we see -- we see distinct types appearing fully formed in the fossil record and existing all over the planet, with not a single transitional fossil (remember the definition I'm using of that) in between.

@ We do have transitional fossils -- again, this comes down to how you define "transitional." By the broadest definition, all fossils are transitional. But all known fossils so far do not count as transitional, when careful studies are done, in ways that creation cannot account for. The sorts of in-between-step transitions between wildly different creatures expected by evolution is not found. Many evolutionists admit this, and see it as a major problem (though often not publicly), despite the clamor of many less informed evolutionary proponents who say what you said/cited.

The horse and cetacean examples (and archeopteryx), I believe I explained either on my user page or above in this talk page. The horse is the best example -- most members of that list clearly count as the horse kind according to creation, so this cannot be legimately used as evidence for evolution over creation. The lack of any ability to construct such lists for the majority of animal types, though, IS a major problem for evolution.

Now, to be clear. Patches can exist in which even the gappy evolutionary record exist. Some of what you said is part of the beginnings of an attempt to find a patch for this problem. I suspect that at some point, evolutionists WILL think of a patch that actually fits. I myself have thought of one, but I'm not going to reveal it; I don't want to give people any ideas. :P The problem with patches is, they do not qualify as the theory best fitting with the evidence. Creation clearly fits best with the fossil record. It requires the least explaining the fit with it. The fossil record is exactly what we'd expect if the biblical account of history is true.

And that's the real point. Also, this is why I'm not giving out the patch I thought up. Evolutionists are gonna have to figure it out for themselves. :P Although, one patch that is already possible, if you don't consider other things, under Theistic Evolution is if God miraculously "partial-creates" new types in a miraculous version of Hopeful Monsters, or even skip the transitions entirely, but there are other problems with this related to the Bible and the reasoning evolutionists use, etc. That is possible, but there's literally zero evidence for it; there's merely a gap of evidence for full-blown atheistic evolution which it could fill. I'm actually not sure if I've ever heard an evolutionist believe this patch, so I hope I'm not giving them ideas even with this. :P But that's not the other patch.

To continue with the horse example, view that image on that page you linked to. Zoom in on it and carefully study it. Now, look over images of various dog breeds. Can you honestly say you see such difference between the different horse relatives that they could not possibly be the same "kind" with genetic variety within it, in the same way both worldviews admit that dogs are the same "kind"? We know for a fact that dogs were specifically bred by removal and rearrangement of existing information from a pre-existing dog "kind". If you put a chihuahua next to a bulldog, next to a Great Dane in a list, does it prove Great Danes evolves from chihuahuas? No, of course not.

Putting "kind" in quote marks, because creationists have a specific biblical scientific meaning for the word, while evolutionists do not.

@ Human evolution -- many people have rebutted those claims, I don't think I need to go into detail. Look into this on AiG; they have many pages about this. Basically, all known examples are one of three things; 1) hoaxes, which is actually another thing, but getting to that, 2) perfectly consistent upon careful study with variations of humans, or diseased humans, or 3) simply a different species of ape. No clearly transitional fossil for humans has ever been found -- well, that is, some have, but those all turned out to be hoaxes.

On the hoax thing, this is another big reason I am unconvinced by evolution. There is an almost shocking carelessness by many evolutionists to embrace any potential transitional fossil and hype it long before careful study is done, that I cannot honestly label scientific. It's more like junk science. No hoax should ever make it into any textbook,for example. No evolutionist scientist should be fooled by a hoax -- and of course, none should ever perpetrate one, but hopefully that goes without saying. :P They fully research what exactly it is before drawing any conclusions or making any accouncements. This cavalier attitude towards the actual truth of the fossil really hurts their credibility. Thankfully, there are enough sensible evolutionists to catch hoaxes eventually and admit it.

Even with that said, though, many times it takes a creationist to do serious critical analysis of whether even non-hoaxes truly count as transitional (again, by the definition relevant to the debate). Such as the joint studies in "transitional" apes, studies of Archeopteryx, etc.

As far as the cetacean evolution list goes, I don't think we need to spend much time on it. Just look at it (and of course look closely); there is not a single example of a transitional creature (yet again, definition). There are clear land animals, and then there are clear whale-like creatures. AiG has articles on this, if you want more details. There are also artistic imaginings purposefully designed (not based on evidence) to make some of them look more whale-like, but be extremely careful with those. An artist can draw anything, but often the actual fact of the fossil is radically different. (Example, the recent fad of drawing lots of dinosaurs with feathers, despite no such thing ever having been found.)

But anyways, moving on...

For the sake of discussion, though, let's pretend that all of these qualified as transitional. They don't -- creation accounts for them fine -- but let's pretend. :P The real question is, why are they so rare, if gradual, "molecules to man" evolution is true? Why instead does the fossil record look like Creation and a global Flood?

When the scientific method is done properly, a hypothesis is proposed, and predictions are made. In this category, Darwin and others predicted a plethora of transitional fossils (definition). Then, the hypothesis is tested against the evidence. In this case, the hypothesis has failed. Evolution has failed in this prediction. Instead, the evidence still favors the creation worldview better.

No increase in genetic information -- It's easy to say it's not true, but no example has ever been found. News stories are full of examples of claimed genetic evolution, but when you read the details, in every single case, information was either lost or rearranged. New information spontaneously arising (which evolution requires) has never been observed.

Now, there is some debate over what counts as "information". Aside from the definitions creation scientists and evolutionists use, which use a lot of technical terms, the key to me is to look at normal genetic action. Genetic information is rearranged all the time, and that is not what I mean. When a child is conceived, their genetic total code has many differences from each of the parents. However, pre-existing information is simply being combined in new ways. Genetic code sections which produce fully functional components of cells and larger bodies are "information", to me.

New information would require the creation of new genetic "ideas", which translates to new functional components. That is what has never been observed. Existing functions can be "carved down" via a partial loss of information, and they can be accidently copied. (Not to reify DNA.) But the forming of a brand new function from nothing has never been observed. This is the key problem for evolution. Understand?

However, both evolutionists and creationists believe that at some point in the past, there WAS an increase in genetic information, from none to a bunch. We just disagree about how and other details about it. :)

We must also keep in mind that evolution has another patch for part of this. They like to imagine that a large amount of copying occured, and then these copies, along with copying errors, get pared down via natural selection, to create new information. There are many problems with this patch, such as that copying tends to create physical and disease problems, copied limbs, etc which usually make survival of the being unlikely and sometimes reproduction impossible. Another problem is that there are so many harmful mutations and degredation of the DNA that even if the occasional copycarve event did occur, by the time the next one occured, there should have been so many harmful mutations that the species would not survive.

But all of this misses the point -- actually, this one misses two points. Obviously, all of this only works if you already have a huge amount of DNA in place, functional, etc. This might even happen in real life occasionally, and it wouldn't solve the real issue evolutionists have, which is the need to have new genetic information arise from no information. Even though this patch might allow the making of new genetic information, it is from existing genetic information.

But more to the point, it is yet another imagined patch, never observed, intended to "force" evolution upon the evidence, which doesn't support it. Again, you have to accept a whole lot more on faith to accept long-earth evolution than to accept biblical creation. Again, the evidence fits best with creation.

Age of the Earth -- @ plethora of dating methods -- yes, and have you ever studied them closely? Most of them rely on importing assumptions into a formula, such as how much of a substance was in the rock originally. Many examples of evolutionists sending target dates to labs have been exposed. The lab will test various parts of the rock, and get radically different dates. Some will be very short, some will be long, but the lab picks the one the evolutionist wants to hear.

Processes such as heat that can speed up the "age" of a rock are ignored, and so when volcanic rocks of KNOWN ages of merely a few years are tested, the lab comes out with millions of years for the age. That's right -- the tests themselves have been PROVEN unreliable. But this is just swept under the rug. That's not scientific.

Also, evolutionists often do not bother testing for materials which could disprove their hoped-for interpretation. In the RATE project, for example, Carbon 14 was found in diamonds that were supposed to be too old to have it. Evolutionists didn't bother to test this, because most of them are no longer interested in proper critical analysis towards evolution. Evolution is treated with a dogmatic blind faith as a sacred stone, instead of using the scientific method honestly.

That attitude does not disprove evolution. Granted, it's human nature. But to a truthseeker, this is a very important issue to look at both sides fairly about, and not merely trust one side due to fallacies like Ad Populum.

@ "they all point to an Earth billions of years old" -- actually, many dating tests point to a much younger Earth, in the very same rocks that are used to "get" older dates. These results are rarely publicized, however, and are not fairly studied with a critical eye towards evolution by evolutionists. At least, extremely rarely, if ever.

Some of those dating tests appear not to have any other possible explanation. The Earth's magnetic field is a prime example -- by the rates of decay we observe today, it should be long gone by now, and yet it is not. Nothing is for-sure, but it would seem that this is an insurmountable barrier for evolution to explain away. 14C in diamonds, which are extremely unlikely to be contaminated, is another major problem.

However, the dating techniques that give old ages could also be easily explained by real-world, proven mechanisms that would change the "date." Heat affecting the rate of decay is especially important. Evolutionists typically assume blindly that the decay rate remained constant at all times, but this contradicts what we observe in real life, and the proven examples of young rocks of known age, especially volcanic rocks, reading as much older. Amount of original substance is another assumption that evolutionists arbitrarily make, as well as assuming no contamination.

So this is what it boils down to, to me. So many dating methods arrive at roughly 6,000 years. That is huge -- the Bible predicts that age. Think about how unlikely that is, if biblical "young earth" creationism is false. And yet evolutionists' tests arrive at very different dates, which are often corrected later with wild amounts of time difference. Many dating methods that arrive at ages of that (or 5,000ish which is around when the Flood was said to occur) do not seem to have any possible way to explain them away within an evolutionary history. And all the old-earth results can also be explained by real, known mechanisms that can make a rock test older than it really is, due to flawed assumptions in the test.

Therefore, the Earth must be about 6,000 years old. Now, this doesn't necessarily apply to the rest of the universe, but the planet Earth itself. (Starlight in Time white hole time dilation theory.)

@ "all these separate studies and methods point towards the same age of Earth" -- actually, they don't. Many previous test results are later wildly corrected (usually towards the younger side). When the same rock is tested with multiple methods, wildly different results have come out. Also, different parts of the same rock arrive at different dates.

(I'm not sure if this has ever been investigated, but I would think that water seepage could inflate the figures in lower portions of many rocks while taking from the upper portions, which would explain this discrepency. Getting an exact date would be difficult, but would have to take into account the whole rock, and then how do you define the rock considering it was probably cut out of other rock? Also, this could make lower rocks in the ground date older than higher rocks. Also, perhaps this could occur within cooling volcanic rocks too.)

@ "not a single bit of scientific data supports a young Earth" -- simply wrong. This phrase could easily be misused; evolutionists like to simply reject all contrary evidence by labeling it "unscientific". If we accepted that word game, then the phrase would be correct. No single bit of data that support old Earth support young Earth. But this would be circular reasoning, and not truthseeking.

I've listed several bits of scientific data that DO show a young Earth, and I've only scratched the surface.

@ "Evolution doesn't suggest these ages 'give time' for changes to occur; rather, they do it based on what the dating shows" -- I wish that was true, but countless times evolutionists have been caught or even admitted suggesting ages to the labs, which then give the evolutionist what they want to hear. Funding controversies in this have also been exposed; a lab might not continue to get business from evolutionists if they feed them the "wrong" dates; the evolutionist will take it to a different lab that will pick the result evolutionists want.

Also, remember that the dating relies on many assumptions that have been proven faulty, especially that decay rates always remain the same and are unaffected by heat, contamination, etc.

@ "Not well versed in the specifics myself, but the dating seems pretty secure" -- Well, that right there is the crux of the issue. I find that all everyday evolutionists, and even most evolutionists who have science degrees from universities, are not themselves educated on this issue. They just "trust" what they are being told by others. That is not good enough for me. That is not truthseeking, IMO.

Become well-versed in this. It matters. Read both sides. Always read both sides. Look at their reasoning. Look for fallacies in both sides, look for assumptions. Look for things they fail to consider.

@ "Oh, and the RATE project was carried out by creationists with no scientific training." -- Ikki.

You can't really form an educated opinion -- you haven't followed the truthseeking method -- until you read BOTH sides. You're blindly brushing aside whatever RATE found, merely because they disagree with evolution. There are so many mistakes in that statement, I don't know if I have time to go into them all.

First of all, think about this. If you have ten biased scientist dating rocks, who are "in the tank" for evolution and refuse to even consider that it might be false, but then you have one objective scientist who dates the rocks, willing to hear both sides, and IF the rocks actually show a young age, what will happen?

The objective one will side with young Earth. The biased ones will side against young Earth, with old Earth.

Then, your logic would reject the conclusions of the objective, truthseeking scientist, because he doesn't agree with the majority.

That is the ONLY difference here. There are qualified scientists on both sides. Click these links; these are the scientists who participated in the RATE project. First, the link to AiG's summary of RATE:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2005/1107rate.asp

http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/bios/s_austin.asp

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/r_humphreys.asp

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/j_baumgardner.asp

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/j_baumgardner.asp

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/a_snelling.asp

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/isd/vardiman.asp

So, we have people with scientific training on both sides. The only difference is we have the majority currently on the side of evolution, by far. The crowd is definately for evolution. Only a tiny amount of scientists support creation.

In my observation, the people who, in a large group of people, are usually right -- because they're more objective and are willing to look critically at both sides -- are the minority. The crowd is usually made up of the lazy, biased ones who are just believing what they were taught to believe, or what is easier, etc.

To accept the evolutionist's side about RATE (which is basically to not even look into it; unscientific rejection), you must rely on the Ad Populum logical fallacy, assuming that the majority is always right. Yet examples abound of the majority being wrong. Scientists themselves are so often "shocked" to find out the majority of scientists were wrong. (And incidentally, take not of how often the word "shocked" is used by evolutionists. The evidence always surprises them, while it is almost always exactly what creationists expect. We aren't surprised very easily. That's telling.)

I've just had an experience with this principle on BZP I can use to relate to this.

The meaning of "Bionicle" is officially "Biological Chronicle" (Or Biomechanical Chronicle). Back in 01-04, this was common knowledge on BZP. Then, the mistaken term "Bionicles" started (and let's not get into that debate here; you could email me if you want to comment on it, I'm only using it as an example). Many older fans have stopped following BZP, left, etc. (Not to reference what happened with you. :P)

As BZP's only remaining active Reference Master, leader of S&T, and one of the most active fans who's left from 2001 and paid attention to things Greg has said, I know very well that "Bionicles" is not an approved word in official Bionicle story. Without going into the big long explanation for the rule, S&T got to a point where I had to make an actual rule bringing this official fact to people's attention.

Now, I LIKE the term Bionicles. It has a nice ring to it, it reminds me of popsicles, icicles, bicycles. All of which are cool. :P If I let myself be biased, I would be tempted to give in to the pro-Bionicles-for-characters mindset. (Note that I don't mind it being used for sets, though, especially now that LEGO company itself has begun to embrace it, though I still prefer my own Bionicals, which is definately some bias. :P But that's just my own personal use of it. I separate that totally from objectively admitting what is acceptable according to LEGO company.)

So, objectively, I have to conclude that Bionicles should not be encouraged in S&T, because it is not an official term and S&T is for official storyline only. Or rather, that the official definition should be encouraged. So, I came up with that rule (and it has prevented further flamewars on the issue :)).

Now. We have a lot of newer members who don't have the knowledge of what Bionicle means and weren't following back in 2001ish.

One of them posted a topic in GD, wondering why people object to "Bionicles". They were so ignorant of what is going on they assumed it was about the plural s, heh. When someone pointed them to the S&T rule topic, which explains the official fact, they didn't even read it (apparently) and instead had a gut reaction against it, insulting me for coming up with the rule.

Now, getting to the point about this as an analogy. The number of people who support Bionicles and are ignorant of why it is problematic officially has grown in recent years. Now, the majority has forgotten, or never knew, the truth about the past. They have invented an alternate idea about the truth of this matter, and are ignorant of any evidence against it.

In that topic, the very first reply was Erebus linking to my topic which set the record straight on what is official. And yet, the topic starter and many others who replied in the topic (I believe it now has two pages, though almost half of them are against Bionicles) doubted it being official. Even after I posted in there stating the official definition, the topic starter quoted me and asked "are you sure it's official", then went on to claim it was in fact NOT official!

I'm not sure if the "uneducated pro-Bionicles" side is a majority yet, but I get the impression it is. Regardless, they're certainly very numerous now compared to the term never or barely ever being used in the old days.

Now, in that topic, I am pretty much the only one, along with Erebus and a few others, who are stating that the official definition is, in fact, official. In terms of that, I'm the minority in that topic. Most others are ignoring my post, and the in-depth, careful analysis I posted explaining why I have that opinion. The minority is the one who's objective and careful, and right.

That analogy works in a lot of ways too. The story team (probably Bob Thompson, not sure) created the original definition, and Greg has stated it. I saw their stating of it, and I know for other reasons that their words are trustworthy. This could be compared to God's Word (the trustworthiness of which is shown by miracles, prophecies, logical coherency and other things). I accept what the story team says, similar to how creationists accept what God said. The ignorant minority doesn't know or hasn't cared to find out what the story team said, and they don't even believe me when I cite what the story team said. The debate got to the point a while back where some got biased for "Bionicles" for characters, and will merely flame and disregard the other side, regardless of how logical they are.

But back to the point, the minority is sometimes the one that is right, now always the majority. :) And IF the majority is wrong, the objective few are going to, naturally, be in the minority. To argue against them merely because they're the minority is

Now, your statement is clearly false, because all of the RATE researchers have scientific training in their fields. They are scientists, and not amateurs. I'm frankly disappointed you didn't know this, and just accepted the untruthseeking, biased line about it from the hardliner evolutionists. Perhaps you didn't realize the people who make that accusation don't care about the truth, though.

Many evolutionists, however, have another circular reasoning ploy here (unscientific, not truth-seeking), that applies more closely to what you actually said here. They define "scientific" as "anything that supports evolution." Here again, your statement can be reduced to "Rate was done by creationists that don't have training to be evolutionists." However, that is false. Most of the scientists whose bios I linked to, in the RATE project, were educated in their field in secular institutions of learning. Even this circular reasoning fails here, and besides, it's a fallacy that has nothing to do with seeking the truth but merely defending evolution blindly.

@ "Sorry, but I'll take the words of professionals over wishful amateurs any day." I won't take anybody's word on this; I'll look into the evidence itself. As Reagan said, "trust but verify." I listen to what BOTH sides say. I eagerly eat up the findings of evolutionists, "despite" being a creationist (really, because I am). I am not afraid to hear both sides, to investigate their reasoning. I just want the truth.

I'm not content with believing based on he said she said.

Never take anybody's word for it. Except tentatively, when you don't yet have time to verify.

OH, BTW, an idea I've had that I've never seen anybody on either side suggest. Lemme just throw it out there even though I'm a little off topic from your comments. The idea that perhaps the days referenced in Genesis refer to revolutions, not to specific time periods. This is a possibility that would seem to allow for some interesting things related to the dating of rocks. Let's assume for the moment that the White Hole theory, as it's basically outlined in Starlight in Time (read that, if nothing else from creationists in your whole life -- it's important), is correct. A huge sphere of water (mass of whole universe, possibly plus some) is the first thing created, and it begins collapsing into a black hole under its massive gravity, creating nuclear reactions which turn the inner water into other elements, esp. hydrogen and rock materials. Then it is reversed into a White hole, and the rest of creation proceeds from there, with a major time dilation effect on Earth during Day 4 while stars form and light reaches Earth.

If the days refer to revolutions, then before it collapsed into a black hole, this sphere may have taken a very long time to rotate. During this time, elements like uranium may have formed and begun to decay. I'm not sure (I thought of this only a few months ago and have been extrmely busy with Expanded Multiverse and such, so haven't had time to look into whether this might be possible with what we know), but this might cause some rocks on Earth and elsewhere to actually be older. Billions of years may be a stretch, especially since rotation (did I say revolution earlier? I meant rotatation) speeds up as a collapsing body approaches singularity. But longer than 6000 years might actually be possible. For Day One, maybe day two.

Then, the time dilation thing would happen naturally for Day 4 as well, so that day would be twenty four hours on Earth but millions to billions of years in the rest of the universe for starlight to travel, until the event horizon fades away inside Earth.

This way, there would be six revolutions of the Earth before Creation was finished, complete with the Day 1 light source allowing for evening and morning, and yet that first revolution may have been longer than twenty four hours, allowing for some rocks to be older. This alone cannot explain dating methods, though, due to their contradictions and flawed assumptions. But if this was true, we should expect some rocks to show long ages, while other dating methods prove a young Earth. The other things would not come into play until after Day One (or whatnot; sounds most likely to me anyways), like the magnetic field, etc.

I'm gonna have to get around to looking into this... :P

Statistics -- We're not talking about the statistics of mutations of preexisting genetic information. Mutations play major roles in creation science, especially in confirming the age degradation of humans after the Fall, which previously was a mystery. Incidently, on that topic, look up progeria. Interesting topic; we have someone with that disease locally in our city. Interesting to note that disease reduces their lifespans by the same proportion the Bible says lifespans were reduced post-Fall from the 900-ish age ranges of previous humans.

Anyways, back on topic, the statistical problem for evolution is for a cell to form, from NO prexisting cell, gradually. Even evolutionists are now starting to admit that on Earth at least, the evolution of the cell is not statistically feasible within the time frame allowed by their (flawed) dating techniques. At this point, either some kind of alien seeding is sought, or even longer ages of Earth.

Pay attention to how this unravels in the future; this is where evolution is really starting to slip into the realm of mythology instead of science, and patches are clearly not making it any more likely -- if aliens had to evolve in some undiscovered environment radically different Earth and achieve long-distance space travel, then feed Earth and start a long evolutionary process there, even more time is required, and the statistical likelihood becomes even more ridiculously low.

Of course, we have to keep in mind that whole "backs of crystals" outburst in Expelled. It will be interesting to see where this goes; if this becomes evolution's next patch, instead of alien seeding or even longer age for Earth. It sounds to be highly unscientific, but then many patches are, and that hasn't stopped evolutionists before. But again, it gives us the same problem -- it's a patch, a theory with no evidence except the lack of evidence for the overall theory of evolution. Unscientific.

@ "As I said above, these mutations can often duplicate DNA sequences and further mutate those, so increase of gentic information is in fact a fact" Yes, as I said above, this is a patch that evolutionists do have. Unfortunately, it has never been observed. If it happened, it wouldn't surprise me. The basic idea of this seems plausible. But the problem, again (besides it being a patch) is that this is working with existing genetic information. This is not new genetic information from no information; it's simply existing information being rearranged. It's not the same thing as a loss of information as most so-called "evolution" instances trumpeted in the media are, and it's not the same as normal rearrangements of information, because it does result in more total information. But then, the actual copying itself results in more information -- then the natural selection and mutations pare it down and sometimes alter them. This process does not actually create more information -- other known processes create more information and then reduce them. This does not solve evolution's statistical problems, because evolution requires an original cell(s) to evolve without prexisting information.

@ "Bacteria" -- Since this is an oft-repeated ignorant claim of many evolutionist hypers, I have to ask if you have followed this issue closely or if you're just repeating the talking point. Evolutionists trumpet many examples of natural selection in bacteria, claiming this disproves creation and proves evolution, apparently ignorant that what is actually going on is a loss of genetic information. It's the exact opposite of molecules-to-man evolution, and is perfectly consistent with creation.

@ "And contrary to popular belief, there is no difference whatsoever between micro- and macroevolution" -- Technically there is, but those terms are misnomers. The point that was originally intended by those terms is the difference between "evolution" in terms of variation within kinds, which is constantly changing and adapting and evolving -- and which all sides agree on -- and evolution in the sense of all "kinds" or branches evolving from a common ancestor. Technically speaking, micro and macro are valid etymological labels for the difference between those two beliefs.

The terms are misused though, when what is usually meant is natural selection and mutation which deal only with existing information, versus creation of new genetic information. The real point is that evolutionists commit equivocation fallacies all the time, pointing to examples of loss of genetic data as if they proved molecules-to-man evolution. They should not do that. Even if evolution is true, that deception should not be done. The truth should not need deception to support it.

Now, examples of increase of information MIGHT happen. Again. I'm not saying I think this is impossible. I'm saying, this is not what evolution is about -- it's new information arising from no information, without God creating it. Gradual evolution from nothing. Bits and pieces of cells coming together for other reasons and happening to come together in just the right ways, and for the same thing all in a line at least once, to create eventually the first protocell with at least some DNA code... Frankly, we have to stop there, because the likelihood of a replicating protocell developing an information computer system by chance to record the way to replicate it is highly unlikely. Think about what that is -- a nearly binary code system creating so much complexity, all written in a linear code and translated by molecular devices into physical shapes; this is nanotechnology, not something simple like crystallization. Self-replicating complex crystal structures that self-form because all parts naturally grab on to each other in the same circumstances without those same circumstances destroying other parts... Well, frankly, even that is highly unlikely, if the crystal had any variety at all, but this might be a bit more believable. (Hence the on the backs of crystals patch idea.)

But let's just plow ahead anyways -- complex proteins that require radically different conditions to naturally form which would destroy other unfinished components, and all in an unimaginably huge number of additions by unlikely chance, and not in the wrong order, for a single protocell, arriving "somehow" at DNA, mitochondria, etc. etc. Complex nanotechnology being built totally by accident. (Seriously, study the cell, especially its atomic makeup and components. It is nanotechnology of an advancement level and complexity that is miles beyond even the most advanced machines on any scale that humans have built.)

All of this, especially the part where information is in the mix and in fact BUILDS the mix, is the problem evolution has with statistics. Granted, the "new genetic information from pre-existing genetic information" kind of evolution that would happen after this is a little more likely (but still not anywhere near likely or ever observed), but that is NOT primarily what is meant about statistics being a problem for evolution.

And now, for the important part.

I think all of that happened. :)

Alright, sorry if you just fainted (:P), but I actually bet all of that happened in God's mind as he created, but very rapidly (or even outside of time, and technically I do mean that, but from the Son's perspective, which the Bible says created everything with distinction from the Spirit and Father). An all-knowing God could consider all possible combinations of different atoms (once you propose the atomic system which probably was thought up in this same way in the first moment of Creation, creating different particles of different proton counts, allowing for different combinations of those to create tons of variety) very fast, and then create the being. I think in his mind he experimented -- tons of times, mixing and matching, putting it together in different ways to see what happened and going with what works, building on the complexity then rethinking parts as needed as the whole thing came together. I get this from certain inferences from the Bible, such as the fact that we know not all life was created at once; so perhaps within each type, each kind was created one at a time, and the first things made may have been single cell organisms.

The idea would make a lot of sense to me: God is the ultimate MOCer. When I MOC, I do parts of that in my mind and parts physically trying out combinations and connections, building on it and rethinking parts as I go, trying to think of the best possible combinations and then building even on that with variety, etc. The finished MOC did not physically evolve, but it DID evolve in my mind and in my hands.

Given that (as I've shown), we know that God in some form exists (not all of us know this, but the evidence for it is ironclad, at least in my opinion :) and I'm talking about the reasoning I used to form it; end disclaimer), it is not unlikely at all that "evolution" could have happened in mere seconds or less in God's mind and hands (or "hands"; the Son speaking it or telekinetically making it happen, recombining, rethinking, perfecting, etc. and BTW note here that the Creation was "not good" at several points before completion, especially when Adam was the only human and Eve wasn't created yet, so the whole thinking it through to perfect it as you go on principle is backed up well by that too). In that sense, "evolution" IS creation, simply without millions of years, death, or anything like that. :)

Now, when I look a finished MOC, should I naturally conclude that to say "a human made that MOC" is "unscientific"? No, of course not. Watch CSI sometime, and you'll see that science DOES contain making conclusions about the actions of intelligent beings (destruction in that case, but keep in mind Nuju's old quote on that issue; the creation of a murder scene technically counts, or consider theories about how the Pyramids got there, etc. -- these use knowledge of intelligent beings and physics to extrapolate that intelligence created things. This is within science.) Was it as simple as "I have infinite knowledge, I knew exactly beforehand what the complete MOC would be, so I just snapped my fingers and it happened?" Well, yes. Except I don't have infinite knowledge. :P God could have done that, but I strongly suspect he did not. The Son is shown many times, and states himself at one point in the gospels, that his knowledge is limited. He may have been given some of the basic ideas from the Father (the infinite, outside of time aspect of God, according to my theories), but I bet Jesus (the Son, the Word, the Creator aspect of God) went through some process similar to making a MOC.

Even though the MOC did not appear fully formed at once, it did not take millions of years of pieces jumbling around by chance physics to come together in just the right way. :P "Chance physics", however, works just fine if it's in the mind and hands of an intelligent maker. Especially if that maker is a living fundamental force of quantum existence holding everything together.

Since this principle exists with MOCing, building anything with lots of parts, etc. I say it is very plausible for origins, especially once we know that the Biblical God exists.

Mutually exclusive -- Covered a lot of this above. What you say doesn't solve the issue -- proteins that have survival power without being co-dependant are never going to make it TO the co-dependant surviving stage if mutually exclusive conditions are required for their formation, without an even more unlikely scenario -- a patch. Thus far, no patch for that has been divised as far as I know, but again, patches themselves are the big problem I have with evolution.

If for example extreme heat is needed for a protein to form and stay in formation without the other protein, and yet the other one can't form in heat and also can't stay together in it -- how are they ever going to meet? If they ever did, they might become co-dependant, yes. But scientifically speaking, they cannot meet. Some unknown mechanism must be imagined, one which has never been observed, to place them together.

I think it was God placing them together, since we know He exists through past miracles, prophecies, etc. The key here is that this method would avoid the need for death to be involved in origins.

Irreducible Complexity -- clicking link, but before I analyze that, keep in mind that everybody knows mechanism can be imagined (that haven't been observed) to explain away anything, including this. Patches. For example, some other "molecular machine" could be imagined that creates a more complex version of the irreducibly complex component, without, presumably, having its own problems of irreducible complexity, and multiple such machines could place them together by chance (also very unlikely, but possible). The problem is, these molecular machines are made up patches, used to explain away the fact that the evidence doesn't fit evolution.

To start out with, the article is off-base. It claims that the IC argument is simply:

"IC things cannot evolve If it can't have evolved it must have been designed"

That is not true -- the argument is that in terms of the scientific method, the kinds of evolution required for them to evolve have never been observed. (As opposed to God, who HAS been observed to exist, by countless people throughout history and current world and proven his own existence with prophecy, resurrection, etc.)

That doesn't mean that those kinds of evolution are impossible, but that as far as we know, they do not occur. Scientifically, that is important. This is how the scientific method is supposed to work. Quotes in the rest of this section will be from that link.

@ "Irreducible complexity (also denoted IC) has gained prominence as the evidence for the intelligent design" -- I believe that should read "primary evidence". And obviously it is hardly the only evidence for actual biblical creation, which is what is the issue here; most ID is basically guided evolution, including death. I believe ID also recognizes the nanotechnological aspects of cells and other such things. Not that they are too complex to have evolved, but that they are complex in such a way that it clearly indicates intelligence. The Bible itself says that God as Creator is understood through the things that are made, so people have no excuse.

If we are 100% honest with ourselves, we don't even need to have a clue what cells are like, know nothing of DNA, etc. to see that (which ancient people did not have available far as we know to see). God's design aspects are obvious in virtually all aspects of existence. But most of us have an inborn bias against God due to our sin nature. For me, frankly, that bias was strong up until literally the moment I went underwater in baptism. Even after doing the research and seeing clearly that it was PROVEN God created and sin problem is real and Jesus really solves it, etc, I still felt that bias against God, from the sin nature. Only afterward did that bias finally disappear, and in my heart I could be totally honest with myself, and realize the only real reason, subconsciously, I ever had to believe in evolution was as justification to sin. (And now I have concluded that even this doesn't work, ultimately, because sin really is harmful, and that's the only real reason God calls it sin; for our own benefit, though people usually don't see that.)

@ "As you may have heard, the ID movement wants this taught in public schools as a new scientific theory." -- Sigh. I wish evolutionists would get off that high horse. This argument essentially tries to mix science with constitutional law, which is not truthseeking (and of course everybody who has read the constitution knows the reasons given against "religion being taught in schools" aren't even in there anyways, rather the opposite). This argument basically boils down to "ID is religion, and religion can't be taught in schools, therefore ID is wrong." This has no place in an objective study of irreducible complexity, so already, frankly, this link is looking pretty useless. But, I'll hope the writer left that bias out in the actual logic of the issue at hand...

@ "This article just looks at the first part, the argument that irreducibly complex systems cannot be produced by evolution, either because they just can't evolve, or because their evolution is so improbable that the possibility can be ignored." -- Another error -- the argument is not that (if it is merely improbable instead of impossible) the possibility can be ignored, but that a different possibility fits the evidence better. That is, again, how the scientific method is supposed to work. The theory that best fits the evidence is the one that is right. The possibility is not ignored. Rather, it is scientifically, honestly, considered less scientifically accurate than the better theory -- creation (to IDers, "creation in some way by some intelligence" in general, to me, biblical, with many details not known for sure).

@ "why scientists are so unimpressed" -- This fails to consider the possibility of human bias in the scientists. Bias should not be discounted, as it does play a role in human thinking. Scientists are not immune from bias, in fact I have seen countless ones admitting to it openly, even defending it. If a scientist is biased towards a theory -- if they believe it chiefly because they WANT to believe it, and do not care about the truth -- then their opinions are untrustworthy. A

Also, the wording may be a bit of a Freudianish slip about the underlying psychology of evolutionists (but which some evolutionist have, in the same vein as above, actually defended). Seeking the truth should have nothing to do with being "impressed" or unimpressed. It should have only to do with objectivity. What is logically the most sensible. I am unimpressed, emotionally, by many things, but that doesn't mean I can objectively discount them. I am unimpressed, for example, by evolutionists' stubborn adherence to dating methods whose reliablility has been disproven, but I cannot discount their findings and research. I still have to look into it fairly. I still have to consider the possibility I'm wrong, honestly.

@ "How do we decide when the term IC applies?" -- Again, a possible slip revealing an unscientific subconscious attitude. It is not a matter of deciding anything, but of determining it. That one might be a simple word choice semantics mistake, though.

@ "Organisms don't come with parts, functions and systems labeled, nor are 'part', 'system' and 'function' technical terms in biology. They are terms of convenience." -- Again a logical error. The writer is playing a word game. Organisms do in fact come with parts and functions labeled in the genetic code. Not in English, obviously, but the genetic code is clearly information, which generates the parts etc. If you want a biological label for these things, you look at the DNA. This is what IC is all about; the functions are created by an information computer reader and translator and other machines that construct the parts, run the systems, etc. These things are not terms of convenience.

He is (as far as I know), correct that they are not technical terms in biology, but that is of course irrelevant. That too might be part of a deceptive word game, I dunno not telepathic, but I'm wary of it. It could be taken as an emotional implication that the terms should not have been used, therefore the ideas behind them are wrong. I'm very strongly in favor of what I call the Plain English Moral. There should be no reason to point out that terms that were obviously meant to be understandable to the layman aren't technical terms. That's obvious -- even layman can tell when a term is technical usually, because technical types love to use them, heh.

"We might say, for instance, that the function of a leg is to walk, and call legs walking systems. But what are the parts?" This is a pointless word game. We all know what he meant. And the parts are known too. I hope this article gets smarter soon, I'm beginning to think I'm wasting my Thursday. :P

He ironically came close to the answer to this earlier about the labels, but now is acting as if DNA doesn't exist. Hopefully he's leading toward the right answer though.

"If we divide a leg into three major parts, removal of any part results in loss of the function." This is downright disengenuous. He knows what is meant, and so does everybody else. This is not how it works. It's a game of genetic code, producing functions. IF you actually did this in the genetic code, and the leg actually became useless or even harmful to the being, the being would die and likely not reproduce. But we all know this isn't what was meant by parts. The genetic code doesn't arbitrarily divide up the leg into three "parts"; rather specific sections of code create all the parts in it. Types of cells (parts of cells too), what types go where, in what shape, etc. Anyways, will try to go forward a big bunch before the next quote...

"Thus legs are IC. On the other hand, if we count each bone as a part then several parts, even a whole toe, may be removed and we still have a walking system. We will see later that Behe's treatment of cilia and flagella follows this pattern." Sigh. Didn't get very far. No, cilia etc. are cellular functions. Legs are multicellular constructs that are far more complex than flagella, simply because they have more parts (again, we all know what parts means). Identifying the parts of those is not arbitrary. The problem is, whether it's the parts of a leg or not, within evolutionary theory for something to survive in the genetic code it must either be beneficial or be carried "under the radar" for a time. The point is, with flagella and the like, Behe believes that none of the components could plausibly have done either. (Without patch machines that add them together and then disappear.)

"What about the boundary of the system? This too is up to us." That's totally false. I cannot imagine the writer doesn't know that. Granted, there are subsystems and systems of systems, but those things aren't arbitrary. They are created by the genetic information in the DNA. This isn't a sculpture we're looking at it, this is life which must survive.

"Take the digestive system for example. We may be interested only in the action of acids and enzymes in the stomach, or we may include saliva and chewing, or the lower intestine where some extraction of water and nutrients continues." -- Yeah, I can pretty much conclude that the use of the term "decide" earlier instead of the truthseekingy word "determine" or something wasn't just an innocent semantic error. This is just the sort of thinking that bothers me about so many evolutionists -- they think it's okay to only consider what parts they're interested in, instead of considering the whole thing accurately before you draw conclusions.

If you want to identify what is a system in terms of IC, you must consider the whole organism, every single aspect of it, and especially (in this example) the whole stomach, before you can accurately determine what is a system.

For example, when you look at the whole body, you know what is meant by "digestive system" as opposed to "respiritory system". It is not that you aren't interested in one or the other, or that you think the two systems aren't interdependant in some way, but that you see the full parts that run one system are mostly different parts from another system and the basic end result of that system is distinct. Breathing versus digestion. The writer of that article implies that he understands this by calling it the "digestive system", but contradicts himself by not applying the same logic to the subsystems of the digestive system.

"As a mental exercise, try before reading on to formulate an argument to prove that IC systems cannot evolve." -- Here he's building on his Straw Man fallacy earlier. Science is not about proving that the wrong ideas are necessarily impossible, but about determining what appears to honestly be the actual right idea. IC is, again, about realizing that creation fits better with these examples than evolution. NOT that the IC thing CANNOT have evolved. But that a more plausible alternative exists and is believed over the less plausible one.

"Behe's argument that IC cannot evolve is central to ID, so it deserves our attention. His method is to divide evolution into what he calls 'direct', which he defines in a special way, and 'indirect' (everything else). He finds that direct evolution of IC is logically impossible, and indirect evolution of IC is too improbable. The argument against 'direct' evolution of IC is contained in this long sentence right after the definition: An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional."

Dunkelberg is pulling a subtle equivocation fallacy here. Behe was saying that the IC part could not evolve without some other patch mechanism placing the pieces together, because the partial organism would not survive. I don't know if all of Behe's arguments are airtight about each example, but I know of several examples where that is definately true, and as far as what we know. Woodpecker and a type of beetle that sprays a chemical mixture are two examples I know of (dunno if Behe raised them, but anyways, these would have to be disproven to show IC false in my mind).

But Dunkelberg is taking Behe's use of the word "cannot" there and pretending he said it cannot evolve period. That's not what he said at all. Thankfully he at least acknowledged the use of the word directly versus indirectly, but notice that he himself contradicts his own claim that Behe said IC cannot evolve, here: "He finds that direct evolution of IC is logically impossible, and indirect evolution of IC is too improbable" [emphasis added].

Now, all that said, Behe's argument would fall apart if survival was possible with nonfunctional components. Like I said, though, examples abound that are known to not qualify for that.

"The first part of the sentence refers to slight changes. Removing a whole part is a major change; this is a major 'disconnect' between the parts of Behe's argument." -- Re-reading the Behe quote, I don't see where he gets a disconnect here. Perhaps you may have an idea what he means? (And I find it odd from an English perspective that he puts the word disconnect in quotes and also uses the word major as part of his argument against slight versus major. He's supplying the word major, I know, but trying to use it to object to the word slight, and yet uses major himself! The statement appears to contradict itself, but I'll withhold judgement since I'm not sure what he means by a disconnect. But it sounds like he's basically gotten confused about part versus system of parts.)

"It is not true that a precursor missing a part must be nonfunctional." -- Again, he missed the point. Behe never said that. He said that as far as he can see, there are examples in which such WOULD be nonfuntional (and presumably unable to survive long enough to reproduce). Pointing out some members of a set that are nonfunctional does not amount to an argument that ALL members of a set are nonfunctional. This is an easy logical error to make, but see, this is yet another problem with evolutionists. They are lousy logicians, and these minor errors pile up.

As I logician, I might say I am "unimpressed." :P (But I wouldn't mean it that way. :))

"It need only lack the function we specified." He knows full well this is not the case -- the function must be beneficial or not too harmful (or neutral) to the survival of the organism. He goes on to say "Even a single protein does something," which is totally irrelevant to Behe's argument, and he should know better. "Something" is not enough in terms of survival, and that is a major aspect of Darwinian evolution.

"The actual precursor may have had more parts, not fewer." -- This is a legitimate criticism of IC. More on that above.

"If the individual parts evolve, the precursor may have had the same number of parts, not yet codependent. We will learn more about this possibility shortly." -- That might work for some examples, but not all.

"How can one construct a valid argument that IC cannot be produced directly? ID proponents have not found a way. Yet it's easy (and left as an exercise for the reader) once you realize that a valid argument from definitions requires carefully defining the terms so that the argument becomes a tautology. This may be accomplished by redefining 'direct' or 'IC', or (best, I think) by defining Behe's expression 'be produced' which he uses in place of 'evolve'." -- Depends on the example, but in the beetle example, if any part of the reactive chemical spraying system is wrong, and the beetle explodes before it's able to reproduce, then obviously it can never contribute to Darwinian evolution, no matter what new part of its incomplete system it evolved. That is logically valid, and as far as I know, it's also sound (but that's what I'm hoping will be looked at). It requires no redefining, unless you want to accept his word game about "be produced" (there's no need to "redefine" Behe's use of that, because we all know what Behe meant by it).

"A precursor to IC lacking a part can have any functions except the specified one, which brings us to 'indirect' evolution." -- IF Behe meant that, then this would be a legitimate criticism of Behe's specific wording. I did not read that meaning into Behe's statement as quoted here, though, so I'm not sure where he gets it. It may be wishful thinking. Also, I don't see how this applies to IC in general, regardless of Behe's specific wording. This seems to be another word game -- whether Behe counted that as "direct" or not (and it looked to me like he did, so this is a misunderstanding at best and Straw Man at worst). Since the part of what Dunkelberg quoted from Behe doesn't say one way or another, I'm not sure.

Ultimately, it's irrelevant, because what Darwinian evolution of functions is normally described as is understood as direct evolution being the gradual modification of useful functions or survivable nonfunction collecting and rearranging to form more advanced functions or different functions.

"Consider a cow's tail. So far as I know, the main thing a cow uses its tail for is to swat flies. Did tails originally evolve for this function?" This has nothing to do with IC in terms of relevance to evolution vs. creation/ID. Cow tails aren't necessary for survival, and a useless unfinished tail would not, most likely, harm survival either. Again, the key issue is survivability, because that is what Darwinian evolution requires.

"There were tails before there were flies." -- XD. This is a wacky claim to make as a statement of fact, but at least this is something both sides can probably agree on. Unless flies count as "birds" on Day 5 instead of "things that creep upon the Earth (bugs)" on Day 6, in which case it may be concurrent. Besides that, though, the claim may be irrelevant, depending on what evolutionists believe about the origins of cow tails, heh.

"The long term evolution of most features of life has not been what Behe, or indeed most people, would call direct." -- Well, I dunno about that, but my understanding of Darwinian evolution and the issue of IC is that "direct" best describes long term evolution of features, including changing of function of components, and that in Darwinianism, IC things must be thought to have evolved via other imagined things putting the pieces together, which is "indirect." That's what I read Behe as meaning. Even if evolution is true, that does make an important distinction between IC things and other things that could theoretically pull themselves up by their own bootstraps assuming you already have a functional reproducing cell with DNA. So even to evolutionists, that division should not be obscured by word games; if they seek to understand how things evolved they must consider this.

"So it is surprising to read, on page 40, Behe's argument against indirect evolution of IC systems. Here is the crux of it:

'Even if a system is irreducibly complex (and thus cannot have been produced directly), however, one can not definitely rule out the possibility of an indirect, circuitous route. As the complexity of an interacting system increases, though, the likelihood of such an indirect route drops precipitously.'" So far, I get the impression Dunkelberg is simply not familiar with the issue of IC. He's surprised by what should be patently obvious, and he appears to be misunderstanding what circuitous route Behe means. Again, maybe Behe is confused on that, but nothing Dunkelberg has quoted so far backs up that claim.

"He offers no evidence." -- Well, I haven't read Behe's book, and I wasn't aware this was a book review instead of an analysis of IC itself. But evidence exists -- examples of actual IC, which we now know could not have evolved part-by-part. If they evolved, they must have evolved from multiple unknown seperate old systems coming together, losing their old functions, etc. all at once. For that, there is no evidence, that I am aware of.

"And his very limited meaning of 'direct' renders much indirect that is not circuitous at all. Yet he insists:'An irreducibly complex biological system, if there is such a thing, would be a powerful challenge to Darwinian evolution.'" I don't see how the word "yet" is justifiable there. He's playing a word game with direct and indirect and circuitous, and apparently that is supposed to contradict the fact that IC is a powerful challenge to DE. Evolutionists and creationist alike know that this feature of the real world is a challenge to the theory. That is why they have sought to come up with the patch of IC-construction mechanisms which then disappeared.

Anyways, I think by now I can skim the rest of what he said, at least for now, and try to get this reply done in time before my weekend job. It boils down to this -- IC evolution is possible, but it's less plausible than IC creation, doesn't fit the evidence as good. I'll skim on and see if he covers the examples I'm thinking of, for now...


 * reads one more sentence... fails to skim on XD*

"Here's another exercise: before reading on, try to think of ways that IC systems, including biochemical ones, might evolve after all." -- They evolve in the sense of experimenting and rethinking in the mind and hand of God, in mere moments during the creation of each "kind", in biblical creation. :)

That is the only way that, all things considered, I believe is possible. (Within evolution, though, if you discount the other problems with evolution and presuppose a reproducing cell with DNA, then the Disappearing Construction Mechanism theory could account for it. And heck, it's possible that this may have even occured in real life, even given that God created the original life forms in six days. Because after all, biblical creation gives you the necessary reproducing cells with DNA, unlike evolution.)


 * succeeds in skimming*

"Behe's most famous example is a mousetrap. But since a mousetrap is not alive, it doesn't tell us much about whether or how living IC systems might evolve. How about a flytrap instead?" -- His wording would seem to imply neither Behe nor any other creationist has ever considered the flytrap IC. I don't recall ever hearing it, myself. So this would seem to be irrelevant... And I'm not sure how he counts this as IC either -- I don't see how flytraps wouldn't survive without the trap, considering they're plants that photosynthesize.

Besides, IMO the flytrap function is something that HAS evolved, anyways, most likely. Either that or it was a purposeful change or latent programming from the original expressed features before the Fall. Unless of course insects don't count as having a nephesh, not sure... but re: the recent news story of a rat-killing pitcher plant, the function could possibly eat nephesh animals, which would not be allowed before the Fall. The function may have worked as it does now though, too eat falling seeds instead of bugs.

"Do we have an IC system here? We must specify a function and all the parts needed to carry it out" -- I don't think we do, and again we see his logical error of 'specifying' instead of determining. This makes his analysis untrustworthy, to me, but reading on...

"The function of interest is trapping insects for food" -- Yet again, the same error again. "Function of interest" is not the issue, but functions in terms of survivability. The possible function of catching falling seeds pre-Flood may not interest him, but it is important to consider. Ultimately, the function here that is most important is the touch-trigger reaction, which the flytrap shares with many plants. And that could have any number of applications beyond eating bugs, so again I don't think we have an example of IC.

"that snap-traps very likely evolved from flypaper traps (4) as Darwin thought" -- That would make a ton of sense with creation, because the flypaper is even more likely to capture falling seeds, leaves, etc. This would be an excellent example, if he's right, of the opposite of evolution. The loss of genetic data for the flypaper-trap function, turning it into a simplified flytrap function. (Or seed trap.)

"Pentachlorophenol (PCP) is a highly toxic chemical, not known to occur naturally, that has been used as a wood preservative since the 1930's. It is now recognized as a dangerous pollutant that we need to dispose of. But how?

Evolution to the rescue! A few soil bacteria have already worked out a way to break it down and even eat it." -- Oy. This is a great example of presuppositions at work. He already assumes evolution explains bacteria and bacterial adaptation, and that a designer didn't think of that. AiG has had a ton of in-depth articles on this very topic lately. I haven't had time to read many of them (they are VERY long, heh), so I won't comment further than to say from what I have read, this is exactly the sort of thing we should expect from an infinately brilliant creator, in fact bacteria probably played a far larger role in the original creation (all beneficial before the Curse), constantly working and adapting to ensure the Creation was safe for its inhabitants.

He goes on to claim this is IC at work, and I don't know enough about bacteria yet to judge that, but I highly doubt it. It sounds more like he's confusing an enzyme process with IC. He's again not making any argument about survivability or that the enzyme process could not have "evolved" part-by-part, so apparently his mistakes earlier are merely carrying over into this example. Bacteria adapt to new substances all the time, and I can't at the moment see how an enzyme process couldn't arrange itself piece by piece without interfering with survival of intermediate forms.

If you haven't already, seriously try to take the time to read at least one of AiG's articles on bacteria and viruses. Frankly, they're farther into the topic of adaptation of these organisms even than evolutionists are, proposing all manner of gene swapping, drift, and the like as part of God's intent for how they're supposed to work. Only after the Curse, and apparently a fairly long time after, did enough of these things get corrupted by copying mistakes and the like to turn that adaptation system against us as new diseases.

Skimming on, it appears the same misunderstanding is driving most of his choices of examples to analyze. He gets to flagella further down, so lemme skip to that...

"Behe concludes that any bacterial flagellum is composed of at least three parts: a paddle, a rotor, and a motor, and so with swimming as the specified function must be IC" -- And the reasoning is that it is needed for survival, at least in theory. If any part is missing, without the constructor mechanism patch, the bacteria could not survive.

"Then comes the hard part: proving that every last protein is required for the function. Oddly, ID proponents show no interest in doing any of this work" -- Well, if the second sentence here applies to the first, and not to the trivial classifications of paddle style he mentions earlier which doesn't, as far as he said yet, change the basic function, then that would be a foolish thing for them to do. I'm not convinced just because he claims it hasn't happened, though. It would be similar to evolutionists showing no interest in checking on so-called missing link hoaxes because they want to believe it.

From what I have seen on this one, though, ID proponents do indeed focus on the ICness of the flagella. I have seen detailed, logical explanations of this argument, and I found no flaw in them.

But the question is, could it survive without the fully intact function? He still hasn't commented on survivability.

"What's the answer? Is any flagellum IC with proteins as parts or not? As this would depend on arbitrary criteria, scientists have not pursued this question as such" -- Well, arbitrary criteria should not be used.

"It is clear that all of them absolutely require a good many of their proteins in order to function as swimming systems."

"This brings us to the dark side of design. Flagella participate in the cause of quite a few bacterial diseases, including diarrhea (38), ulcers and urinary tract infections (39). If the Designer is directly responsible for flagella then he is implicated as a cause of human diseases." -- I knew this was coming, heh. He is, but not the most important cause. Human sin is what brought the Curse on. Obviously the one Cursing was God. And the Curse has a purpose towards bringing us back to what's right, not spiteful anger as many non-Christians seem to think.

But even if you don't understand that, this is no excuse for throwing the scientific by the wayside and believe what feels good instead of what objectively is the truth.

To quote the old saying, "God gives, and God takes away."

"Happily, science makes such beliefs unnecessary." -- This is getting off topic, but such a statement is very sad. There's nothing happy about a world that came about by accident, or worse, God caused it to use death as a part of the creative process. That is what Darwinian evolution (which is what he clearly means by "science", which is a typical word-game mistake) requires. Even worse, atheistic evolution says there's no hope; when we die we are gone forever, although at least theistic evolution can allow for the afterlife.

The Bible claims a much better history and future -- God gave us the chance at a perfect Creation as originally intended, yet gave us freewill so our choice would be for real not just robotic, and we chose wrong, and yet even despite that, He came and died for our sins so we can live forever at the resurrection and the New Creation in the future, when disease and death will no longer exist, as it was intended originally.

Again, though, these are emotional reactions. Those are important, but not really part of the truthseeking process.

Swimming systems provide a good illustration of how (not) to think about evolution. Behe argues that evolution can't produce them because they are IC (a dubious claim and not an obstacle to evolution as we have seen). With this example, the only one Dunkelberg has listed so far that actually qualifies as IC as far as I am aware, we have not seen that. He hasn't shown any possible use for the incomplete flagella; the most relevant thing on this that he said was the admission that at least three basic components are IC. If any one of those is not yet evolved, the function doesn't work.

What he didn't even touch on, and which it seems to me is what matters, is whether and how the bacteria could have survived without this function in a Darwinian sense. That is, if part of the component evolved, would the bacteria that carries it be more likely to survive than its relatives who don't have it? Less likely? No difference in the likelihood? If they would not survive due to natural selection, then the evolutionary process never gets to the stage where the next component is added.

"But parts that stick out can have a number of functions, and bacterial flagella clearly have several. If there is another reason for it to be there, the sticking out part can gradually evolve more abilities." -- Right, but again, not if the evolving of partials harms the organism's ability to survive sufficiently.

Well, it doesn't look like he bothers to deal with the most important examples of IC that I have seen. He gets kudos for at least touching on the flagella example, although he doesn't really analyze it in any significant way to the debate. But it doesn't look like he has really studied this issue in depth because he doesn't even mention the most important examples -- the ones hardest to explain by evolution.

Alright, moving on from IC now, heh. Wow, that part alone is longer than the rest of my already long reply. I don't even care about IC very much lol -- it's ultimately a side-issue in the creation vs. evolution debate, since it deals with what appear to be fairly rare organisms and there are much bigger problems with evolution. It is somewhat important, though, and definately yet another case where the real-world facts fit better with creation than with evolution.

Catastrophic fossilization -- Well, creationists believe that much of what evolutionists label smaller disasters (compared to the global flood) are actually part of the Flood, and are being misinterpreted. I'm not sure about the K-T event specifically, a little rusty on my evolutionary disaster theories, which are constantly changing, XD.

@ Gravity. Ikki mah man, I hoped you were above this ploy. :P The gravity argument is one of the desperate straws evolutionists like to grasp at when they are so biased they don't wanna think for themselves and actually look at the issue.

But for the sake of discussion, here's the answer to that. There is a difference as AiG points out often between observable, repeatable science, and origins science. Gravity is in the field of physics, and is so observable you'd be hard pressed to get to a place where it isn't playing a role. The mathematic theories about it predict the real world so accurately that there is no grounds, as far as I know, for it not to quality as a solid scientific theory.

Molecules-to-man evolution on the other hand is an idea invented by athiests specifically to justify a life that ignores the existence of God, to "make atheisim scientific sounding", and objectively, it has failed to be confirmed by the evidence, failing to predict accurately the fossil record and many of other things. At this point, it cannot objectively be called a theory. Even a hypothesis is questionable, since it has entered the evidence-comparing stage and been found lacking. This evolution has never been observed, and exists purely in the imaginings of evolutionists philosophers, scientists, hypers, and those who listen to them. As far as we factually know, that is the only place it has ever existed. (Gradual evolution, anyways.)

We do have factual evidence of God, however, and specifically of the truth of the Bible. The founders of scientific study were creationists, and they believed scientific study was even possible because God created an ordered universe (a major emphasis of AiG; check their archives and you're bound to find at least one recent article on this, they love to repeat this often). They considered God and Creation very real, indeed as real as gravity. They may not have necessarily understood God (yet) in any scientific way, but there existed a time in which gravity was not understood in that way either -- and yet it existed too.

So frankly, if gravity can be compared with anything it's creation. :)

But even considering that, gravity is still a separate field of science from origins science, and much less speculative. Also a fair bit simpler too -- and frankly nowadays we pretty much do understand it. Evolutionists have compiled more details about evolutionary theory (much of which doesn't even count as evolution, but they claim it anyways), but percentagewise what is understood about how evolution could work is about zero. We know a few mechanisms whereby existing DNA information, and therefore lifeforms, can change, but we know of no mechanisms at all whereby they can evolve from nothing, which is the real issue between evolution/creation.

I say again, we may know more details about the (theory of) evolution -- although those details are constantly changing of course, and interestingly are usually moving closer to the biblical claims. Ahem. I say again, we may know more details about evolution theory, but that is only because it is obviously so complex, whereas gravity is a simple yet fundamental force. Genetic evolution, even if it happened, is hardly comparable to gravity for that reason alone. We know the vast majority, percentage-wise, of what there is to know about gravity, while knowing virtually nothing, percentage-wise, of what there is (believed to be by evolutionists) to know about evolution.

The next part of my reply is so important, I'm giving it a whole new section.

The Argument Against Gravity
@ "I hope I won't see you arguing against gravity, though"

Gravity is annoying, I wish we all floated with telekinetic control and air was all throughout space with no risk of it all collapsing into a black hole. Okay maybe it doesn't annoy YOU, and you might know more about it but I don't care, it annoys me right now.

If I want to jump off a building and fly, how does it hurt you?

What? I can't jump off the building and fly because of Gravity? At least if I know what's good for me? This Gravity is really stingy. I hate it. What would be so bad about jumping off the building? And flying. Jumping off and flying. Meant that.

What if, what if... what if gravity doesn't REALLY exist, but some technical-sounding alternate is imagined so that we don't have to obey the Dogma of the Gravity believers? We all move down, but maybe that's just because we all telekinetically want to. Maybe all particles are just moving towards each other of their own accord, and the fact that it appears to fit the concept of gravity better is merely a coincidence.

Okay, but these are things nobody would consciously argue. But let's keep it in the realm of the subconscious.

Subconsciously, I want to sin against Gravity. I am not going to take the trouble to look into whether there may actually be real causal consequences for this choice, because I have no subconscious desire to. I simply want to jump off the cliff and fly up, not down. Peter Petrelli style, except he fictionally believes in so-called gravity. They wanted to have a power to explain how the character could fly, like how airplanes counteract the apparent force of Gravity. But all of that is just belief in the myth of Gravity -- falling downwards IS the power!

Anyways. Yeah, I definately don't consciously reject Gravity merely because I want to break that rule. Do I subconsciously? I'm not even going to ask myself that. I don't want to.

I reject Gravity because... because... well, "I could imagine" (to quote Darwin, or at least a paraphrase) that the central motion could have come about because that's the default direction of particles. The electromagnetic force, under this hypothesis, alerts particles to the presence of other ones, even though it's too weak to actually pull them together and might even normally repel them depending on alignment.

But the particles all contain a system, too subsubsubnanoscopic for us to yet detect, to decide which direction to go in. Particles merely normally decide to move towards each other, that's all. All living beings could decide to fly, if they start falling and then change their direction.


 * One by one, scientists begin embracing this philosophy, while deaths by jumping off cliffs and skyscrapers increase. Scientists see no connection*

We have a scientific theory. Happily, we don't need to believe in Gravity anymore. A majority of scientists now believe in the Theory of Aerokinesis.

Oh, and there's air in space. You just can't see it. It's invisible. Intangible. Has to be, because we know Aerokinesis is true. How do we know? Most scientists say so. Virtually all do. They all do.

What? Yes, yes, yes, inaudible too I guess.

Gravity is NOT annoying. It doesn't exist! How could I be annoyed by something that doesn't exist? I am annoyed by those Fundamental Forcists who stubborn hold to that outdated idea, though.

Hm. Okay, yeah, yeah, jumping off a cliff MIGHT be a bad idea. Okay, I agree with the morality of Gravitists, but there's no need to believe in Gravity itself. We might be able to fly from level ground too if we try hard enough. Hasn't been observed?

Uh... wrong! Airplanes fly all the time! We made that happen by trying hard enough. Therefore there's no need to believe in Gravity. Therefore, Aerokinesis HAS been observed. Never mind that Gravitists also believe in that kind of flight. We claim airplanes as ours.

What?

Hm.

Oy. Good point.

Yeah.... Uh... minor correction.

Just a little change, we don't have to change the theory itself, just specify something.

Just a little thing. Don't get mad.

It's okay to believe in Gravity. Annoying, but okay.

What? I didn't insult them -- I'm tolerant! No, it's not annoying. It's perfectly okay to believe in Gravity. I believe in Gravity. I just don't think Gravity actually operates in the real world. It's just something that's "out there", yanno? Maybe played a role in the first few moments of existence, but then let Aerokinesis take over.

Why not gravity play roles other than at the very start? It's unscientific. Science can't answer that question. Gravity is supernatural. It's outside the purview of science. Science can only deal with the laws of nature, and Gravity isn't listed in our laws of nature. Why not? Well, we don't talk about that. It's supernatural, trust me. It just can't be pinned down. If Gravity existed, it could work any old way since it's not natural, and that's just not good enough for science! Science has to follow observable rules, and nobody has ever proven the existence of Gravity.

Therefore, Gravity never did anything after the initial moments of existence, because science can't study the supernatural, even if it does exist.

No, it might have. What? I... Uh... So what are you saying? "If Gravity really DID do things, other than after the first moments of existence, wouldn't it leave traces science could study?" Uh... Gravity is not scientific. Science can't study gravity. The majority of scientists accept Aerokinesis. If that happened we still have to be scientific, so no gravity allowed. We can't study it, therefore it couldn't have happened. Gravity isn't scientific, because science doesn't involve gravity. Science doesn't involve gravity because gravity isn't scientific. No gravity. No... no. No gravity.

Didn't answer the question? Whah? I... Gravity is not Science. We have Science now, we don't need gravity. Get over it. It's an outdated idea.

But Gravity could definately exist. We don't know whether it does or doesn't. People think they have encounters with Gravity, but these things are explainable within Aerokinesis. They're just delusional. I mean, it's all a matter of opinion, right? At least for them.

It has metaphorical value, the belief in a simple explanation for "Down" but we know better now. People get emotional benefit out of believing in Gravity. Real-life lessons can be learned from the Books about Gravity.

So, you're free to believe what you want. You can believe in Gravity. You're wrong. But you can do it. You're hopelessly uneducated -- all qualified scientists believe in it, but okay. Scientists can always be wrong. But on this one, they're definately not, trust me. It's fact. Aerokinesis is a fact.

We need better education. Man. Let's educate these Gravitists. No, I those Gravimetric Aerokinesis guys are loons, makes no sense. It's just a compromise, made to make Aerokinesis look less darkside to those who don't have the stomach, or blame us for the cliffjumping deaths. Blame game, stop playing the blame game.

...

Whose definition of Gravity do you go with, if you open the door for Gravity to get a foot in? The whole idea is just boring. Wars. Wars have been caused over Gravity. People wanting land others have when they could just fly to Mars. And breath the invisible air. Gravitism of all stripes is the enemy. Ban it. No don't -- they have the right to be wrong.

Uh... point is, there's so many different alternative explanations of Gravity. Apples versus frizzy hair are the main ones, but they were outdated. We know better now. Why believe any of them, since there were so many different ones? What? Apples BECAME frizzy hair? Okay, but what about stringy versus nonstringy? Who's right there?

They're all just making it up. They can't explain Down and Up scientifically. We can. It's Aerokinesis.

........

...

HOW do the particles move you ask?

Well... We don't know. Nobody has any idea. Maybe on the backs of flying crystals, or maybe space aliens cause it! I... I don't know. How? I JUST TOLD YOU! ON THE BACKS OF CRYSTALS!

Actually, I think, maaaybe, just maaaybe, aliens cause it.

Don't quote me on that. You... whah? You quoted me on it? No, I was joking! It was a joke. Just joking.

We're scientific. They're not. Period.

...

We've catalogued many examples of how stuff interacts with Aerokinesis. We've shown examples of how things fly, even into space, and yet the astronauts can still breath air, right? and all of this is Aerokinesis. Not Gravity. Forget Gravity, those guys are nutjobs.

We know more about Aerokinesis than about Electromagnetism!

Aerokinesis has definately moved along, if you'll pardon the bad pun -- we've come a long way since Aerwin's ideas, and flight is a well-understood process. I should add here, I suppose, that so is Aerokinesis -- it is regarded as fact in the entirety of the scientific community (the guys who research aerokinesis, lol), and is far better understood than Electromagnetism! I hope I won't see you arguing against electromagnetism, though. :P

...

Aaaand we slap a big ole :P emote on that whole section. XD

Back to Replying to Ikki LOL
Okay, argument against gravity has now ended. :P

That basically follows the process of how Evolution has come up, as a desire not to believe in God. The two situations are very comparable, except that there are many sins whose consequences aren't as obvious as cliffjumping. :P Evolution's ONLY foundation, as far as I have been able to find, is the desire not believe in God.

I believe God is as much a fundamental force to existence as gravity. As undeniable as gravity. As obvious as gravity. As observable as gravity.

In that example, I proposed a "scientific" alternative to Gravity. It is more complex, and requires imagined mechanisms we've never observed ("we HAVE observed them"Bonesiii (talk)Enough, you, we have not :P), stuff in space that is conveniently impossible to observe,

Now, which is more plausible?

I say gravity. Why? Because it best fits the evidence. If evolutionists were consistent, they really should stop believing in gravity and accept the Aerokinesis theory, as it makes about the same amount of sense as evolution. Gravity requires the least patches (I had to concoct at least three major patches and countless smaller ones to make Aerokinesis fit the evidence, while gravity fits naturally) to explain all the evidence we see, when it is looked at objectively.

Likewise, creation requires the least patches to explain all the evidence we see, when it is looked at objectively.

So I believe in gravity for the same reason I believe in the God of the Bible (and thus his creation account). It is undeniable. If I am honest with myself, that is. And when I bother to look into it carefully, I find that not even the SINGLE reason to accept Evolution (or Aerokinesis) is that the "sin" in both cases is only deceptively appealing -- only appealing if I fail to consider the consequences.

Most who believe in evolution, in my observation, do not understand why all the sins listed in the Bible are or were wrong. Lying, for example. Many evolutionists seem to find this perfectly acceptable. Politicians especially XD. Under evolution, it could be debated whether it is "right", but by the Bible, it's clearly wrong. But lying seems, deceptively (okay pun, yeah, I know, but it's actually intentional here :P) to be the easy way out of many situations. Appealing. Fun, even.

But further down the road, lying has consequences that cannot be denied, as inexorable as the Deep Magic that even Aslan could not violate in Narnia. We may not even see all of the consequences in this life, but the consequences are no less real just because of that (if the biblical resurrection, judgement day, and lake of fire and New Jerusalem are true, of course).

I believe that all sin including this "little" sin have negative consequences even in this life, though, and that even though we age, die, and have diseases, life would otherwise be perfect if all people perfectly followed the laws in the Bible, even if they didn't believe in God.

I know at least that every time I adapt myself to live more and more according to the Law, my life simply gets better and better. (But not through legalism, through Living In The Spirit, see Galations, and that also explains why I think non Christians are doomed to fail to replicate perfect living since they do not have the Holy Spirit in their hearts.) That in and of itself is another powerful evidence, to me, for Creation (through the knowledge that the Bible is trustworthy).

Do I know all the details of Creation? Frankly, I personally apparently have stumbled on (actually, believed I could understand and therefore sought) far more of the details than virtually anyone else I've ever seen, especially about the basics of God specifically, but that aside, no, of course not.

Do I know all the details of Gravity? No, I don't know if the string theory has it quite right, although some of the concepts of it would seem to be right, and currently no scientists knows for sure about that issue.

Now, another disclaimer.

This isn't ENTIRELY a fair comparison.

God is alive, gravity is not. The analogy doesn't 100% match, but then that's the whole point of analogies. If it matched 100%, we probably WOULD have Aerokinesisists running around, in majorities among scientists, etc, and I'd be the weird guy for believing in Gravity. But the parallels other than the living and infinitely complex aspects of God are virtually identical.

And to be clear, I would side with the "Gravitists" who are all for making airplanes. That COULD be misinterpreted from my analogy XD.

This illustrates why I don't accept things like theistic evolution too. First, evolution is invented to explain existence without God, but then God is mixed with it, while evolution is held to just to compromise. This isn't truth-seeking, it's salad-bar. The truth IS often somewhere in the middle, to paraphrase a wise prof I had once. But you can't legitimately pick and choose from two sides and call that truthseeking. That's seeking to please both sides. Which rarely works anyways. In the Gravity example, it's pretty clear the folly of that compromise. Since the only "solid" reason Aerokinesis ever had in that fictional scenario was dislike of the idea of Gravity, it makes no sense to give back into that idea and yet keep Aerokinesis. It would, though, make sense if evidence actually supported Aerokinesis better for some things. In the case of billions of years for starlight to reach Earth, I do think this is something evolutionists were right on, so I think some kind of time dilation effect must have been used. I don't do that to emotinally compromise, but because the evidence appears to support it.

Also, do I think most evolutionists, especially the scientists, consciously embrace evolution because they want justification to sin? No. Although it cannot be denied that many evolutionists, including scientists, have argued this very thing. But I think for most it is subconscious. For Darwin it may even have been subconscious. For the original humanists that inspired Darwin, it may even have been. But the subconscious cannot be ignored. If a person accepts evolution, despite their scientific training, because they subconsciously want to, that makes them unreliable.

Alright, this has gone on long enough as a tangent, though I think it's extremely important. Look past the myth of God as a guy on a throne that evolutionists often seem to think we believe in, and realize the Bible portrays a fundamental force of existence as real as vital as gravity -- in fact THE fundamental force who created gravity in the first place and without which, according to the laws of Causality, gravity should not even exist.

Harmful/Beneficial Mutations -- Well, now I'm gonna have to reread what I said on this, because your reply doesn't seem to be aware of what I believe on this subject.


 * reviews*

I said: "As we study mutations, we are learning that they are in fact a problem for evolution, not an aid. Regardless of how statistically unlikely a beneficial mutation is" -- Alright, I can see how you might misinterpret that. You said they are "common", well, the question is how do you define common? Harmful mutations are much MORE common, and that's all I meant. :) That's a fact. Darwinian evolution basically presupposes that natural selection removes most of the harmful mutations without affecting the train of beneficial ones, however.

Me again:

"the fact remains that harmful mutations are fact. They do occur, as predicted by Creationism, and in relatively large numbers. They are also not always fatal, not immediately. We all probably have harmful mutations lurking in our DNA, but in recessive genes that are overruled by dominant genes (this is why reproduction with close relatives has become harmful over time since the Fall, and, incidentally, why Cain's wife was one of his sisters). We now know that negative mutations are adding up rapidly"

That last sentence is the key.

"in mere millenia, centuries, decades, and even years. Evolution quite simply cannot sustain this degradation for the millions of years it requires, and any information-increasing mutations would have been overwhelmed by this degradation."

That's the longer way of saying the key. Evolution requires millions of years to account for enough beneficial mutations (and other things), but evolutionists fail to consider the rates of harmful mutation accumulation which would add up a lot more than we see (according to AiG). It would also have a lot of really bad effects, including possibly the deaths of the creatures along the needed evolutionary line before they could evolve to the next step.

Again, patches are possible here. Evolution can still work despite this. Some as-yet-unimagined mechanism to explain this could have occured. Just because evolutionists haven't found it (probably because they haven't yet bothered to investigate the problem itself, same reason they like to believe hoaxes) yet doesn't mean it couldn't exist. The issue, though, is that yet again, the evidence matches up better with creation than evolution.

Bible Contradictions -- I'm going to check out the list, but you need to understand something first, Ikki. It is extremely easy to allege a contradiction without objectively and fully considering the actual hermeneutics and context, cultural traditions that affected word choice, etc. I have seen so many alleged contradictions that are only contradictions if you come at the Bible with a bias against it and carelessly grab bits and pieces and pretend they mean what they don't, or even just ignorantly misunderstand, that are not legitimately contradictions. You have to look carefully at what the Bible actually means, especially when someone alleges a contradiction, not just blindly accept that it's a contradiction just because an "enemy of the Bible" says so.

@ "literal interpretation of the Bible is recent thing" -- This is a common evolutionist mistake. Biblical creationism is not a "literal" interpretation of the Bible -- it never has been, but a straightforward one. Reading metaphor as metaphor, parts that are intended to be read literally, read literally, etc. If I make a metaphor, you know I meant to. You knew the Argument Against Gravity was a metaphor. I didn't have to say "Hey, this is a metaphor." The Bible contains many different writing styles.

Genesis 1 and 2, or most of them, are written in the style usually called historical narration. Hermeneutically, it appears to be intended to be read literally. This part of the Bible has been taken literally by most believers until recently. But even if it hadn't been, to use such things as an argument against (or for) creation is the fallacy of "Chronological Snobbery". More to the point, later books refer to the Genesis Creation account as literal history, including Exodus, Jesus himself in the gospels, Romans, and others. That's about four thousand years of history in which literal Genesis Creation was accepted.

Of course, not every human accepted it and in fact a minority did at most points in history.

@ "tons of evidence Bible is collection of older myths" -- Could you list some?

@ "selfish and hateful God" -- Evolutionists, namely atheists, love to claim that, but that is the opposite of the Bible I read. I read about a God of Infinite Love, a God of Justice, who gets angry when the poor are oppressed. A God who isn't content to let us ruin our own lives by our own selfish, ignorant sins. A God who, despite being perfectly justified, legalistically, in just wiping the slate clean, destroying us all and starting over, came down and died for ours sins, so all we have to do to be okay with God and live forever is accept that.

Selfish and hateful God is far from a fact. It's an opinion, and a very narrow, non-truthseeking, and frankly self-deceptive one. It's used in defense of an atheist point of view, usually, which offers no hope.

But again, all of this is emotion. It's important to making a personal decision to believe in the heart one way or the other or the other or the other etc. But it's not supposed to be involved in making a rational decision as to what is objectively true.

IF a hateful God was the case... well, frankly, I gotta stop the idea there. A hateful God is a contradiction in terms. A hateful God is not possible, in my opinion, according to the laws of Causality. Go back to what I said about existence existing.

Either existence does not exist, there is nothing, not even a place for a thing, or there is existence with an infinite string of causes and no beginning, or there is a single Infinite Cause -- God. The first two are known to be false, obviously, although some nonevolutionary worldviews might touch on the second, but the evidence to me (and to evolutionists and of course to creationists) clearly contradicts that. Infinite God, outside of time, is the only possibility Causality allows to be left.

From there, what does Causality say about God? Primarily, he must be entirely self-consistent, or he is not truly One Infinite Cause. This is the cause of Love, and this Love would be so inherent to this fundamental force of existence that it is unavoidable. I believe God cannot help but be Love. He can hate hate, and sin which leads to harm for his creations, but above all he desires Love. The whole reason for other beings being created by him is because he Loves, and yet Love demands someone to Love, besides the self. Causally, all of this seems to be demanded.

But what I was trying to say is, if, hypothetically, this hateful God imagined by atheists was actually real, and created the world, then objectivally we would have to believe it. If you're under the thumb of a hateful person, you can't make it go away just by stopping believing in it.

But again, it cannot be emphasized enough how ludicrous the allegation that the Bible portrays a hateful God is. If you think about it, does that even begin to make sense?

It's true that God is no pushover. When people abuse the innocent, when people sin, it makes him angry. Anger has a place in existence. It should not be confused with hate, which is contradictory to existence. Hate is an unhealthy antagonism towards people. Anger is a healthy reaction to evil actions. Frankly, I wouldn't want a wishywashy wimp of a God who had some qualm about doing what is right, seeking Justice.

But again, the whole point of the Bible is that even though according to Justice God would be right to just destroy us all, forget even one hundred ish years chance to repent, forget this creation entirely, or at least just leave us to wallow in our own miserable evil and not do anything to rescue us, He came and died selflessly for our sins. :)

That God, the God of the Bible, is easy to worship, when I finally get past my own selfish Pride. But here's a warning; until the very moment you accept, a part of you will find it at least a little hard to worship this God of Love, God of Infinite Wisdom, Holy God. Be very careful with looking towards that subconscious antagonism you have, that I had, towards it as evidence against Him being real.

Also, read the Bible carefully. Objectively. Reach your own conclusions about who God is, according to it. Don't just take the word of atheists who tell you what to think. Or my word. Read for yourself.

@ "all prophecies unclear, metaphor" -- Read the gospels, and pay attention to the references to prophecies, and go back and compare them (about Jesus, I mean). Especially the one in Isaiah about the cornerstone that was rejected. Look at Daniel, BTW, for many major prophecies about things like major empires yet to rise at the time of writing, etc. which came true exactly. At least one of them names the culture in question directly, explaining the metaphor that was given first.

However, think this through. I know how to predict to a certain extent what people are going to say. I predicted most of what you said. I often plant partial predictions and setups to lead the other person to say what I have designed for them to say. When I am subtle about it enough, it works. The prediction occurs. Sometimes word for word.

But, if I tell you directly beforehand what you are going to say, the likelihood of you still saying it goes way down. Why would I do that? It would be a self-defeating prophecy, lol.

Now, I'm not all-knowing, I don't literally know what you're going to say. I only know why you are likely to say what you're going to say if I direct you subtly to say it. Watch the Mentalist for some pretty good portrayals of ways to do this, though fiction of course. But if I was an all-knowing God, and I knew a future NEEDED to happen for your salvation to occur, if I Loved you, why would I ruin it by telling you clearly what you would have done if I hadn't told you?

So, I think the reason certain prophecies are unclear and metaphorical (or the main reason) is to avoid ruining the very future that's being prophecied. When a prophecy is crystal clear (and these exist and occured -- 70 year exile is a major one in addition to the Daniel stuff I mentioned), it is probably because there was no danger of that prophecy defeating the event it prophecied. God telling Abraham about Egyption slavery is a big one, BTW.

Also, there are some clear prophecies in the Bible that are about what will happen "if you do this", and what will happen instead "if you do that." (A major reason I believe in alternate timelines, at least within the mind of God.) There are examples of clear prophecies being given specifically so the people will choose differently and avoid a bad fate. The biggest one to me is his prophecies of what would happen if Israel broke its covenant with God in the Law, and that of course happened.

But the key to consider with the metaphors is that after the event happens, it becomes clear, to anyone who is being objectively honest with themselves (IMO anyways), that the prophecy was intended to mean that. God is quoted at one point in one of the major prophets (I think it's Jeremiah, not sure) as saying that the very reason these prophecies are given is so that you will know he is God, and you will know the false prophets are false because their prophecies do not come true. People can tell when a prophecy comes true, metaphor or not. It's easy to say the metaphors could mean anything before you investigate objectively. After you finish investigating objectively, that becomes impossible.

"not a single one has ever been proven to have come true" -- Whoa! Ikki! That's a bold claim! I hope you take time to research that before you blindly accept that whopper lol. Many have been proven to have come true. Rise of Medo-Persian Empire, Greece, and then another culture whose description fits Rome to a tee, from Daniel. 70-year exile of Israel, then a return, from Jeremiah (and others I think). 400 year enslavement of Hebrew people in Egypt, prophecied in Abraham's time. Tons of details of Christ's life, prophecied from Genesis 3 throughout most other OT books and fulfilled in a single man. Israel's prospering time and time again when they turned to God, but falling into oppression by various cultures when they turned away, prophecied at least as early as Moses' time. Jesus himself prophecying his own death and resurrection.

In fact the mindset of evolutionists was prophecied by one of the NT letter writers (I forget which but it's probably Paul or Peter...), which has been one that really wowed me. The mindset of the very scoffers who willfully forget that God created the world as told in the Bible was prophecied in the Bible they scoff at to come about in the last days. And that didn't really start to come true en mass until Darwin, and now it is a peak to this day.

To say that some prophecies haven't come true, nobody would object to. The very end of Revelation (and Isaiah, and parts of other books) obviously hasn't happened yet (though there are of course different camps about the more unclear parts in the middle of revelation, and I have no opinion about that). There are a handful of other prophecies from the OT that don't specifically say last days or anything like that, which most scholars do not think havebeen fulfilled yet.

To declare even that most prophecies haven't come true -- it would be way off base in my opinion, but at least you could get away with thinking it and having done at least some research. To say literally not a single one? Sorry, Ikki, that is definately false.

"Satan not originally evil, as a mistranslation" -- This is a miconception I've encountered recently, if you mean what I think you mean. Satan has never been said to have been originally evil, so you probably didn't mean that. But at some point, he DID become evil. The Bible is clear about this in many places. Scholars, however, believe that Satan is intended to be portrayed as a tester in the Bible, which is a job God has actually, apparently, given him. So much of what he does serves a good purpose in God's plan. Read Job on this especially. Some people hear that and assume the belief is that Satan is not actually currently evil, or wasn't at the time Job was written. That is not what it means -- it simply means that even being evil, he still must carry out the job God gave him, and he does it with evil intentions.

@ virgin thing -- This is an old one, and misses the point that the word can mean either definition; it wasn't mistranslated, but the word alone could be ambiguous, but more to the point, the gospels also clarify with other words that the meaning of virgin was intended. @ scientific data -- the overwhelming body of scientific data fits best with the Bible, so the idea that it goes "directly against" the Bible is frankly laughable. Not that laughing disproves it. :P But anyways, I've pretty clearly explained what I mean about that above. In fact, I found that ALL data supports biblical creation best.

A majority of scientists' opinions go directly against the Bible, but not the evidence itself. As AiG is so fond of pointing out, the evidence doesn't literally speak for itself, it must be interpeted. I observe that evolutionists are interpreting it illogically, unscientifically, when it comes to seeing it as supporting the very thing it is hardest to reconcile with; evolution.


 * clicks link* I'm very low on time so I won't reply to these specifically here today. I'd recommend you look at all the entries in AiG's new series on contradictions (called Contradictions), though.

Yeah, it's pretty clear whoever made this list isn't even close to objective. Just look at the first example: "1. God is satisfied with his works Gen 1:31 God is dissatisfied with his works. Gen 6:6" Anyone with a fraction of a brain knows what is going on there; he's dissatisfied when a major part is incomplete, and satisfied when it's complete. I mentioned this earlier, in fact. Have you ever MOCed? I presume you have, you being you. :P Now, apply the same principle here. When I MOC, I am not satisfied with the unfinished product. I am satisfied only when it is finished. I am finished only when I am satisfied. :)

Also, notice how horribly out of context these list entries are. There is no analysis, no study of context, no consideration of intended meaning of the versus, and most of these are even paraphrases!

Ha, look at number three -- God dwells in light and God dwells in darkness. Again, that sounds like a paraphrase, and I don't have time to check the reference, but I know of many verses that say this concept. This is something I majorbig LOVE about the God of the Bible. My God is a God of the dark clouds, of blackness, black smoke, a God of the night, a God of dirt and grime and mud and spit, a God of blood and tears, and tears of blood, and blood running from his sides as he sacrifices his own life on the Cross. A God of deep blackness that takes Egypt into a panic, a darkness that can be felt (and also referenced in Rev). My God dwells in the darkness. I love that.

My God is light. My God is invisible. Light is invisible. Light is darkness. Unravel that. I believe I have, and when you do, it is the thrill of twenty lifetimes, two hundred lifetimes. It is more profound, IMO, than just about anything. Except other things about my God. :)

The basic point that the listmaker here (and all contradiction allegers I have found so far) don't understand is what makes a contradiction in logic. Something can be two different things in different senses, or at different times, or in different places, or in different circumstances, etc. Something is only a contradiction if none of those differences come into play.

If I say that right now I am awake and not asleep, but then I come on here tomorrow and say that hours before, I was asleep and not awake, did I contradict myself? Think about it.

Okay, scrolling down I see some actual quotes. They start with one of my favorites, the one about a sword. They could have included a whole lot more context about that to make God look even worse, heh. I love statements like that, because they are sorters. They sort the reader into the wise ones who will consider the intent as shown by other verses, or the ones who will have knee-jerk reactions only to that part, who aren't spined enough to accept that part, because they don't see the full picture, have not tried to understand why that negative is required. Life is not all ones; it is ones and zeroes, if you will. Binary code would not work with all ones. The negatives have purposes.

Reading on, some of these are obviously not contradictions even from what little they quote. This is one of those lists that is clearly intended to make your eyes go big at the size of it, to make the Bible feel REEAAALLY contradictory, not just slightly contradictory, regardless of the truth about each specific instance. Quantity over quality.

More importantly, context, hermeneutics, and the other necessary studies I mentioned are blatantly missing from this "analysis". And that's been the case in the vast majority of such lists I have seen. The few that aren't always miss part of the picture, which when realized "makes the contradiction go away."


 * gets to the end* Yeah, no analysis at all. At the very least, thanks for bringing this list to my attention, I hadn't seen this one before. Nor the site (noticed the URL, I presume there is more here than just contradictions).

Living Fossils -- You are making a lot of assumptions about dragons by saying man never could have survived alongside them. For example, who says all of them are predators? There were many which are believed to be plant-eaters, including the largest known ones. Brachiosaurs and the like. I'd compare it to life in Africa today, with many large mammals, including predators. There are huge creatures like giraffes which humans live alongside, and predators that cause some problems but mostly hunt the easier prey of other animals.

Also, the Bible says (and this is true of most living animals including predators) that animals will be given a fear of man after the Flood.

An example, saw a show on Nat Geo recently about that guy who has a "tamed" bear, was going out and observing wild bears, and he demonstrated that a massive bear which scared off two smaller bears from its territory moments before, then saw him crouched down and started heading towards him to see what he was -- as soon as he stood up and held out his arms so the bear knew he was a human (this was one of the national parks, forget which), the bear instantly ran away. He said that bears normally do this -- they are afraid of humans. Even though in a one-on-one fight, the bear wins.

This is usually the case in Africa and elsewhere with big predators. Lions and other big cats usually don't come waltzing into villages and eating people, though sometimes that does happen; usually they stay well away from humans.

Another point, why do you think dragon legends so often involve an urgent desire to make the dragons go extinct? :P When humans became so common later that dragons could not avoid them as easily, it makes sense that people would want to hunt them to extinction not just because they want the pride of the kill of such a huge creature, but because the creature is seen as a threat to their people.

Finally, most dinosaurs were small; this is another major misconception. People get this "Age of Dinosaurs" idea in their heads from evolutionary kids books, but that's not what we find in the fossil record. There are massive dinosaurs, like there are massive mammals, but most dinosaurs were very small. We coexist currently with billions upon billions of small animals, yet we have six billion of us right now (ish). Somehow it works. :P If you consider bugs too, it's billions and billions of species, let alone individuals.

You go on to brush dragons aside as coincidence from various other inspirations, but frankly, it's not convincing. Given that we know they existed at some point, and that we don't think the scientific knowledge existed before recently to extrapolate from the bones alone what they were like, you have two possible theories I see. 1) Dragons lived alongside humans for millenia, until around the middle ages, or 2) massive coincidence. The evidence fits best with theory 1, especially when you factor the Bible and the other reasons to trust it, as I must since I have concluded the Bible is trustworthy and references dragons and creature like Leviathan and Behemoth that sound like dragons. Even without the Bible, forget it entirely, so many cultures that never heard of the Bible accepted it as common knowledge that dragons lived alongside them. China is a huge example. Look into that.

Bishop Bell. Look into that. Look into other examples of art of dragons that match known dinosaurs, too. There are enough that are so close, treated as normal animals along with other animals we still have with us today, that I am convinced, even without considering the Bible.

Also, some of the fused creature depictions might be exaggeration in reverse; when dragons were rare, people who saw them may have tried to describe them to artists who didn't see them, and the comparisons to parts of known animals may have been the best the artists could do to depict them. Then, those depictions could have become seen as accurate. This makes sense. In this case, those things may actually be evidence FOR it. I think that possibility cannot be ignored, because we know that sort of thing goes on in human nature. That game where you whisper something along a chain of people, for example. It often comes out as something quite different from what it was. If a dragon was really spotted, but people in general didn't know what they looked like, it would be expected that they'd have to compare it to creatures the artist does know.

An interesting shift in people's attitudes towards massive reptiles, especially predators, occured once dragons went extinct (if you accept that dragons were real). It's easy, once they're gone, to suddenly lose all fear of them. Prior to the time after the middle ages, leading directly to the scientific revolution (coming from a biblical perspective primarily, mind you :), the mountain which had now grown to encompass much of the world as Daniel prophecied so long ago), dragons were to be hunted and wiped from existence. After this, when dinosaur fossils were discovered, they became really popular and many kids and adults like to imagine how cool it would be to see a living one (provided you were safely on the other side of a barrier with the ones thought to have been dangerous).

That shift in attitude corresponds perfectly with the theory that the dragons really were living alongside humans, but were hunted to death (and probably also didn't adapt well to climate change after Flood).

@ "I'm running outta time, lol" -- Yeah me too lol. Trying to get this posted tonight... zooming along...

Aliens -- This one is largely a matter of opinion right now. We really don't know one way or another, so in the interest of time I'ma leave it at that except to answer your question.

"Also, let me ask you this question -- if God only intended for life to exist on one planet, why did he make a universe that consists of trillions upon trillions of stars, so vast that Earth looks like a mere speck of dust within it? Why this incomprenshibly huge vastness? Seems rather useless to me... =P"

Under a boring, practicality-only view of life, I can see thinking that. I think it's 1) to give us a subtle hint at just how tiny we are compared to God :), 2) for sheer beauty and variety, 3) to help provide light at night, as Genesis says, and to serve as signs for the telling of time, but admittedly this would only require the Milky Way, 4) To allow for life to exist on Earth (this one is talking primarily about the huge distances between Earth and Sun, which I think counts under this topic, but also issues like distance from dangerous supernova, etc.), and probably other purposes. Are these things necessarily strictly practical? Well, depends on how strict you are about what is "practical." I often see practicality where others see mere emotional appeal, because emotions play practical roles too in life. I think it's very practical.

Also, if the white hole theory of creation is at least partly right, especially about the big ball of water at start (which Genesis appears to imply), the size would be required for laws of nature we know of to cause the formation of the heavier elements, before stars even formed. Novices ask "but why not just do that miraculously", but as I said, I think that word is largely a misnomer when it comes to creation. God has his own rules, his own physics, and this is just as natural (at least during the creation of nature :P) as the rules he creates for the nature. It makes sense that he would use those laws of nature to help the universe build itself that could do it without causing death or pain.

When I sculpt, I can go around the rules of "clay" (I use Sculpy, though, not actual clay) with various techniques not contained within clay (so miracles, in terms of clay), but normally when you do that the sculpture is too fragile and tends to break. It's better to use the rules of clay to your advantage as much as you can, but also use miracles (shaping of the clay) for what the clay itself can't handle. So avoiding thin components, or anchoring them down, and making sure different parts are fused together strongly enough before baking. This results in a "universe" (a Sculpy creation) which survives well on its own, using the physics self-contained within it.

There's another purpose that is very practical that I have thought of, though, considering "what would life have been like if there had been no Fall?" Lemme quote how I put this is an email to someone else:

"A sinless Adam and Eve could have had children, inventions could have happened (probably way faster and better than we have done), animals would have likely speciated anyways but without death (instead using migration to different environments if needed, but probably wouldn't be needed much; they could have just lived and let lived), etc. I've always imagined that had that happened, when mankind outgrew Earth, Mars and other planets would have become places for us to live with advanced technology (never failing), and we may even have invented somethiing like Warp Drive and spread to other star systems, terraformed, etc. -- no need for death."

Ad Populum -- I think I've pretty much covered this above. Put simply, this is the most oft-repeated reason to believe in evolution, and it's a fallacy. As a logician, I know that people usually resort to fallacies when they have no valid alternatives left (and are not willing to abandon previously-embraced ideas; have lost the ability to adapt their brains, or choose not to use it). Fallacy Fallacy says this does not disprove the idea, but it does amount to a really bad argument for it, and begs the question of why a valid argument isn't instead used as its best evidence. To answer that question I think I've covered that pretty much above too.

"I could shoot the same argument back at you -- creationism is based on the one argument that "one book says so", and that's that" -- That would be absolutely valid. IF the bible was wrong, then it would be Appeal to False Authority fallacy. However, once you realize that the Bible is trustworthy for the other reasons I've stated (the Bible itself, not necessarily translations, and including careful hermeneutical and contextual analysis), that the Bible is "telling it like it is", in this case the Creator simply telling us what he did, then the argument falls flat on its face.

"These people have been trained for years and performed exhaustive experiments, data collection, theorizing, scrutiny, peer review, and rigorous testing of theories." -- And none of it has supported evolution over creation. That says something. People like to claim it does, but when you don't take their word for it and actually look at the evidence yourself, and their reasoning, you see fallacy after fallacy based around patch after patch needed to force the evidence into evolution -- to fit the square peg into the round hole, to use an Apollo 13 analogy -- when creation fits the evidence naturally, including much evidence that could not have been known until very recently like DNA and fossil record, especially became known after Darwin.

"Science is a battleground -- any hypothesis that has a single bit of evidence against it is readily torn apart by other scientists." Except evolution, right. And that disconnect is telling -- evolution is never questioned, despite tons of "evidence against it" (but remember evidence must be interpreted; often the same piece of evidence is claimed by both sides to support their side). Critical analysis is never turned against evolution within evolutionary circles. Actually, Darwin himself used critical analysis to a degree against his own theory, but after evidence came out later that contradicted his predictions, that same honesty was abandoned by other evolutionists. Specifically about the fossil record, especially.

That battleground is what this debate is all about. But what is often missing, on either side and unfortunately among at least some on both sides, is a proper truthseeking attitude and technique, self-critical analysis, etc. Often even with the little things, scientists blatantly admit -- even take pride in defending -- that they blindly believe their own theories and work tirelessly to support them, regardless of what the truth is, and leave critical analysis to others.

Ha, NatGeo is on as I type this and the narrator just repeated the evolutionary chant, "scientists were shocked by" the findings they found. So many times, evolutionists (which is what they mean by 'scientists'; actually it said scientific community, but that especially is code for evolutionists today) are shocked by the findings. The real world simply does not fit their assumptions, time and time again, while it is perfectly consistent with creation.

That is the crux of this part of the battleground of True Science -- which is at issue whether evolutionary scientists admit it or not. The truth matters, even if it's about Evolution versus the Bible (or other things), and that's why this dogmatism for evolutionism is doomed if evolution is false. Eventually, at least some people find the truth, and it usually becomes common knowledge eventually. And I think most evolutionists care about the truth. (They simply have been taken in by the propoganda, believed what they were taught, etc. I could have been there; it's what I was taught, if not for being lucky enough to study logic and see AiG videos later.)

"This is how they arrive at their conslusions: logic and research." -- I wish that was always the case, but often it's "human reason" using primarily logical fallacies instead of sound and valid logic. Also, while I'm a logician not a scientist, even I have done enough research to show flaws that most evolutionists are not considering because they have NOT done the research.

Your post (or comment or whatever you call it here :P) illustrates this. You have repeated many ignorant claims that are put out by prominent evolutionary organizations and scientists and philosophers, like Dawkins, Eugenie Scott, that blogger guy whose name escapes me at the moment, etc. Books are put out by the supposedly most informed evolutionists that repeat these ignorant arguments, showing barely any knowledge of what creationist actually believe, or of the Bible. And many examples of older prominent evolutionists abound that aren't active or are deceased now.

What I see from evolutionists is an intense (but often failing to involve critical analysis) focus on specific focused studies, but a horrible lack of knowledge of any other issue related to origins. In their fields, they usually do not find anything that they believe supports evolution better than creation; in fact they see creation being supported and evolution appearing to be contradicted, but they assume that some other guy in some other field has the smoking gun of evolution. And the other guys in the other fields think the same thing. Because none have done the research into origins itself that I and many creationists have done, they cannot connect the dots and admit that creation is simply true and evolution has failed as a theory.

Put simply, virtually no evolutionary scientist is testing the hypothesis of evolution anymore. They just assume it is already a safe theory, or even fact, and does not need to be investigated at all. In their fields, how they relate to evolution is in coming up with interpretations of the data that fit it into the evolutionary theory. They will sometimes engage in self-critical analysis, and usally amongst the community at least engage in critical analysis in general, to debate various ways in which the data best fits within evolution. But the real key to this -- the question of whether evolution itself is true -- is not researched. This is left to blind faith.

"They don't go into it with their minds made up" -- That's what I see. They're told what to think in their education, and they usually don't think to question it. They go into it assuming their teach was right, with their minds made up. Also, again, I observe that many (myself included for a while) are tempted to WANT to believe it because it provides a justification for personal sin. Evolutionists usually have strong emotional reactions to this observation (sometimes mistaking it for an "accusation"), "but" that doesn't...

Ha, that show did it again. "Scientists expected Europa to be a dead world, but Galileo finds active systems." And they were shocked again. The evidence "caused me to say, I don't believe it!" In all fairness, they rethink parts of the theory of evolution "change our view of the evolution of Ganymede" (they come up with patches) -- but they never consider that perhaps the view of evolution itself is the problem? Under Creation, we have no reason to expect it to be a dead world. It is probably as young as Earth, even with the time dilation starlight theories.

What was I saying? That strong negative reaction to the observation about subconsious desire for evolution to be true doesn't disprove the observation. And in fact, I put "but" in quotes because perhaps it should be "therefore" it is probably true of a lot of people. People usually only get defensive in radically strong negative ways against "accusations" that are true, in my observation of human behavior at least. And in their less emotional moments, those people will usually also observe of themselves that they want to believe it, find it pleasing and the other not so (as you did a few times here).

I have to admit that now that I understand creation and evolution so well, though, I no longer have much desire for evolution to be true. Pretty much the only desire for that now comes from peer pressure. Which has never had any hold on me, so it's only a tiny desire, heh. And I especially want to believe in God and Creation now. I love God, and I love creation. Although this didn't happen until I finally had the clear logic that I could not deny and made The Decision.

So just to be clear, I am not saying this argues against the theory (either one). But it can affect what conclusions people come to. The subconscious can affect what the conscious concludes, and to ignore this very real psychological phenomenon just because the people in question are scientists is very unrealistic. Scientists are not magically turned into godmen who are immune from the temptations of human nature. Neither are logicians. :P No humans are automatically immune to this. It requires constant vigilence and self-critical analysis, and above all a desire for the Truth.

That clock ticks! Zoomon...

"BTW, Christ's resurrection is hardly an accepted fact -- lots of people even doubt that he existed" -- Of course they do. It's 2000 years after his life. This is a huge part of human nature -- the more distance in time and space between you and an unusual event, the less likely you are to believe it, even if it is true. Shortly after the Flood (if, for the sake of discussion, it occured as the Bible says :)), very few people would seriously doubt it, but only those actually on the Ark saw it themselves. At least some degree of faith is required by all but the original eight to believe it, and as time goes on, it is believed less and less, the account twisted into various legends all over the Earth.

This fact of human nature is apparently inescapable. But, by the definition of fact as that which is logically proven from the evidence (not just fitting it best among multiple theories, or rather that there may be multiple theories but these would require even more "miraculous" explanations to work around the evidence), his resurrection is still a fact. There is no logical way he could not have existed at least as a man, as far as I am aware. Evolutionist historians see his existence as a man at least as historical fact, at least at this point in time. Given that, to explain the events of his life, especially the ones after his death, heh, without resurrection would require other miracles to create the illusions of resurrection (or of death, but that one is especially illogical, considering the Romans were expert at this).

It is so easy to forget the details that factually back up past events, whether the event itself can still be called a fact or if it must now be retired to the status of theory, but that is not real science. That's just lazy ignorance. "Willful forgetting" as the Bible puts it.

"you won't find any contemporary sources outside the Bible speaking of him rising from the dead" -- Er, you'd have to carefully define "contemporary sources outside of the Bible." You have to remember that at the time there WAS no Bible -- not the NT anyways. That's like saying "you won't find any source from people who didn't know he rose from the dead saying he rose from the dead". Obviously, the ones who knew it were the ones whose writings were relevant to the NT. Also, I believe there WERE letters that did not make it into the NT for various reasons, mainly not believed to be Scripture. I don't know if any of these have survived to today, though.

"If anything is undeniable, it's evolution and a universe billions of years old. =P" Both sides can make statements like this. I even have, about biblical creation. :P

And again, by some definitions of "evolution", I agree with the statement. The billions of years thing is not undeniable, but for the most distant parts of the universe I do think billions of years took place under some kind of time dilation action (probably Humphreys' Starlight in Time White Hole theory). But I think the details are what evolutionists have wrong.

"Dark Matter -- For the record, evolution deals ONLY with the changes in allele frequencies between generations" -- Biological evolution, that is. Evolution as the general term for the whole worldview of atheistic evolution, including the Big Bang, and other things that also use biological evolution's idea of millions of years of death and suffering on Earth, though, does of course deal with astronomy and is the reason DM was concocted.

""Fact, not theory" -- Evolution is both a fact and a theory, actually. The fact of evolution is the observable phenomenon, backed up by such things as the fossil record, DNA, and observation. The theory of evolution explains how it happens. As I said earlier, evolution is a process much better understood than gravity -- it is only controversial among creationists who refuse to acknowledge the wealth of scientific data against their worldview. Sorry, but creationism has not a single ounce of evidence -- evolution and billions-year old Earth, does. I suggest that if you are this intent on proving evolution wrong"

I covered most of what you say here above before, but you get to a part at the end of this quote that needs more comment. I'm a little surprised you would say such a thing, knowing my views of truthseeking, openmindedness, etc. I don't care about proving anything wrong. Or right. I care about what the truth is. Whatever it is.

Me want truth! :P

hat you take a BA in biology or at least read some professional books on it. Second yeah. Degree in biology no. My degree is in English, and I'm also a logician -- what I study primarily; my "field" is the logical reasoning used by the sides of origins debate. The word games evolutionists play don't work on this logical English Major. And I don't have to fork over the dough to get a degree to read the facts on my own of specific topics. This is a common talking point evolutionist like to use -- and if I were writing scientific papers in biology, it would be fair -- but I'm just a human being trying to find the truth. :)

That said, I would SO love to get advanced degrees in all scientific fields, biology, astronomy, geology, archeology, history, etc. That would be a dream come true for me. Unfortunately I will need to become filthy rich before that's possible.

Anyways...

This is a process we've come to understand thanks to over a century of extremely rigirous testing. Wouldn't you call that more scientific than basing everything on an old book and some claims by people with no relevant education? =P I would, except that I'm smart enough to not rely on claims, and instead look into it myself. Do the research myself. This is why I'm a Christian today; I did the research and found it undeniable that creation, the Bible, and therefore Christ's gift of salvation were true. I refuse to base anything on a book, whether old or new, whether books or Book full of books, etc. I read the book and logically, causally think through what makes the most sense. I concluded the Bible is trustworthy, evolutionists are not. And other things.

"Sorry for the harshness. 8-)" -- You're just telling me where you're coming from. No need to apologize. :) You're being honest. I want that.

"Whew, that's all I can do right now. Hope you'll read it all and at least consider it -- after all, an open mind is, as you say, one of our greatest assets. And please, do yourself a favor and read some books and academic websites that explain evolution and why it's an accepted fact. If only to know the thing you're arguing against. =)" Yeah, have, but of course that process never ends. :) Same to you -- especially make sure you read up on Answers in Genesis. They're the most logical creationists I've found. Be careful with their view of the treatment of evidence versus presuppositions -- they're technically right on it but word it in easily misunderstandable ways IMO. But they are logical to a tee, extremely informed. They know all the best arguments for evolution and cite them over and over.

As an aside, that's yet another reason I believe creation over evolution. Evolutionists don't read the other side. They attack Straw Man arguments, over and over, despite the other side correcting the Straw Men over and over, they avoid quoting or apparently even considering the best arguments the other side has. Creationists -- AiG at least -- do the opposite. They quote the best arguments for evolution and logically analyze them. Objectively, even. To a logician, that's a majorly telling difference (and the logician says it should be telling to everybody else too :P).

"Finally, let me ask you again -- if God intended for life to exist solely on this insignificant speck of dust, why bother creating an infinitely vast universe around it?" -- In addition to what I said on this above, have you ever looked into just how tiny atomic particles (components of atoms and atoms themselves and molecules included) are, compared to this planet you call a speck of dust? How much comparable distance is between those specks?

And that's not even considering that -- apparently -- base particles exist comprising these atomic particles (particles really should be in quote marks at this level though; "particles") that are even smaller.

Think about that. Just more food for thought. :)

Whew, I reached a sort of end! Nowhere near as massive a reply as I would wish for to be complete, but this will have to do for this week... Now to see if this edit will even go through XD... Probably with tons of code errors. I'm up about three hours past when I should be since I gotta get up early tomorrow so no time to proofread. I'll just agree with your disclaimer about spelling/grammar errors and such and leave it at that.


 * does password recovery to even get into account to post this properly XD* --Bonesiii (talk) 06:49, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

This is Zoxara Tomana
From BS01.
 * I might applaud you for this, but I go for Old Earth Creationism and find it rather disconcerting you just dismiss it by saying there is no real evidence for it and the ways we try to provide evidence for it are flawed when you are coming from the opposite view. And before you throw your support behind the white hole distant starlight theory, note that White Holes themselves are still just theories, so that theory should be put aside until more evidence for white holes themselves is gathered and proven or dis-proven. Nor should you dismiss Carbon-14 Dating as bunk when there are methods for correcting and aligning the date to account for environment and radiation, it is more than just getting a ratio, there are obviously other factors. Nor should you ignore the fact that the Hebrew word used for "Day" in Genesis can also be translated as "Era" along with the odd order of "Evening and morning, the (previously described) day", whereas it would normally be "Morning and Evening, the (next) day".
 * Beyond wanting to mention those, I like this essay as a good argument against evolution, and if you could get it down to just pointing out the flaws of and arguing against evolution and not taking a side of Young vs Old Earth I would love to show this to my Biology Teacher and anyone else who believes in Evolution! I probably won't be around to reply further to this, so just email me.~Zo;Tomana
 * I would, but I have no idea what address to email you at? *looks around expecting he missed something* I'll presume you list it on BS01 and go look...
 * Real fast, just let me clarify where I'm coming from. Remember what I said about never entering this debate unless everybody (myself included) is open to the truth, whatever it is. If Old Earth creationism were the truth, I would want to know it. So please don't misunderstand my essay as saying "We can consider only atheistic evolution and young earth creationism in the search for truth." I focused on those two mainly because of space issues, and because I believe young earth creationism IS the truth, and evolution is the dominant belief that competes with my opinion.
 * So, if you want to print it out for the purpose you said and quote me clarifying this, feel free: "This criticism of Atheistic Evolution can be taken as endorsing Old Earth Creation or Young Earth Creation as more realistic worldviews. The writer of the essay believes in Young Earth Creation, hence the tack the essay takes, but agrees that OEC, and to an extent Theistic Evolution, are clearly closer to the truth than AE."
 * I presume you want reply to the details you raised via email. I'll probably reply here and quote it in an email so others can read my reply if that's okay with you. Don't have time at the moment. --Bonesiii (talk) 22:02, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks!
TLhikan (talk) 23:15, 13 June 2010 (UTC): Hey Bones, TLhikan here, just wanted to thank you for that very in-depth essay (although, as with most of your BZP posts, I kind of zoned out at the wall of text :P).

Essay
So sorry for the solemn title. I couldn't think of anything better. ... I've always followed the Bionicle Paracsomos, and I found the stories greatly entertaining. I've grown to respect you for your writing abilities. But after seeing your essay here, I now have another reason to respect you. You beliefs are firm, and your approach logical. Logic and truth, when sought, always seem to lead to the same conclusion. ''' Ridly Skree! ''' 19:17, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Flat Earth
Are you aware of WP:3RR? That was a content dispute and there are no exceptions to 3RR except BLP violations and obvious vandalism. Dougweller (talk) 07:19, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Well aware. It was Strebe who reverted three times. One of mine was adding a good suggestion that I thought would be an acceptable compromise but wasn't, not a revert to my original idea. I actually warned Strebe against his three reverts in the edit note, though I guess I should have mentioned the number. Ah well. A good compromise has now been reached (the OR has been taken out, and the current wording can be interpreted as nonliteral), so no problem now. :) Bonesiii (talk) 21:59, 29 December 2012 (UTC)