B5B-Creation
Graham Kendall
Modified 10/8/2005
Email grahamkendall74135@yahoo.com
I am found on IRC Efnet, Undernet, Dalnet as glk
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All are free to use any of this material without limit.
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==
California
In August, a conservative Christian private school in Riverside County and an
organization representing 800 Christian schools sued the UC system for
rejecting three of the school's courses as unacceptable for meeting UC entrance
requirements. One course is a creationist-oriented biology course; the others
are an English and a history course from a Christian perspective.
The Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta and the Association of
Christian Schools International are asserting a First Amendment violation. They
claim that UC is hostile to their religion and is using the coercive power over
admissions to impose secular views and deny qualified students a UC education.
The suit appears to be baseless -- a case of substandard academics hiding
behind a false cry of religious persecution. But the suit must be taken
seriously, because a victory by Calvary Chapel Christian would weaken UC's
ability to require strong curriculums and would open the door to more bad
science and sectarian courses in high schools.
UC and the California State University systems have the authority to determine
standards and qualifications for admission. One way they do this is to set
prerequisite subject requirements, known as a-g, for all applicants. By
examining textbooks and course outlines, a committee of UC admission officials
certifies whether courses that public and private schools offer are up to
standard.
The issue is not whether religious and private schools should be able to teach
religion or other courses tied to the core mission of their schools. They have
a right to. The issue is what can be used for college entrance requirements.
UC says it has certified about 80 percent of courses that California high
schools submit as prerequisite-worthy. Among the approved are three science and
40 other courses at Calvary Chapel Christian School.
But it rejected ``Special Provenance: Christianity & the American Republic,''
``Christianity & Morality in America Literature'' and a high school biology
course using a textbook with an explicitly anti-evolutionary bias. About the
latter, UC told the school that it must use a primary text that reflects
``knowledge generally accepted in the scientific and educational communities
and with which a student at the university level should be conversant.''
Most scientists consider the theory of evolution to be the central unifying
concept of biology, a key to understanding heredity, DNA, genes and
breakthroughs in pharmacology and agronomy. Courses that don't teach this are
deficient, their students ignorant.
Not all Christian schools agree with the suit or will be affected by it. The
science courses at Valley Christian, a high school in San Jose whose graduates
have attended every UC campus, already meet the prerequisite standards, as do
all courses except religion courses taught from a doctrinal perspective. The
biology course uses a non-religious text but includes a discussion on
creationism and ``intelligent design''; Valley Christian has been upfront about
that, Jonathan Burton, Valley Christian's principal of academics, told us.
``I've never felt that UC policies have violated principles we have tried to
teach,'' Burton said.
The suit against UC is part of a campaign by religious conservatives to put
public educators on the defensive and insinuate their beliefs into the
classroom. UC must stand firm, in defense of students who need to be taught
objective content and critical thinking.
==
The fundies tend to have more money, more political clout and more 
fanaticism than the centrists or liberals.
==
Barbara Forrest, a Southeastern Louisiana University philosophy professor gave
information regarding the history of the intelligent design movement
andcreationism. The author of "Creationism's Trojan Horse," Forrest painted a
picture of a covert religious movement ‹ one that presented itself as
scientific to the media and mainstream public. But under the surface, she said,
leaders plotted not only a revolution in science, but also of modern culture.
She outlined how intelligent design's founders wanted nothing more than to have
their concept permeate all religious, cultural and political life.
Forrest also pointed to an inherent contradiction in the movement ‹ even as it
presented intelligent design as science, its proponents actively courted
Christians and promoted creationist beliefs.
"Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the
idiom of information theory," William Dembski, one of the movement's chief
proponents, said in a 1999 interview in Touchstone, a Christian magazine that
Forrest cited in her testimony.
==
http://www.aclu.org/evolution/statements/forrest.pdf   analysis of ID
==
Dawkins, Richard.  15 April 1982.  "The necessity of 
Darwinism\ _New Scientist_, 130-2.  On 130:
   Darwin's theory [of natural selection] is now supported by all
   the available relevant evidence, and its truth is not doubted by
   any serious modern biologist."
==
Brown _The Darwin Wars_ (1999)

_Devil's Chaplain_ Dawkins
==
"Evolution is the cornerstone in modern biology . . Any student who is
deprived of instruction as to the prevailing scientific thought on
these topics will be denied a significant part of science education.
Such a deprivation through the high school level would undoubtedly
have an impact upon the quality of education in the state's colleges
and universities, especially including the pre- professional and
professional programs in the health sciences." 
-- Judge William Overton - McLean v Arkansas, 1981)
==
The "Wedge Strategy," is the long-term plan of Dembski and Discovery to replace
materialism with "a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."
Dembski says that being religious doesn't necessarily make all one's ideas
religious. He also argues that atheism is part of evolutionary theory.
The truth is, proponents of Intelligent Design ultimately have little
to contribute other than sanctimonious finger-wavings such as "Come to
Christ and give up your willful stupidity." 
==
I had great anticipation for the "Evolution Wars" three-part series in
the Sentinel, hoping just once, some form of public media would
explain a little about the creation-intelligent design side of things
so that the public could understand this controversy. We have all been
educated about evolution through the schools and media, and everything
is interpreted with one undeniable assumption that evolution is
absolutely true. That assumption is where we have a problem. We don't
have a problem with science, but with the interpretation of science.
Let's start with biology. Evolution claims life started with simple
forms of life that became more complex, with time and chance as the
cause. In all known life forms, the mechanism for replication depends
on the double-stranded DNA, or the single-stranded RNA. But there is a
catch: you need DNA to make proteins and you need proteins to make
DNA. The chances of one protein molecule having all the amino acids
arranged in the precise sequence to make a protein molecule are 10 to
the 130th power. That is one chance in 10 with 130 zeros. The genetic
information in the DNA cannot be translated except with many different
enzymes, which are themselves encoded. Also, the genetic code has
editing machinery that is itself encoded in the DNA. These are vicious
circles for those who believe in evolution.
The theory of Michael Beal's in the article is called the theory of
irreducible complexity, and it states if you take away one part of a
system, it does not work by lesser percentage points; it does not work
at all. He makes a good case example by demonstrating the precise
chain effect of 20 different proteins to cause the blood to clot. If
the blood doesn't clot, you die; if it clots too much, you die. Now
apply this same theory to the blood cell. A blood cell could not exist
without veins to carry it, a heart to propel it, a digestive and
oxygenating system to sustain it, a filtering system to clean it. So,
how could a blood cell ever come into existence without the whole
system? These examples are the tip of the iceberg to show the
impossibility of time, chance and human imagination coupled with art
to explain the diversity and complexity of this world.
Then there is the fossil record. There are billions times billions of
fossilized invertebrates (clams, snails, worms, sponges, etc.).
Nowhere on earth has a single ancestor of one of these been found.
There is not one single example of a transitional form between
invertebrates and vertebrates. Where is the evidence that the whale's
ancestors were land dwellers that evolved back to the sea? The oldest
known sea turtles were fully formed. Prehistoric bird and bat fossils
are shown to be full-fledged fliers.

To deal with the absence of transitional links, the late great
evolutionist Steven Jay Gould came up with the theory of punctuated
equilibrium, where as out of a dinosaur egg came a bird. Voila, who
needs transitional forms?
Scientists have given up trying to create life in a test tube. They
have bred more than 70,000 generations of fruit flies only to end up
with fruit flies with short wings, long wings, or curly wings, but
cannot breed anything more than a fruit fly. Natural selection is
happening so that species can survive, but no new information is being
added. The drug-resistant bacteria are a good example. These bacteria
are only resistant to all these drugs through breeding, but out in
nature they are just as vulnerable as the rest. We breed horses, dogs
and tomatoes to all different sizes, shapes and colors, but that
information already exists. Horses range from Shetland ponies to
Clydesdales, but you will never get a cow out of these genes. All 32
mammal orders appear abruptly in the fossil record. This suggests that
instead of evolution happening, what we are seeing is just the
opposite, loss of information, or extinction. We have birds with wings
that cannot fly.
I have, in a nutshell, barely skimmed the case for the
creationist-intelligent design side of this argument, and I have kept
religion out of it. But may I say, secular humanism is the philosophy
of naturalism (no god), with humans being the measure of all things,
including law, ethics, history and biology, with evolution being its
foundation. This is as pure a religion as creation or intelligent
design, especially for being based on an assumption.
---
Reply/correction
 When he cites the paradox of DNA being required to make proteins, but
proteins being required to make DNA, he fails to realize that RNA
appears to have preceded DNA, has the capacity to carry information,
and may act as its own catalyst.  When he claims that the likelihood
amino acids being arranged to form a given protein are astronomical,
this calculation assumes that proteins are formed by a purely random
process rather than one in which natural selection took part, omits
the fact that earlier life was undoubtedly simpler, and specifies a
given protein as that which must be formed through such random
combination.  But evolution does not consist of defining the goal to
be attained, then attaining by purely random means.  The aprioristic
calculation he is citing is meaningless as it is based entirely upon
a product which is specified beforehand, rather than an analysis of
the likelihood of the relevant processes.
Behe's claim that the clotting system is irreducibly complex (such
that every part must be in place for it to function at all) has been
refuted by a growing body of evidence.  For example, in both whales
and dolphins, Hageman factor 12 is no longer produced -- and this was
known as far back as 1969.  Likewise, pufferfish lack three of the
factors which are normally associated with blood clotting,  and they
appear to do quite well.  At the far end of the scale with its lower
differential pressure, lobster require only two factors.  Moreover, a
number of the factors associated with blood clotting have been traced
back their genetic origins in the digestive system, and it has been
shown by Russell Doolittle that a fully-gradualistic explanation of
the mammalian clotting system is possible, with the details worked
out by later authors.  Similarly, for a more primitive cardiovascular
systems, Mr. Woelfel might consult crayfish (with its vastly
simplified "open" circulatory system and hemolymph for blood), or
better yet, starfish.
He claims there are no transitionals between vertebrate and
invertebrate, but there are in the Cambrian era.  These include
pikaia (first thought to be a segmented worm, but later shown to have
a notochord -- a cartilage column serving as a primitive spinal
column), yunnanozoon, haikouella (which had a heart), conodont (which
had bony teeth), and the earliest known vertebrate -- cathaymyrus
diadexus (535 million years old).  Similarly, a transitional sequence
from land-dwelling mammals to whales now include:  pakicetus inachus
(mostly adapted to land), ambulocetus natans (somewhat like an
alligator), rodhocetus kasrani and indocetus ramani, and basilosaurus
(which would have appeared whale-like, but still had greatly reduced
yet complete leg bones).  Three such transitionals were already known
when Behe first claimed that they were impossible.  Moreover, genetic
analysis shows that the closest living relative of the whale is the
hippo, and whale embryonic development involves the growth of legs
which are found protruding even today in occasional adult whales. 
Given its skeletal features, permian era pareiasaurs (such as
deltavjatia vjatkensis from 255 million years ago) appear to be early
transitionals for turtles.  Similarly, the flightless, feathered
dinosaur sinosauropteryx prima appears to have been a transitional
for birds, and later transitionals appear to have been gliders.  As
for reptile to mammal transitionals, there exists a sequence
stretching from the synapsid reptile protoclepsydrops haplous 325
million years ago through at least fifteen known transitional
species, demonstrating the gradual evolution from the reptilian jaw,
teeth and skeletal systems to the mammalian 239 million years ago.
He states, "Natural selection is happening so that species can
survive, but that no new information is being added."  This and
similar statements echo the creationist claim that evolution can't
add information to the genome -- which is false.  There is whole-
genome duplication, gene duplication, segmental duplication by means
of retrotransposons which are themselves relics of ancient retroviral
infections, and even point mutations add information to  populations
through the introduction of new alleles.  Moreover, once genetic
material has been duplicated, it may obtain a similar function or a
new function  -- such digestive enzymes being reused in the blood clotting.
In his opening, he states, "We have all been educated about evolution
through the schools and media, ..."  Not so ­ judging from his
letter.  But I do not believe that he so much as his predecessors are
to blame.  American students are falling seriously behind in
science.  In biology, this problem is exacerbated by religious
extremists who insist on taking a literal or semi-literal
interpretation of Genesis which wouldn't have been regarded seriously
in the late nineteenth century, and then by a political movement
which seeks to tear down the Separation of Church and State and
impose their religious views upon the rest of us -- beginning with
the public educational system.  Intelligent Design is no more
scientific than geocentrism or the flat earth theory, and can only
serve to undercut the teaching of real science and advance the
political cause of the extreme Religious Right.
==
We express our deep concern about 
the education of our children. Specifically, we are concerned about 
efforts to supplement or replace the teaching of evolution in our 
public schools with religious dogma or unscientific speculation. 
Science classes should help provide our children with the tools and 
scientific literacy they need to succeed in a 21st century economy.
We are well aware of studies showing American children falling behind 
those of other nations in their knowledge and understanding of 
science. We certainly will not be able to close this gap if we 
substitute ideology for fact in our science classrooms - limiting 
students' understanding of a scientific concept as critical as 
evolution for ideological reasons.
   Publishers of science textbooks should not be 
required or volunteer to include disclaimers in textbooks that 
distort or misrepresent the methodology of science and the current 
body of knowledge concerning the nature and study of evolution.
Our nation's future rests, as always, in the hands of our children. 
We hope to have your commitment to ensure that our schools teach 
science, not ignorance, to our children as they prepare the next 
generation for the challenges of a new century.
==
The United States cannot accept efforts to undermine the teaching of science.
Our focus should be to raise the level of scientific literacy among our
citizenry because we face a critical shortage of scientists in the next two
decades. As a public research university, we have a special mission to educate
tomorrow's scientists and to support the science teachers who will inspire
young people to become chemists, geologists, biologists and physicists. Let us
use the evolution controversy to intensify our efforts to provide a world-class
education to our students and to support the faculty who engage in the
important research and teaching missions of our schools and universities.
==
Steve Abrams, the chairman of the Kansas state board of education, was
anything but coy about his views.  According to the Lawrence Journal-World
(September 24, 2005), "During a question-and-answer period to a mostly
receptive audience of church-going social conservatives fed up with
evolution, Abrams said one couldn't believe in the Bible and evolution. ...
'At some point in time, if you compare evolution and the Bible, you have to
decide which one you believe,' Abrams said. 'That's the bottom line.'"
==
We want to give students the tools to become critical thinkers and
to be able to discuss and reflect on philosophical questions. But, the
domain of the natural sciences is the natural world. Science is limited by
its tools -- observable facts and testable hypothesis. Because religious
beliefs are based on faith, and are not subject to scientific test and
refutation, these beliefs should not be taught in the realm of natural
sciences."
==
Supporters of intelligent design argue the concept is not religious
because the designer is never identified. 
But this morning, in the third day of testimony in a federal court
case challenging the Dover school district's inclusion of intelligent
design in biology class, an expert for the plaintiffs pointed to
examples where its supporters have identified the designer, and the 
designer is God.
"This means that we affirm that God is objectively real as Creator,
and that this reality of God is tangibly recorded in evidence
accessible to science, particularly in biology," [Johnson's] writing stated.

==
There is a lot of imperfection in nature. Evolution guarantees a good 
solution, but not the perfect solution. Since there is imperfection 
in nature's design then the intellegence designing nature cannot be 
infinte. Therefore god does cannot not exist if you believe that 
everything was designed fully formed and you believe god has infinite 
or near infinite intellegence.  
==
Does anyone know if the infamous "Discovery Institute"
has actually "discovered" anything yet? 
==
"There is exactly zero evidence for intelligent design," agreed Douglas
Futuyma, a biologist at the State University of New York in Stony Brook.
"Design advocates argue by claiming flaws or gaps in evolutionary knowledge or
theory, not by any positive evidence whatever for their theory."
"The only evidence that intelligent design is able to muster is the
observation that science has not yet explained everything, and
therefore design must be kept around as a default explanation for
what is left," said Kenneth Miller, a biologist at Brown University
in Providence, R.I.
"There is exactly zero evidence for intelligent design," agreed
Douglas Futuyma, a biologist at the State University of New York in
Stony Brook. "Design advocates argue by claiming flaws or gaps in
evolutionary knowledge or theory, not by any positive evidence
whatever for their theory."
==
"This is really an opportunity, to mobilize a new generation of
scholars and pastors not just to equip the saints but also to engage
the culture and reclaim it for Christ. That's really what is
driving me."
William Dembski ­ ID activist.
==
For some odd reason, IDers seem awfully reluctant to answer any of 
these simple basic scientific questions.  The best they can come up 
with seems to be "an unknown thing did an unknown thing at an unknown 
time using unknown methods".  And THAT is what they declare "a 
scientififc alternative to evolution".
They did everything you would do if you wanted to incorporate a
religious point of view in science class and cared nothing about its
scientific validity.
==
The scientists have recovered 250,000 yearly ice layers in Greenland.
In Antarctica, about 750,000 yearly layers have been recovered.
==
Intelligent design is ³an argument of ignorance² in that itıs based on the
premise that if we donıt understand everything, we will never understand it, so
we must seek supernatural causes.
No scientific theories are facts.  Rather, a scientific theory is
well-supported testable explanation that connects facts together.
==
In his opinion in Edwards v. Aguillard, Justice Brennan referred to the
three-pronged test of Lemon v. Kurtzman for determining whether an issue meets
the standards of the establishment clause. ³First, the legislature must have
adopted the law with a secular purpose. Second, the statuteıs principal or
primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion. Third,
the statute must not result in an excessive entanglement of government with
religion.²
==
The ID movement's greatest strength lies in its ambiguity. It makes no
claims about who the designer is or the steps taken to create life. ID
does not say whether the designer intervened in the history of life
only once or multiple times or even whether the designer is still
actively guiding the destiny of life on Earth.
They're taking advantage of the fact that Americans like to be fair, but its
really grossly unfair. They haven't done any science, and you don't
have the right to argue that anything you've done should find its way
into a classroom unless you've done the hard work that other
scientists are required to do."
The implication is that by destroying the idea that Man is the paragon
of God's creation, evolution robs life of meaning and worth. And by
limiting God's role in creation, evolution opens up the terrifying
possibility for some that there is no God and no universal moral
standard that humans must follow.
\On its website, the American Association for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS) stated that allowing ID into public schools will
"undermine scientific credibility and the ability of young people to
distinguish science from non-science."
In addition to sowing confusion about what constitutes proper science,
ID has the potential to drive people away from science. If classrooms
are allowed to become theological battlegrounds, then schoolchildren
will basically be told that science is hostile to new ideas and that
scientists believe in a ludicrous theory that negates the very
existence of God.

Intelligent Design "would become the death of
science if it became a part of science.
==
 A resurgent challenge to the teaching
of science has been mounted by evangelical Christians. Teachers are being
intimidated from teaching biological evolution by individuals and
organized groups. In a survey by the National Science Teachers Association
over 30% of public school teachers reported being pressured to alter
teaching of evolution. Well-funded and politically well-organized outfits
like The Discovery Institute and its subsidiary, The Center for Science
and Culture, in Seattle push demands to include "intelligent design" or ID
in public school science classrooms on local school boards, state
legislatures, and even in one instance the U. S. Senate. These efforts
represent an impediment to science education that the country can surely
do without.  If this country is to continue to benefit from a seemingly
inexhaustible supply of scientific discovery followed by innovative
technology, all obstacles to public school science education must be removed.
==
http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/intelligent.html   anti ID *
http://www.antievolution.org/  study of the movement *
==
Creationist arguments are like ducks in a shooting gallery. No matter how many
times you shoot them down, they just pop right up again.
==
The journey from Dayton to Dover was marked by a series of legal verdicts,
only one of which, the Scopes trial, favored creationism. In 1925, John
Scopes, a high school teacher, was convicted of violating Tennessee's Butler
Act, which prohibited the teaching of "any theory that denies the Story of
Divine Creation of Man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man
has descended from a lower order of animal." The verdict was reversed on a
technicality (the judge, instead of the jury, levied the $100 fine), so the
case was never appealed. In the wake of Scopes, anti-evolution laws were
passed in Mississippi and Arkansas, adding to those passed by Florida and
Oklahoma in 1923. Although these laws were rarely enforced, evolution
nonetheless quickly disappeared from most high school biology textbooks
because publishers feared losing sales in the South, where anti-evolution
sentiment ran high. 
In 1957, the situation changed. With the launch of Sputnik, Americans awoke
to find that a scientifically advanced Soviet Union had beaten the United
States into space. This spurred rapid revisions of science textbooks, some
emphasizing biological evolution. But the anti-evolution statutes were still
in force, and so some teachers using newer books were violating the law. One
of these teachers, Susan Epperson, brought suit against the state of
Arkansas for violating the Establishment Clause. She won the right to teach
evolution, and Epperson v. Arkansas was upheld by the United States Supreme
Court in 1968, only a year after Tennessee finally rescinded the Butler Act.
Finally it was legal to teach evolution everywhere in America.
==
For an example of the general idea (though it fails in this case), 
consider the common claim that people make to having 
had "direct contact" with God. The question about such experience is: 
Why is it impossible for naturalistic factors to 
be the cause of such an experience (as seems in fact to be the case)? 
The fact that such people commonly claim to "just 
know" that it was in fact God that they experienced is irrelevant, 
unless it can be shown that they could not have this 
subjective sense of "just knowing" if it were not the case that the 
experience in question was caused by God. Since the 
sense of "just knowing" things is *provably* unreliable with respect to 
metaphysical issues (see note below), it's 
extremely unlikely that any argument of this general kind will hold up 
even to casual examination.

 We know that "just knowing" is unreliable because, in a 
group of ten people there can easily be twelve or 
more mutually incompatible metaphysical claims all held because their 
holders "just know" they are true. Since, for any 
set of such mutually incompatible sets of ideas on the same issue, only 
one can be true, we know that eleven out of the 
twelve ideas (in this example) have to be false -- *and* we may have no 
reason to think that any of them is true, since 
all twelve of them could be false). Thus, right off the bat, there are 
two problems with such ideas: In general, they 
can't all be true even though they are held on the same basis (as far 
as we can tell), and, in many cases, we have no 
independent reason for believing that *any* of them are true (since, 
usually, no two will be simple negations of each 
other). This leaves the entire category of ideas that we "just know" to 
be true in a rather precarious state, at least 
with respect to categories such as theistic and other such beliefs 
where the people involved don't have a "database" of 
previously-acquired *knowledge* that could justify their conclusions.

In general, "just knowing" things is a poor substitute for actual 
cognitively established knowledge, though, in our 
daily lives we often have to make do with such intuitive ideas until we 
can do a better job of developing a rational 
understanding. That is, in deciding whether to trust someone or to try 
to do something, we often have to rely -- for the 
moment -- on "gut feelings" and such. But, for our life-long 
*philosophical* beliefs this is a truly serious mistake. We 
can't generally legitimately take "just knowing" as a basis for 
something like a belief in God or philosophical ideas 
generally.]

This same problem (of not disproving alternatives) permeates nearly all
argumentation in favor of supernaturalism:
Without the proof that whatever facts they are using could not have
naturalistic causes, it makes no sense to claim that
these facts are known to have, or even reasonably *believed* to have,
supernatural causes. Lack of knowledge of
naturalistic alternatives does not support supernaturalism. It supports
admitting that one doesn't know, which few
supernaturalists seem willing to tolerate.

The other category of argument is the purely philosophical
argumentation, like that of the ontological arguments. These
arguments suffer from other flaws, commonly errors of circularity and
argument by arbitrary definition (as in the case 
of the ontological arguments). There is no possible logical or purely
metaphysical argument that can possibly support
true supernaturalism, because the requirements of supernaturalism, by
definition, go beyond the power of both the
axiomatic and provable truths of metaphysics (having to do with
substance, identity, causation, and so on, not with
somehow "reaching out" of the natural world into another realm).
 
Naturalism, as a philosophical position is based on the fact that we
are born into and live our lives in the natural
world and on the fact that it is irrational to believe in thing for
which one does not have sufficient cognitive basis,
as well as on the logical impossibility of supernatural whatsits.
Naturalism is the default; we live in the Natural
world (or part of it, at least). Supernaturalism is *always* an add-on,
and it has none of the epistemological support
of Naturalism. It is not a default, it is not axiomatic, and it isn't
cognitively needed for science (or anything else),
so it has a special burden of proof.

Note that I did not say, above, " that it is irrational to believe in
thing for which one does not have sufficient 
*proof*," but only "sufficient cognitive basis," because not everything
is subject to proof in the sense of argument 
from premises to a conclusion. In particular, the axiomatic facts
themselves are not subject to proof. All attempts to
prove them have to circular (because they are already assumed in the
very process of setting out to prove anything at
all), or they have to propose that there is something metaphysically
prior to Existence that does not itself exist and
which can serve as the basis from which to prove the axioms. Of course,
such an assumption is logically contradictory:
There can't be anything prior to Existence (either temporally or
ontologically), because the only alternative to
Existence is pure and absolute nothingness.
 
The problem for supernaturalism is that it has no basis either in the
fundamental axioms or in the perceptual data of
our senses.

Nor, finally, does it have a basis in our non-perceptual experiences,
though this is where people commonly rest their
implicit "case" for supernaturalism.
 
If we first adopt the unfounded premise that the processes that
naturally occur in the natural world cannot possibly
include the processes of consciousness, *then* it becomes plausible to
suppose that consciousness is somehow distinct
from physical processes. *Conceptually,* it is sound to distinguish
between the mental and the physical, just as it is
sound to think of computations without bothering with the hardware
processes in a computer if we are talking about
software issues.

The mistake is in leaping from the conceptual distinction to the
metaphysical separation, to dualism. People suppose,
since they don't experience what they *imagine* physical brain
processes would feel like if consciousness were physical
brain processes, that there must be an *actual* distinction in the real
world between brain processes and those of
consciousness. This is on a par, roughly, with assuming that lightning
flashes and thunder are somehow metaphysically
distinct events from each other, rather than merely different effects
from the same cause. But, plausible or not, the
idea that lightning and thunder are evidence of truly separate
phenomena is not rationally justified, just as dozens of
similarly "plausible" ideas have turned out not to be justified
throughout history (especially in modern times, of course).
 
As far as I can see, the task is logically impossible, since anything
we can know of has to have some kind of contact
with our minds, and once it does, the experience of the contact becomes
a part of the natural world and thus subject to
the same logical limitations as anything else in our experience. For
example, once a person has a
direct-contact-with-God experience, that *experience,* by virtue of its
occurrence to a person in the natural world,*
becomes invalid as evidence of the existence of something beyond the
natural world. This is exacerbated by our inability
to find a way to provably exclude naturalistic causes for all such 
experiences, because we don't have a way to 
sufficiently limit the natural world such that we can rationally claim
to know that it cannot cause such experiences.
 
If you can't do this, or something essentially like it, all your
arguments for supernatural things become
false-alternative arguments or circular (or worse, of course). That is,
if you cannot eliminate naturalistic causes for
at least some of the "evidence" for supernaturalism, then you can't
really claim that it *is* evidence for
supernaturalism, because you have not eliminated the naturalistic
alternatives.

Usually, supernaturalists do not even make the attempt at this, but it
is necessary if their claims are to have any
cognitive soundness. When the attempt *is* made, I have yet to see even
one that was any good. Arbitrary assumptions are
usually rampant. For example, all the design arguments for God's
existence rest on various unsubstantiated assumptions
or premises, such as that, if there is a designer, that designer must
be God. They almost never consider the possibility
that if our universe does indeed have a designer, there is no a priori
reason whatever to suppose that that designer is
God (indeed, the Intelligent Design advocates will be faced with this
very issue if they ever succeed in proving design
in living organisms, but on an even worse scale, because it still won't
prove that the *universe* is designed, so not
only might the designer, if any, not be the designer of the universe,
but it might be merely some species *within* the
universe (as the Raelians actually claim, though with, as far as I can
tell, good basis).
These are the kinds of problems supernaturalism is faced with, and
which none of your arguments (nor those of anyone
else, as far as I have ever seen) answer.
That is, your argument in both the origin of life issue and the origin 
of the universe issue is an argument from our 
ignorance. You are saying, in effect: "We donıt have a normal
scientific/naturalistic explanation for the origin of the
universe or for the origin of life on Earth. Therefore something
supernatural caused the universe and something 
supernatural caused the existence of life on Earth."
Do you see the giant leap from, "We donıt have a normal scientific
explanation for the origin of the universe or for the
origin of life on Earth." to, " Therefore something supernatural caused
the universe and something supernatural caused
the existence of life on Earth."? How can you rationally get from the
first to the second without an *additional*
premise, such as:

  Anything for which we don't yet have a naturalistic
  explanation must have a supernatural cause.

I hope I don't have to belabor the point that this premise (or *any*
variant of it that would work in your argument) is
not sound.

An example of this mistake in another field is the hypothesis of Newton
that God might be "adjusting" the motion of the
planets to keep them from careening out of their orbits under their
mutual gravitational interactions and colliding with
each other. Newton, as brilliant as he was, nevertheless didn't know
*everything* there was to know about orbital
dynamics (it wasn't until well after his death that someone else showed
mathematically that such configurations of
bodies as those that make up our solar system are naturally stable -- 
and even self-stabilizing to some extent).

Similarly, it might not be for another two hundred (or a thousand,
etc.) years that we find *the* origin of life
explanation (though I think it will be more likely in the next few
decades, given the progress so far), or that we find
*the* cause of the universe (this is something we may never truly know,
because it is at least conceivable that we are
"informationally" isolated (though I doubt it), but we can't lapse into
supernaturalism until we have proved by logical
means that no naturalistic origin is reasonably possible).

Considering how young both questions are, and considering the continued
progress in both fields, you are prematurely
discounting the possibility of a naturalistic scientific explanation
for both occurrences.
     
Supernaturalism does not *expand* the range of scientifically viable
alternatives available, even though it might seem
to on the surface. This is because supernaturalism provides no
additional explanatory power above and beyond that that
could be present in the natural world itself. The fact is, the
introduction of supernaturalism *reduces* the total range
of real answers available, at least in practice. Even if we only
suppose that something *might* be supernatural, it
means we have to include "space" for "answers" that are supernatural
even though there cannot be, by the principle of 
naturalistic sufficiency, any test for supernaturalistic answers. If 
you believe that digestion *may* be supernatural, 
you will try to allow for the possibility of supernatural answers even 
though you have no possibility of ever having a 
supernatural answer that can be empirically tested. This means you will 
be using up at least some of your mental "space" 
for an idea that has no use but which you nevertheless feel that you 
must keep "at hand" in your mind, and this will 
effectively limit the range of *naturalistic* answers you can think of 
or adequately test, simply because your resources 
are in fact limited.

In the Dark Ages, people commonly believed (even more than they do 
today, if you can imagine such a thing) in ghosties, 
spirits, and various supernatural whatists. Like primitive people 
everywhere (usually at least), they imbued all kinds 
of events with supernatural significance.

In so doing, they also (though it is, sadly, little noted) restricted 
their mental processes in such a way that they 
could not entertain *many* naturalistic explanation for things that 
turned out to be true. We no longer suppose such 
things as that gargoyles may be inhabited by spirits so, if a gargoyle 
does something odd (like walking down the side of 
a building and buying a hot-dog), we'd very correctly want to know what 
was going on, and we'd try out all sorts of 
naturalistic explanations (such as that the gargoyle was actually a 
robot, etc.). But, if we lived in Europe in 850 
A.D., we'd probably *not* think to look for naturalistic causes (even 
aside from the lack of knowledge of robots in 
those days). Instead, we'd simply assume (or at least easily conclude) 
that the gargoyle's behavior was supernaturally 
caused. As with digestion, if we assume in any serious way even so much 
as that a phenomenon *might* be supernaturally 
caused, we undermine our efforts to find causes that, if found, would 
actually be useful to us (at least in 
understanding future events of the same kind, whether of digestion or 
gargoyles eating hot dogs). Several centuries of 
Western civilizations history was largely *lost* to such superstitions 
about a wide array of things, including the 
general nature of the universe, its origin, the nature of mind, and so 
on. People were generally trapped in 
supernaturalistic preconceptions and could not even usually *imagine* 
anything else (which is why they found it so easy 
to kill tens of thousands of "heretics"; in their own minds, their own 
views were so axiomatic, so "obvious," that 
anyone who disagreed with certain views was surely evil, or possessed 
by the devil (yet another supernatural entity 
without cognitive basis).
   
If there are truly real "rules/patterns" in the "spirit world," etc., 
and ones that we could conceivably detect 
(assuming we had any data from the spirit world, which, as far as we 
can tell, we don't),  we would then have no reason 
(if this were genuinely the case and if the relationship between the 
"spirit world" and physical reality were genuinely 
lawful), to regard the "spirit world" as anything other than a 
previously unestablished part of the natural world.

To show why this is so, we need only consider the distance between what 
you are suggesting here and the claim that God 
exists. One is supernatural only in a trivial sense (in the same sense 
that modern television might be regarded as 
supernatural by Archimedes, perhaps) while the other is supernatural in 
a truly radical sense (unless you are now going 
to claim that God is simple enough to meaningfully study by scientific 
means). The first is not necessarily even 
metaphysically special, but an omnipotent, omniscient, and eternal 
supreme being would be quite a different thing, both 
metaphysically and scientifically.

(This is yet another reason why the "Intelligent Design" gang (Dembski, 
Behe, et al) are doomed to failure of their 
primary goal (which is not science but promoting a belief in God); 
proving the existence of some supernatural designer 
in the first sense does not prove the existence of a designer in the 
only sense that would satisfy them.)
  
==
The "teach the controversy" approach -- the idea that intelligent
design deserves classroom treatment as a valid challenge to Darwinism -- is
actually a perversion of such eminently reasonable policies. Protections on
academic freedom assume an adherence to progressive and well-founded
intellectual subject matter. Those are criteria that intelligent design's
quack explanations, experiment or no experiment, will never fulfill. Still,
intelligent design is not without value. According to Cunningham, studying
intelligent design has one important function in the classroom: it is the
perfect demonstration of what a scientific theory is not.
==
Speaking at the monthly meeting of the Kansas board of education on
September 13, John Staver, a professor of science education and the
director of the Center for Science Education at Kansas State
University, delivered a message from the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, of which he is a Fellow.  He told the board,
"AAAS is deeply concerned about the changes that have been made in the
Kansas Science Education Standards in order to discredit the theory of
evolution," citing both the redefinition of science in the section on
the nature of science and the addition of "examples of facts that
supposedly provide evidence against evolutionary theory, and
statements that encourage students to distrust science."  "Some of
these are inaccurate," he explained, "and others are simply irrelevant
or misleading."  The full text of his statement is contained in a
press release from the AAAS.
The board was also taken to task for its attempts to compromise the
place of evolution in the state science standards by a group of
thirty-eight Nobel laureates headed by Elie Wiesel.  The letter
deplores "efforts by the proponents of so-called 'intelligent design'
to politicize scientific inquiry" and describes "intelligent design"
itself as "fundamentally unscientific because its central conclusion
is based on belief in the intervention of a supernatural agent." 
Evolution is described in the letter as "the foundation of modern
biology," and the letter expresses concern about the board's
recommendation to adopt standards that include scientifically
unwarranted criticisms of evolution.  Among the signatories are
recipients of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Physics, and Medicine or
Physiology, the Nobel Peace Prize, and the Bank of Sweden Prize in
Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
Closer to home, the Lawrence Journal-World reports (September 13,
2005) that Boog Highberger, the mayor of Lawrence, Kansas, publicly
complained that the efforts of the creationist majority on the state
board of education is hurting the reputation of the state.  Speaking
to the Lawrence Rotary Club about the city's vision for the future,
Highberger reportedly commented, "Lawrence has this vision thing down
... I wish I could say the same thing about our state board of
education. I don't think some of its members understand the national
damage they are doing to our reputation."  Lawrence is home to the
main campus of the University of Kansas, whose provost David
Shulenberger recently told the Journal-World that the debate over the
place of evolution in the state's science standards was damaging the
university's national reputation and its ability to attract the top
faculty and students.
==
Give me an ID-based methodology which can be used in any branch of the
biological sciences. Give me an insight into the processes we observe
and measure in the natural world for which ID provides a useful
theoretical framework. Give me something which ID can provide which is
anything other than an argument from incredulity or an attempt to
obfusticate by using complex mathematical techniques in an
inappropriate manner.
==
The fact that the assumption that no supernatural agency is involved has led
to the explosion in human knowledge we call science seems a pretty good
reason to carry on using that as a basic assumption.
==
The Grand Canyon was formed millions of years ago, said William
Ausich, president of the Paleontological Society.
==
I have, on occasion been wrong in the past, and will continue to occasionaly
be wrong in the future.  However I don't continue to hold onto wrong ideas
in spite of the evidence.  That is what separates me, and others, from 
Creationists.
==
 Our faith is not dependent upon human knowledge and scientific advance,
but upon the unmistakable message of the Word of God. (Billy Graham)
==
As for intelligent design; it is not a scientific theory despite its 
proponentsı insistence that it can be. It is actually science in 
reverse. Intelligent design often must assume design in order to 
prove that there is a designer but always fails to explain the nature 
and origin of the designer. Without proof of a designer the main 
hypothesis of this ³theory² crumbles.
In short intelligent design tends to look more like politicking than 
real science and has absolutely no place in any classroom anywhere. 
It is a pseudoscience that looks more like metaphysics, theology or 
philosophy. It is just creation theory wrapped in a shiny new package 
and offers nothing new to scientific discovery.
==
D. R. Humphreys presented Scriptural evidence that God originally created the
Earth as a sphere of pure water. One of the Scriptures is the last part of
2 Peter 3:5 (NASB): ". . . and the earth was formed out of water and by
water." Shortly after that, God must have transformed much of the water into
other matter, such as iron, silicon, minerals, and rock.
==
Romans 5:12 teaches that death came after the Fall of Adam not before.
The Bible clearly teaches that death came as a result of Adamıs sin.
==
Ross teaches that Neanderthal Man was only a bipedal mammal without a
soul. Question: Where has Ross been since 1975 when Neanderthal was recognized
as being fully human?
Ross also tells us, with a straight face, that God made man-like creatures
before He created Adam! He wrote: ³Starting about 2 to 4 million years ago, God
began to create man-like mammals or ıhominids.ı These creatures stood on two
feet, had large brains, and used tools. Some even buried their dead and painted
on cave walls. However, they were very different from us. They had no spirit.
They did not have a conscience like we do. They did not worship God or
establish religious practices. In time, all these man-like creatures went
extinct. Then about 10 or 25 thousand years ago, God replaced them with Adam
and Eve.² To think they killed a tree to print such tripe!
He teaches that God created various creatures at different times through the
ages.
==
Dr. John Howitt wrote to nine leading universities asking appropriate
professors if they considered the Hebrew word yom (day), as used in Genesis 1,
accompanied by a numeral to be properly translated as a normal day, an age or
either day or an age. Oxford and Cambridge did not respond, but professors at
Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Toronto, London, McGill, and Manitoba all agreed that
it was a normal day!
University of Oxford Hebrew Professor James Barr admitted that to his knowledge
there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university
who does not believe that the writer of Genesis 1-11 intended to convey to
Bible readers the idea that creation took place "in a series of six days which
were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience." 
==
North American Mayflies.  The males don't even have mouthparts, and they die
in 48 hours, after mating. They emerge in May. Were they aboard the Ark?
==
A new study conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew
Research Center for the People and the Press.
According to the poll, 64 percent of Americans favored teaching creationism in
addition to evolution. The poll also showed that 42 percent of Americans hold
strictly creationist views. Those respondents agreed with the statement "living
things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time." Almost
half agreed that humans evolved over time, and of those 18 percent said that
evolution was "guided by a supreme being," while 26 percent of them thought
natural selection drove the process.
===
According to Newsweek in 1987, By one count there are some 700 scientists with
respectable academic credentials (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life
scientists) who give credence to creation-science... That would make the
support for creation science among those branches of science who deal with the
earth and its life forms at about 0.14%
Note that this refers to polls and studies made in the USA. In Europe
the percentage of scientists who do not accept evolutionary theory is
vanishingly small.
==
Fundies come to me, and tell me: "No. Evolution cannot be true. God is a
magician.
He created the laws of the universe, just so he could promptly break them by
performing miracles. That picture scientists have reconstructed is nonsense.
God put together some powdered rock, uttered a word or waved his magic wand, or
something, and there, poof, in a cloud of smoke, was Adam, fully formed. That
is the way it happened, and if you claim anything different, you are an enemy
of God, and you are trying to destroy him!" 
==
There is not a single piece that ID has placed in our scientific knowledge.
You won't find a list of these things at the Discovery Institute because there
are no ID scientific successes. The farce is that they have lists of scientists
that were or are religious and state their scientific successes without telling
anyone that usually these guys were responsible for kicking out an ID piece
from where it didn't belong. These guys are known for their scientific
contributions and not their ID contributions. This is why many scientists
define science in such a way that ID is excluded from consideration. It simply
has never worked, and it has been a monumental waste of time.
==
Intelligent design fails as science because it does exactly that
- it posits that life is too complex to have arisen from natural
causes, and instead requires the intervention of an intelligent
designer who is beyond natural explanation. Invoking the supernatural
can explain anything, and hence explains nothing.
==
If creationists really wanted to prove their point, they'd set up a zoo with a
pair of every "kind", and then  run it with a staff of just 8 people, for a
year.
==
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher-Lightfoot_Calendar   4004 BC
==
Percival Davis co-wrote a book titled "Case for Creation" with young-earth
creationist Wayne Frair 
==
A spokesman for the National Center for Science Education, which tracks
intelligent-design skirmishes around the country, said anti-evolution forces
typically rev up their campaigns when state science standards are reviewed.
The center counts 69 recent clashes involving intelligent design in 27 states,
including highly publicized battles in Kansas, Georgia and Pennsylvania.
President Bush gave supporters of intelligent design a huge boost earlier this
month when he said both theories should be taught "so people can understand
what the debate is about."
==
Two bad ideas in one: A Florida state House committee voted 6-2 to forward
on H-837, a bill giving university students a legal cause of action to sue
universities and professors who "ridicule" their beliefs.
==
The ID movement is first and foremost concerned with getting its views taught
in public school science classes.  They are aiming their ³teachings² at a
captive audience of kids who certainly lack the background knowledge to spot
whatıs wrong with their claims. The fact that many teachers simply avoid
evolution in high school: sort of like teaching physics without teaching
anything about the Newtonian laws of motion, QM, relativity, etc.
==
 Iıd like to share with you an experience Washington State had in the 1990ıs
  Walt Brown showed up at a high school in Aberdeen and instructed the students
on creationism, including the origin of the Grand Canyon and how it could have
formed rapidly.  It was a very slick presentation and left the students
entranced.  Shortly after, Dave Milne, a college biology professor showed up
and not only discussed evolutionary biology, he specifically discussed
intelligent design and creationism.  He took the discussion farther using the
creationistsı own materials than they would have liked.  When Dave Milne showed
a diagram of the Grand Canyon with a small chariot embedded in one of the
canyonıs strata, the students were outraged asking, ³Are you telling us that
the Grand Canyon was formed during the Great Flood?!²  Milne smiled and said,
³Why yes.  Thatıs EXACTLY what Walt Brown was suggesting.²
The students were outraged and the teachers were terribly apologetic, unaware
of the extent of Walt Brownıs own beliefs.  This is what will ultimately need
to be done with the citizens of Kansas.  Protecting them from themselves is
ultimately a losing strategy for all.
==
Why should ID be singled out for special treatment in the classroom? Almost
every subject beyond basic maths and english has its fringe theories. If we
give in to ID, whoıs to say we wonıt have to start ³teaching the controvery²
regarding subjects like astronomy (astrology), geography (young-earth
creationism), biology (ESP, auras), or chemistry (alchemy). Creating a
non-controvertial history curriculum is tough enough these days. Imagine trying
to do it while catering to every fringe group with a mission. Impossible.
==
ID isnıt wrong so much as it is meaningless, because it consists of nothing
more than stale and erroneous criticisms of evolution.  
At best they will simply ignore you and proceed to the next bogus claim.
==
Advocates of Intelligent Design claim the position of our planet and the
complexity of particular life forms and processes are such that they may only
be explained by the existence of a creator or designer of the universe.
Such claims, however, are premised on 1) the arbitrary selection of features
claimed to be engineered by a designer; 2) unverifiable conclusions about the
wishes and desires of that designer; and 3) an abandonment by science of
methodological naturalism.
Methodological naturalism, the view that natural phenomena can be explained
without reference to supernatural beings or events, is the foundation of the
natural sciences. The history of science contains many instances where complex
natural phenomena were eventually understood only by adherence to methodological
naturalism.
==
William Martin, a Rice University fellow in religion and public policy, says
the intelligent design battle cry is that evolution is unproved, "and here's an
alternative we believe is more appropriate."  Martin, author of With God on Our
Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America.
==
Republicans and conservatives are divided over intelligent design.
Seven state Republican parties ‹ Alaska, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri,
Oklahoma, Oregon and Texas ‹ have "anti-evolutionist" platform planks
that support teaching creationism and/or intelligent design,
according to the pro-evolution National Center for Science Education.
==
Percentage that believe the following are "definitely" or "probabaly" true:

Evolution: 55%
Creationism: 58%
Intelligent design: 31%

Source: USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll Aug. 5-7 2005  of 1,004 adults 
==
The stars are magic! They led the three wise men to Jesus. So why should I not
believe in horoscopes?
==
McCain told the Star that, like Bush, he believes "all points of 
view" should be available to students studying the origins of mankind.

==
The Dover school district requires that biology classes, in addition 
to teaching evolution, include a one-minute statement that explicitly 
mentions intelligent design and a book on the subject published by a 
Christian foundation. That policy ‹ believed by activists on both 
sides to be the only one of its kind in a U.S. school district ‹ goes 
on trial Sept. 26 in a federal lawsuit filed by 11 parents against 
the Dover Area School Board. Seven school board members who support 
the policy are on the ballot less than six weeks later, up against 
challengers who say intelligent design is a religious idea that 
doesn't belong in science class.
==
Intelligent design is not a scientific discipline and should not be 
taught as part of the K-12 science curriculum. Intelligent design 
has neither the substantial research base, nor the testable 
hypotheses as a scientific discipline. There are at least 70 
resolutions from a broad array of scientific societies and 
institutions that are united on this matter. As early as 2002, the 
Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement 
of Science (AAAS) unanimously passed a resolution critical of 
teaching intelligent design in public schools.
The intelligent design/creationist movement has adopted the 
lamentable strategy of asking our science teachers to "teach the 
controversy" in science curriculums, as if there were a significant 
debate among biologists about whether evolution underpins the 
abundant complexity of the biological world. 
==
If we teach Intelligent Design in school, it should be in a political
science class.  ID advocates are very good at politics, but they are bad at
everything else, particularly science.  
==
What some are proposing is that we return to the Middle Ages? We all know 
what it was like when we let the Church decide scientific matters.
==
Consider the true horror of politicians dictating science. Many
Russians died due to starvation caused by stupid Lysenko/Stalin  science.
Stupd science existed because the politicians decided it was
more important to bow to the state. Now we have IDers
advocating stupid science be taught once again.
Totalitarians, like the religious wrong, never learn.
==
Once the crappy design of many features is considered, the only logical
Designer is Coyote Trickster.
==
Wilder-Smith was a pharmacologist. He opposed evolution.
==
There currently is no data to support ID at all.  There will be no data unless
the IDers find a way to test the supernatural.  If it is allowed into the
classroom, then we have to let EVERYTHING in the science classroom,
evidence or not.
==
The bible DOES CLEARLY STATE that the earth and everything on
it was formed in 6 literal days. It states and there was a morning
and an evening, another day. So, you can't blame some people for
sticking their faith in words which God had inspired. What YEC is
saying basically is, if the Bible isn't correct, then it's a lie.
This would mean God is a liar or deceiver.
==
God exists, wants us to know that he exists, created us and everything around
us, but carefully hid from us any evidence of these facts.
==
Letter written to D. James Kennedy by a Christian astronomer.

Young earth creationism, namely a belief that the universe is less than about
10,000 years old, together with other dogma, in particular a global Noahıs
flood about 1600 years after the creation, is in my mind a disease that has
infected a large fraction of the evangelical community in the USA since World
War II, and does not necessarily have much to do with the bogy word
³evolution². In fact many evangelical scholars in the late 19th century and
early 20th century, such as Charles Hodge and Benjamin B. Warfield, accepted
that the earth was probably very old, even if they had problems with evolution.
The whole issue of a young earth creationism was revived by Henry Morris and
John Whitcomb Jr. with their book ³The Genesis Flood² in 1961, which was based
on the writings of the Seventh Day Adventist George McCready Price before World
War II. 
It is true that evolution as we understand it requires long periods of time,
but some astronomical processes also require long periods of time (and others
short periods of time), quite independently of any assumptions about evolution.
Astronomical timescales are determined from the empirical evidence, not on any
assumptions about evolution. So called ³evolutionists² do not need long periods
of time, long periods of time are just determined by looking at the evidence.
Unlike some of the leaders in the creationist community, who I have every
reason to believe are knowingly bearing false witness in some cases, as I can
tell by what they say, I have every reason to believe that you are just
misguided, and have bought into this whole business of young earth creationism
simply because you have not thought through the whole issue properly, and
acquainted yourself with the science. It appears that you have been persuaded
by some of the leaders in the creationist community, and are propagating these
errors to other Christians. 
The impression you give in your two broadcasts is that there is a world wide
conspiracy in astronomy and geology to cover up the evidence that the earth is
no more than about 10,000 years old, and that somehow geologists with their
dating methods are evil and deliberately manipulate dates because they do not
want to be accountable to God. You stated several times that over 99% of all
geochronology gives relatively young ages for the earth. Indeed many rocks can
be young, but many can be old; however, the age of the earth, the moon, the
other planets, the sun, and the Solar System as a whole, have been dated to be
4.5 billion years old. These are based on many independent assumptions, and if
different and independent assumptions generally agree, there is every reason to
accept this figure. There is no argument that the Solar System is about 4.5
billion years old, rather than about 10,000 years old, nor that the universe as
a whole is about 14 billion years old. The empirical evidence is just too
strong, and anybody who denies this is in effect denying that there is such a
thing as objective truth. 
One matter that really puzzles me is that several times you say that evolution
is impossible even in trillions of years, yet you make an issue out of a mere
4.5 billion years. All of the specific errors concern the second half of your
broadcast on May 25, 2004 as follows: 
(1) Meteorites: You stated that they are made up mostly of nickel, and stated
that this element is rare on the earth, and none are found, except obviously
for freshly fallen meteorites. This is completely wrong, as far as I know no
meteorites containing mostly nickel are known. Nickel is found alloyed with
iron in iron meteorites, is always significantly less abundant than iron, and
iron meteorites make up about 5% of meteorite falls. Moreover, when exposed to
water and oxygen, the iron and nickel will weather with time, and be difficult
to distinguish from terrestrial rocks. 
You also stated that no micrometeorites have been found in sediments, but for
the same reason as stated above, reactive elements like iron and nickel will
readily react with water and oxygen over time, and be difficult to identify as
having come from meteorites. Of course the elements themselves in a combined
state can be identified, and in the case of the rare element iridium, can be
identified as being of extraterrestrial origin. 
Finally, you stated that you had performed some boring in the ocean and found
nothing. Fine, OK, but could you say where and when you did this boring, what
equipment you used, and your results. 
2) Cosmic dust: You stated that the Voyager space probe(s) found three huge
rings of dust between Mars and Jupiter, but the Poynting-Robertson effect,
which you described with a bit of detail, would cause this dust to fall into
the Sun in a relatively short period of time. That is certainly correct, but
what you did not say is this dust can be shed by comets and produced by
collisions. For the former we can see this process happening today. A
particularly good example was Comet Hale/Bopp in 1997 where you could look up
in the sky and see a large dust tail. For the latter, all the asteroids we have
looked at are pock marked with many craters, so obviously impacts have
happened, and dust will be thrown out into orbit around the Sun in such
collisions.
3) Jupiterıs moon Io: You stated that scientists were surprised to discover
from Voyage that Jupiterıs moon Io was bubbling over with volcanic activity
That is correct. However, you also stated that if the Solar System were
billions of years old, it should have long ago cooled down and all activity
should have stopped, thus violating all physical laws. Even if the source of
heating was unknown, this does not argue for a young Solar System given that
our own moon has cooled down, as well as the other moons of Jupiter. In fact Io
is in a tidal tug-of-war between Jupiter and the next moon out, Europa, and
heating caused by the tides match the heat dissipated by volcanic action.
4) Red Sirius: You stated that the brightest star in the night sky, Sirius, was
reported to be red by the Egyptians, Romans and Greeks, that is correct. You
also said that it is a white dwarf, that is technically not correct. Sirius is
a binary star consisting of a bright white star known since antiquity, and a
very faint white dwarf, which was only found in the 1800s. Exactly why the
Egyptians, Romans and Greeks claimed it was red is not very clear, the most
plausible theory is related to its helical rising at the time the Nile flooded,
and when low down in the sky will appear red, as do the sun and moon. Being so
bright the effect of atmospheric absorption will be more noticeable than any
other star. Another theory is that the ancient writings have been mistranslated
or misinterpreted. 
You implied that our knowledge of stellar evolution is so bad that the white
dwarf companion of Sirius was a red giant less than 2000 years ago. If that had
been the case, the red giant would have been nearly as bright as the moon,
there would have been a spectacular display of the ejected gas when the white
dwarf threw off its outer layers, which would still be visible today. None of
this has been observed, and the white dwarf, though hot by our standards, is
much too cool to have been produced only about 2000 years ago, unless you
assume that all the laws of physics are wrong, but then concerning Io above,
you used the laws of physics as part of your apologetics. 
Why the Egyptians, Romans and Greeks claimed Sirius was red is a bit of a
mystery that may never be fully resolved. A very unlikely astrophysical
explanation is that a cloud of dust passed between Sirius and us, causing
Sirius to be reddened, and has since cleared away. The ancient Chinese recorded
Sirius to be white, and they are considered to have made reliable records that
can be backed up in the case of planets, comets and supernova explosions, which
can be checked independently. 
5) Comets and the Oort cloud: This is one of the favorite arguments used in
creationist apologetics, and unfortunately you are no exception. You stated
that the Oort Cloud is merely a belief in the spirit of Hebrews 11:1, which you
quoted, namely that scientists need it to explain where comets come from in
order to explain why we see them if the Solar System is billions of years old,
instead of a few thousand. Even though the Oort Cloud has not been seen
directly (yet), scientists do not believe in the way of Hebrews 11:1 that it
exists, but it is inferred from the orbits of long period comets, which have
orbital periods from 200 years (which is an arbitrary figure), up to about a
million years. Those comets with orbital periods of about a million years spend
most of their time out at great distances from the sun at what is assumed to be
the Oort Cloud. As a very small proportion of the comets have been discovered,
it is likely that there is a very large number of bodies out at the Oort Cloud.
You stated that we ³know² in two million years all the comets, long and short
period, would have disintegrated if the Solar System were that old. In fact
as many comets can survive several passages of the sun, but some cannot, comets
with orbital periods of about a million years would still be around, and this
makes no assumptions about comets on orbits that do not take them into the
inner Solar System, but are later perturbed by passing stars.
Another problem with your apologetics for the non-existence of the Oort Cloud
is that it may be directly observed at some point in the future as our
instruments improve. If this happens, some Christians will get egg on their
faces who use this argument. This has already happened twice in the last few
years. For many years creationists maintained that the Kuiper Belt, which is a
region of icy asteroids at about and beyond the distance of Pluto, did not
exist, because it had not been seen. Well, in the early 1990s objects were
found it in, and a figure approaching 1000 objects are now known. In fact Pluto
itself is probably a large member of this group. The same happened with planets
orbiting other stars. Before any were discovered, creationists maintained on
some strange theological grounds that they did not exist, but the first was
discovered in 1995, and over 130 are now known. In both cases, for a number of
years after the discoveries creationists lived in denial claiming that Kuiper
Belt objects and planets orbiting other stars did not exist, just as some
member of the Roman Catholic Church denied that Galileo had seen moons in orbit
around Jupiter. In the end, with the weight of evidence so strong, creationists
quietly back-peddled, but probably not before damage was done to the image of
Christianity. 
Incidentally, in 2003 an asteroid called Sedna taking over 10,000 years to
orbit the sun, was discovered. It is in an orbit between the Kuiper Belt and
the presumed Oort Cloud. 
6) Salt in the ocean: This is another classic creationist apologetic, where a
false uniformitarian assumption is made about the accumulation of salt, sodium
chloride, in the oceans. In fact there are processes that remove as well as add
salt into the oceans, which have to be taken into account. Some compounds of
aluminum stay in the oceans for a very short time, so by you making the same
assumption for them, you can state that the oceans are only about 100 years
old. In fact because different substances have different accumulation and
removal times, based on these alone you can ³date² the oceans to any age you
like between 100 years and billions of years, just pick a figure.
7) Helium in the atmosphere: You started by mentioning hydrogen in the
atmosphere, which presumably was a slip of the tongue, because you then went on
to talk about helium, which is the product of most forms of radioactive decay
in the earth. You stated that if the earth were 4.5 billion years old there
would be massive amounts of helium in the atmosphere which cannot escape, so by
there being only a very small amount of helium present implies that the earth
is young. As any first year chemistry student would tell you, helium is a very
light and chemically inert gas, and is used in balloons. Being light and inert
it will readily escape from the earth, so your statement that it cannot escape
is patently false.
Hydrogen is even lighter than helium, but of course nearly all of it on and
above the earthıs surface is combined with oxygen to form water. 
8) Radiometric dating: You stated that rocks were dated from a Hawaiian volcano
that erupted in 1800, and huge variations in ages were found using the
potassium-argon method. Potassium-40 has a half life of just over a billion
years, and cannot be used for rocks younger than about 100,000 years old simply
because not enough potassium-40 has decayed to give meaningful results. It is a
bit like using the counter in your car to measure the length of your garage, it
is a far too coarse a measuring tool for the purpose. Also, it is well known
that if rocks embedded in lava have not been completely melted, their ³clocks²
may have not properly have been reset. 
9) Skull 1470: I am not familiar with this and the anthropologist Richard
Leaky, but again you stated that dating methods are completely unreliable. In
particular you stated that the dating methods used to determine the age of the
earth are so unreliable as to be useless, implying again that the earth is
young. 
Unfortunately, your witness for Christ can be seriously undermined by your
incorrect science, and thus your apologetics on other matters such as abortion
can loose credibility in the eyes of those who have some scientific knowledge
What happens to a student who is a devout Christian, and has bought into young
earth creationism, then goes to college and studies geology or astronomy, what
happens to his faith? What if his professor is a Christian? No wonder many
Christian parents complain that their children drift away from Christianity
when they attend college. Young earth creationism is just as false as
flat-earthism or geocentricism, and claiming that it is true, undermines the
whole meaning of truth, particularly in a post-modern society where truth is
considered as relative. This is the legacy of young earth creationism: The
non-Christian is handed what appears to be a valid reason to reject the good
news of Jesus Christ. And when the fallacies of young earth creationism are
finally discovered, disillusioned Christians may relinquish their faith.
Another legacy is that Christianity is perceived as residing in the ghetto of
anti-knowledge and anti-science, thus undermining its influence in society.
With the brains God has given us, and such a fabulous universe to study, I
think that young earth creationism sells God very short. As Christians we
should celebrate that we can study Godıs creation using modern science, far
more than the ancient Hebrews could have imagined, rather than skulk in the
darkness of deliberate ignorance with the fear that science will undermine our
faith. 
The real irony of young earth creationism is that its proponents, more than
many other Christians, keep claiming that they have the truth, yet when
confronted with the irrefutable evidence that the universe is ancient, such as
seeing light from distant stars, are unable to bring up any plausible arguments
or evidence, and often resort to arguing for some form of a deceptive creation
with the appearance of age. This not only contradicts objective truth, it of
course also contradicts Romans 1:20. 
==
In his 2004 book The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason,
Sam Harris notes that humans' unceasing desire for knowledge has always
presented religions with a problem: "Every religion preaches the truth of
propositions for which it has no evidence. In fact, every religion preaches the
truth of propositions for which no evidence is even conceivable. This puts the
'leap' in Kierkrgaard's leap of faith."
And there's nothing like a good miracle to put some spring into that leap. In
the struggle among religions to claim hearts and minds, those with the most and
the best miracles have a big leg up. 
Creationism is particularly effective, instantly providing the believer with at
least 13 million miracles (a conservativeestimate of the number of species on
earth, each of which, according to most versions of intelligent design, was
specially created).
The creationists know that the more complex our knowledge of the universe
becomes, the easier it is to keep the scientific waters muddied. Doing so
allows them to "see" physical evidence of God's handiwork -- the so-called
"irreducible complexity" of, say, the cell or the bacterial flagellum -- and
that makes it impossible not to believe. 
In contrast, even if the theistic evolutionists' God has the power to perform
crowd-pleasing miracles such as pulling bunny rabbits or butterflies out of
thin air, He doesn't indulge in them. His miracles lie in the distant past,
sometime between the origin of the universe and the origin of life on Earth.
He's had to make do with less flamboyant miracles, building into the initial
conditions of the universe such marvels as the half-life of ytterbium, the
freezing point of water, and the possibility of transposable genetic elements
 Not the sort of stuff people come to hear about on Sunday morning.
And if the God of evolution has indulged in any macro- or micro-management of
the tree of life since that time, then He's not really that easy to distinguish
from the God of intelligent design. 
(Suppose, say, that He effected a change in George W. Bush's heart so dramatic
that Bush halted logging in Northwestern forests, which, in turn, saved a
certain species of bird from extinction, and that species went on a few hundred
millenia from now to found a whole new branch of the avian evolutionary tree.
Wouldn't that count as a supernatural influence on the origin of species?) 
Whether it's associated with theistic evolution or intelligent design, a
miracle's a miracle. Having accepted supernatural intervention in earthly
events, a true believer can't be blamed for thinking, "Well, in for a penny, in
for a pound" - or maybe "In for a nucleotide, in for a redwood tree."
The creationist lobby in Kansas, as everywhere, marches under the banner of
classroom democracy. Its troops want, they say, to free students to explore all
theories of life. That sticks scientists with what looks like the elitist
position: "We're the experts, and we say you shouldn't discuss intelligent
design."
In an era in which we all can't be experts on everything, people are rightly
wary of a scientific priesthood being empowered to dictate school curricula.
The trouble is that very few of the parents of Kansas schoolkids are equipped
to weigh the claims being made by the Intelligent Design Network or other
creationist outfits.
Few parents had the chance to learn much about evolution (or biology in
general) when they were in school, while all their lives, most of them have
been learning more than there is to know about the Creator. And no
tweed-wearing, ivory-tower egghead scientist is going to tell their kids they
can't discuss "alternatives" to evolution.
====
Intelligent design" is a mutant form of creationism that attempts to mimic
biological research.
==
 Science is open to anyone, anywhere in the world. It is open to any religion,
to those who believe in God and those that do not. Science does not force
itself upon anyone. Science just demands that an idea or theory follow the
rigorous steps of the scientific process. ID has not made it through that
gauntlet yet. Don't force it upon us. At most the idea of intelligent design
belongs in a class in philosophy and/or religion.
==
Death before sin would nullify the need for the death of Christ and 
accuse God of creating a world with suffering and calling it good.
==
Creationists define "macroevolution" as "evolution from one 'created kind' to
another".   However, since creationists are quite unable to tell us just what a
'created kind' is, or how we can tell whether or not one 'created kind' has or
has not evolved into another 'created kind', their private non-scientific
definition of "macroevolution" doesn't mean anything within science.
==
If humans are a separate design, then why are the internal organs fastened to
the backbone with the same musculature as in quadrupeds?  This is not efficient
support.  Any engineer could do better.
===
Among the more recent sites that are generally accepted, are Monte Verde in
Chile (11,000-10,500 BC, Tom Dillehay), Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Pennsylvania
(12,500-12,000 BC, James Adovasio), Fort Rock Cave in Oregon (10,000 BC),
Bluefish caves in the Yukon (13,000-11,000 BC), Chesrow site in Wisconsin
(10,500 BC), Florida sink hole sites (10,000 BC).
==
Utah
Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, Utah, had earlier suggested he would propose
legislation that would enforce the teaching of alternative concepts of human
existence. Now he says conversations with the state superintendent of schools
have left him confident that teachers who teach the evolution of humanity "will
be dealt with." 
--
July 19, 2005
Utah: Teachers of Evolution 'Will Be Dealt With'
Chris Buttars, Republican state senator in Utah, really doesn't want 
public schools in his state to teach the truth about evolution. First 
he proposed that schools teach unscientific alternatives like 
creationism; now he insists that evolution not be taught at all. Utah 
education Superintendent Patti Harrington assures him that those who 
teach evolution "will be dealt with."
Matthew D. LaPlante explains:
Superintendent Patti Harrington was not immediately available for 
comment, but on Wednesday told The Associated Press, "There is not 
enough evidence yet to claim how the earth was created and no 
evidence to connect the family of apes with the family of man."
  "Most scientists would not find that to be a very credible 
position," said [University of Utah professor Dennis Bramble]. ... 
The genetic similarity between modern apes and modern humans is 
extremely high," he said. "That combined with an increasingly 
complete fossil record . . . is compelling."
  Bramble lamented the idea of withholding scientific information from 
schoolchildren. "I think the job of public schools is to present 
modern science as we know it and inform students about how science 
works," he said. [The Salt Lake Tribune]
Buttars, however, thinks that schools should withhold the truth if it 
offends people's religion:
"In my constituency," he said, "the vast majority believe God created 
man and we are his spirit children, not his spirit apes." He pledged 
to give the state's schools a reprieve of one legislative session "to 
get the people who are out of line into line." If that doesn't 
happen, he said, he will resume his quest to force public schools to 
teach a theory known as "intelligent design" alongside evolution.
In Buttars' world, people are "out of line" when they teach as truth 
any facts which contradict long-held religious beliefs. In Buttars' 
world, religious faith takes precedent over reality, truth, and 
science.
Buttars earlier proposed that schools teach "Divine Design," not 
simply "Intelligent Design." 
==
The 2003 IMAX film ''Volcanoes of the Deep Sea,'' whose producer 
consulted with scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic 
Institution and used its Alvin submersible to film the underwater 
volcanoes, has been banned by some theater owners and managers in the 
Bible Belt because it briefly mentions the theory of evolution.
==
http://www.rationallyspeaking.org/
Great Essay on fundamemtalism there
Creationism 101
===
GOD'S GIFT TO KANSAS
by Richard Dawkins
Science feeds on mystery. As my colleague Matt Ridley has put it, "Most
scientists are bored by what they have already discovered. It is ignorance that
drives them on." Science mines ignorance. Mystery - that which we don't yet
know; that which we don't yet understand - is the mother lode that scientists
seek out. Mystics exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious.
Scientists exult in mystery for a very different reason: it gives them
something to do. Maybe we don't understand yet, but we're working on it! Each
mystery solved opens up vistas of unsolved problems, and the scientist eagerly
moves in. Admissions of ignorance and mystification are vital to good science.
It is therefore galling, to say the least, when enemies of science turn those
constructive admissions around and abuse them for political advantage. It is
worse than galling. It threatens the enterprise of science itself. This is
exactly the effect creationism or 'intelligent design theory' (ID) is
having, especially because its propagandists are slick, superficially plausible
and, above all, well-financed. ID, by the way, is not a new form of
creationism. It simply is creationism disguised, for political reasons, under a
new name. It isn't even safe for a scientist to express temporary doubt, as a
rhetorical device before going on to dispel it....
==
This explains why scientists become so angry when dealing with this subject. If
the issue were simply that mainstream science says, for example, that current
theory is fully capable of accounting for information growth in the genome,
while a handful of dissenters claimed otherwise, then I would be all in favor
of engaging in polite debate. The reality, however, is that ID proponents are
entirely shameless in presenting the most malicious caricatures of modern
science. In response to such behavior, anger is entirely appropriate. 
This also explains why ID proponents rarely make any attempt to present their
case to professionals. In front of such an audience their distortions would be
immediately obvious. They are on far safer ground in lobbying school boards and
state legislatures. When making your case in front of audiences that do not
know the facts of the situation, it is easier to lie with impunity. 
==
http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=1842
Here are fourteen natural phenomena which conflict with the 
evolutionary idea that the universe is billions of years old. The 
numbers listed below in bold print (usually in the millions of years) 
are often maximum possible ages set by each process, not the actual 
ages. The numbers in italics are the ages required by evolutionary 
theory for each item. The point is that the maximum possible ages are 
always much less than the required evolutionary ages, while the 
Biblical age (6,000 years) always fits comfortably within the maximum 
possible ages. Thus, the following items are evidence against the 
evolutionary time scale and for the Biblical time scale. Much more 
young-world evidence exists, but I have chosen these items for 
brevity and simplicity. Some of the items on this list can be 
reconciled with the old-age view only by making a series of 
improbable and unproven assumptions; others can fit in only with a 
recent creation. 

1. Galaxies wind themselves up too fast.
The stars of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, rotate about the galactic 
center with different speeds, the inner ones rotating faster than the 
outer ones. The observed rotation speeds are so fast that if our 
galaxy were more than a few hundred million years old, it would be a 
featureless disc of stars instead of its present spiral shape.1 Yet 
our galaxy is supposed to be at least 10 billion years old. 
Evolutionists call this "the winding-up dilemma," which they have 
known about for fifty years. They have devised many theories to try 
to explain it, each one failing after a brief period of popularity. 
The same "winding-up" dilemma also applies to other galaxies. For the 
last few decades the favored attempt to resolve the puzzle has been a 
complex theory called "density waves."1 The theory has conceptual 
problems, has to be arbitrarily and very finely tuned, and has been 
called into serious question by the Hubble Space Telescope's 
discovery of very detailed spiral structure in the central hub of 
the "Whirlpool" galaxy, M51.2 

2. Too few supernova remnants. 
According to astronomical observations, galaxies like our own 
experience about one supernova (a violently-exploding star) every 25 
years. The gas and dust remnants from such explosions (like the Crab 
Nebula) expand outward rapidly and should remain visible for over a 
million years. Yet the nearby parts of our galaxy in which we could 
observe such gas and dust shells contain only about 200 supernova 
remnants. That number is consistent with only about 7,000 years worth 
of supernovas.3 

3. Comets disintegrate too quickly.
According to evolutionary theory, comets are supposed to be the same 
age as the solar system, about five billion years. Yet each time a 
comet orbits close to the sun, it loses so much of its material that 
it could not survive much longer than about 100,000 years. Many 
comets have typical ages of less than 10,000 years.4 Evolutionists 
explain this discrepancy by assuming that (a) comets come from an 
unobserved spherical "Oort cloud" well beyond the orbit of Pluto, (b) 
improbable gravitational interactions with infrequently passing stars 
often knock comets into the solar system, and (c) other improbable 
interactions with planets slow down the incoming comets often enough 
to account for the hundreds of comets observed.5 So far, none of 
these assumptions has been substantiated either by observations or 
realistic calculations. Lately, there has been much talk of 
the "Kuiper Belt," a disc of supposed comet sources lying in the 
plane of the solar system just outside the orbit of Pluto. Some 
asteroid-sized bodies of ice exist in that location, but they do not 
solve the evolutionists' problem, since according to evolutionary 
theory, the Kuiper Belt would quickly become exhausted if there were 
no Oort cloud to supply it. 

4. Not enough mud on the sea floor. 
Rivers and dust storms dump mud into the sea much faster than plate 
tectonic sub-duction can remove it. 
Each year, water and winds erode about 20 billion tons of dirt and 
rock from the continents and deposit it in the ocean.6 This material 
accumulates as loose sediment on the hard basaltic (lava-formed) rock 
of the ocean floor. The average depth of all the sediment in the 
whole ocean is less than 400 meters.7 The main way known to remove 
the sediment from the ocean floor is by plate tectonic subduction. 
That is, sea floor slides slowly (a few cm/year) beneath the 
continents, taking some sediment with it. According to secular 
scientific literature, that process presently removes only 1 billion 
tons per year.7 As far as anyone knows, the other 19 billion tons per 
year simply accumulate. At that rate, erosion would deposit the 
present mass of sediment in less than 12 million years. Yet according 
to evolutionary theory, erosion and plate subduction have been going 
on as long as the oceans have existed, an alleged three billion 
years. If that were so, the rates above imply that the oceans would 
be massively choked with sediment dozens of kilometers deep. An 
alternative (creationist) explanation is that erosion from the waters 
of the Genesis flood running off the continents deposited the present 
amount of sediment within a short time about 5,000 years ago. 

5. Not enough sodium in the sea.
Every year, rivers8 and other sources9 dump over 450 million tons of 
sodium into the ocean. Only 27% of this sodium manages to get back 
out of the sea each year.9,10 As far as anyone knows, the remainder 
simply accumulates in the ocean. If the sea had no sodium to start 
with, it would have accumulated its present amount in less than 42 
million years at today's input and output rates.10 This is much less 
than the evolutionary age of the ocean, three billion years. The 
usual reply to this discrepancy is that past sodium inputs must have 
been less and outputs greater. However, calculations that are as 
generous as possible to evolutionary scenarios still give a maximum 
age of only 62 million years.10 Calculations11 for many other 
seawater elements give much younger ages for the ocean. 

6. The earth's magnetic field is decaying too fast. 
Electrical resistance in the earth's core wears down the electrical 
current which produces the earth's magnetic field. That causes the 
field to lose energy rapidly. 
The total energy stored in the earth's magnetic field ("dipole" 
and "non-dipole") is decreasing with a half-life of 1,465 (ħ 165) 
years.12 Evolutionary theories explaining this rapid decrease, as 
well as how the earth could have maintained its magnetic field for 
billions of years are very complex and inadequate. A much better 
creationist theory exists. It is straightforward, based on sound 
physics, and explains many features of the field: its creation, rapid 
reversals during the Genesis flood, surface intensity decreases and 
increases until the time of Christ, and a steady decay since then.13 
This theory matches paleomagnetic, historic, and present data, most 
startlingly with evidence for rapid changes.14 The main result is 
that the field's total energy (not surface intensity) has always 
decayed at least as fast as now. At that rate the field could not be 
more than 20,000 years old.15 

7. Many strata are too tightly bent.
In many mountainous areas, strata thousands of feet thick are bent 
and folded into hairpin shapes. The conventional geologic time scale 
says these formations were deeply buried and solidified for hundreds 
of millions of years before they were bent. Yet the folding occurred 
without cracking, with radii so small that the entire formation had 
to be still wet and unsolidified when the bending occurred. This 
implies that the folding occurred less than thousands of years after 
deposition.16 

8. Biological material decays too fast.
Natural radioactivity, mutations, and decay degrade DNA and other 
biological material rapidly. Measurements of the mutation rate of 
mitochondrial DNA recently forced researchers to revise the age 
of "mitochondrial Eve" from a theorized 200,000 years down to 
possibly as low as 6,000 years.17 DNA experts insist that DNA cannot 
exist in natural environments longer than 10,000 years, yet intact 
strands of DNA appear to have been recovered from fossils allegedly 
much older: Neandertal bones, insects in amber, and even from 
dinosaur fossils.18 Bacteria allegedly 250 million years old 
apparently have been revived with no DNA damage.19 Soft tissue and 
blood cells from a dinosaur have astonished experts.20 

9. Fossil radioactivity shortens geologic "ages" to a few years. 
Radio Halo, Photo: Courtesy of Mark Armitage 
Radiohalos are rings of color formed around microscopic bits of 
radioactive minerals in rock crystals. They are fossil evidence of 
radioactive decay.21 "Squashed" Polonium-210 radiohalos indicate that 
Jurassic, Triassic, and Eocene formations in the Colorado plateau 
were deposited within months of one another, not hundreds of millions 
of years apart as required by the conventional time scale.22 "Orphan" 
Polonium-218 radiohalos, having no evidence of their mother elements, 
imply accelerated nuclear decay and very rapid formation of 
associated minerals.23,24 

10. Too much helium in minerals.
Uranium and thorium generate helium atoms as they decay to lead. A 
study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research showed that 
such helium produced in zircon crystals in deep, hot Precambrian 
granitic rock has not had time to escape.25 Though the rocks contain 
1.5 billion years worth of nuclear decay products, newly-measured 
rates of helium loss from zircon show that the helium has been 
leaking for only 6,000 (ħ 2000) years.26 This is not only evidence 
for the youth of the earth, but also for episodes of greatly 
accelerated decay rates of long half-life nuclei within thousands of 
years ago, compressing radioisotope timescales enormously. 

11. Too much carbon 14 in deep geologic strata.
With their short 5,700-year half-life, no carbon 14 atoms should 
exist in any carbon older than 250,000 years. Yet it has proven 
impossible to find any natural source of carbon below Pleistocene 
(Ice Age) strata that does not contain significant amounts of carbon 
14, even though such strata are supposed to be millions or billions 
of years old. Conventional carbon 14 laboratories have been aware of 
this anomaly since the early 1980s, have striven to eliminate it, and 
are unable to account for it. Lately the world's best such laboratory 
which has learned during two decades of low-C14 measurements how not 
to contaminate specimens externally, under contract to creationists, 
confirmed such observations for coal samples and even for a dozen 
diamonds, which cannot be contaminated in situ with recent carbon.27 
These constitute very strong evidence that the earth is only 
thousands, not billions, of years old. 

12. Not enough Stone Age skeletons.
Evolutionary anthropologists now say that Homo sapiens existed for at 
least 185,000 years before agriculture began,28 during which time the 
world population of humans was roughly constant, between one and ten 
million. All that time they were burying their dead, often with 
artifacts. By that scenario, they would have buried at least eight 
billion bodies.29 If the evolutionary time scale is correct, buried 
bones should be able to last for much longer than 200,000 years, so 
many of the supposed eight billion stone age skeletons should still 
be around (and certainly the buried artifacts). Yet only a few 
thousand have been found. This implies that the Stone Age was much 
shorter than evolutionists think, perhaps only a few hundred years in 
many areas. 

13. Agriculture is too recent.
The usual evolutionary picture has men existing as hunters and 
gatherers for 185,000 years during the Stone Age before discovering 
agriculture less than 10,000 years ago.29 Yet the archaeological 
evidence shows that Stone Age men were as intelligent as we are. It 
is very improbable that none of the eight billion people mentioned in 
item 12 should discover that plants grow from seeds. It is more 
likely that men were without agriculture for a very short time after 
the Flood, if at all.31 

14. History is too short.
According to evolutionists, Stone Age Homo sapiens existed for 
190,000 years before beginning to make written records about 4,000 to 
5,000 years ago. Prehistoric man built megalithic monuments, made 
beautiful cave paintings, and kept records of lunar phases.30 Why 
would he wait two thousand centuries before using the same skills to 
record history? The Biblical time scale is much more likely.31 
==
Oklahoma
In 1999, the committee voted unanimously to place a disclaimer in all high
school biology textbooks that would have read: "This textbook discusses
evolution, a controversial theory, which some scientists present as a
scientific explanation for the origin of living things, such as plants and
humans. No one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore, any
statement about life's origins should be considered as theory, not fact. ..."
Soon after, Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson issued an opinion voiding
the disclaimer, patterned after Alabama's version.
==
As creationism is dumping itself on the dustbin of history, I'd still like to
see it preserved, as an example of how a radical religious agenda can attempt
to hijack a portion of science and abuse it for decades.
==
The decay rate is linked to the laws of physics, particularly the nuclear
forces that hold atoms together.  Strange how those that argue that the laws of
physics show "intelligent design" because they can't be at all different and
still allow for life, often simultaneously argue that the decay rate could have
been dramatically different in the past
==
I always find it amusing to see a creationist complain about anyone
using false propaganda, since they themselves are so skilled in the
art. Let's see, what's the truth? The truth is that scientists are
busy doing all kinds of scientific research in thousands of different
areas, and in those areas relevant to the concept of evolution we see
them publishing this research, and the results continue to clarify
and back up the idea of evolution, just as they have for over a
hundred years.

Creationists, on the other hand, don't do scientific research
relevant to creationism, they never publish any research relevant to
creationism in professional science journals, and it is creationists
who engage in political maneuvering in various states for the purpose
of trying to force their unscientific religious views into the
science curriculum despite the lack of any scientific research
backing up their views.
==
Antievolution legislation in South Carolina again
On June 1, 2005, a bill modeled on the so-called Santorum language stripped
from the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 was introduced in the South
Carolina Senate and referred to the senate's Committee on Education. If
enacted, S. 909 would require that:
In the promulgation of policies and regulations regarding kindergarten through
twelfth grade education, the State Board of Education shall implement policies
and a curriculum that accomplish the General Assembly's desire to provide a
quality science education that shall prepare students to distinguish the data
and testable theories of science from religious or philosophical claims that
are made in the name of science. Where topics are taught that may generate
controversy, such as biological evolution, the curriculum should help students
to understand the full range of scientific views that exist, why such topics
may generate controversy, and how scientific discoveries can profoundly affect
society.
Such bills have been common in state legislatures over the past few years,
although none has been enacted.
The lead sponsor of S. 909 is Michael L. Fair (R-Greenville County), described
in the June 17, 2005, issue of The State as the "dominant voice advocating for
S.C. schools to teach more than Charles Darwinıs theories of evolution." In
2003, Fair attempted to amend a textbook bill to require a textbook disclaimer
reading "The cause or causes of life are not scientifically verifiable.
Therefore, empirical science cannot provide data about the beginning of life."
Subsequently, he repeatedly but unsuccessfully attempted to pass legislation to
establish a committee to "study standards regarding the teaching of the origin
of species; determine whether there is a consensus on the definition of
science; [and] determine whether alternatives to evolution as the origin of
species should be offered in schools"; the Greenville News reported on May 1,
2003, that "his intention is to show that Intelligent Design is a viable
scientific alternative that should be taught in the public schools."
S. 909 was introduced the day before the South Carolina legislature adjourned;
the bill will therefore be at the top of the agenda when it reconvenes in
January 2006. The State reports, "Fair says he plans to mount a major push
during the next legislative session to win colleagues' support for his latest
idea to modify standards for teaching science, particularly in high schools.
Public school students, he said, should be told a 'full range of scientific
views ... exist' when it comes to explaining how fauna, flora and man came to
inhabit the earth," and quotes him as acknowledging that his critics "will say
all this is a thinly veiled attempt to mandate that creationism must be
taught," a charge he rejects. The newspaper's report noted that South
Carolina's science standards include evolution but not "alternative theories"
and also quoted the Reverend Baxter Wynn of Greenville's First Baptist Church
as writing, "It is not necessary to choose between Christianity and evolution
-- they are not mutually exclusive."
==
Science rationally modifies a theory to fit evidence, creationism
emotionally modifies evidence to fit the bible. 
==
Methodological materialism is a scientific position.  Because it makes
no claim as to the sufficiency of naturalism or to the existence or
non-existence of the supernatural.  Methodological naturalism is simply an
outgrowth of how experiments are conducted and the role of the controls.
there is no control for the supernatural or for deity.
ALL experiments are attempts to
falsify a hypothesis. Within the experiment are the controls; these are
the experiment run in the exact same conditions without the variable being
tested. Controls are designed to falsify ALL other alternative explanations
except the one being tested.  However, how do you run an experiment without
deity?  How do you set up a test tube where you KNOW deity is absent?  You
can't. Therefore you can't test for the supernatural.  For all we know the
result may depend on the presence of the supernatural.  We can't tell that
because we can't eliminate the supernatural. Philosophical naturalism does
qualify under your heading of philosophy and faith.
==
Several hundred years ago, peoples' ideas about God were
expressed in terms of a theory of positional astronomy that didn't prove
adequate in the end. Lots of people were very upset. Books, and occasionally
their authors, were burned. Today, no one believes in an Earth-centered
cosmos, no one looks back on those days as the church's finest hour, and
despite the worst fears of some believers, Christianity is still very much
alive today. Will the same thing happen with evolution? Some might argue
that it already has, but there are still some who seem very troubled.
==
The only kind of supernatural agency that science cannot live with
is that which violates the Einstein dictum: God is subtle but he is not
malicious.  Among malicious Gods are those Who whimsically and carelessly
intervene frequently in ways that continually falsify every attempt
scientists make to characterize natural processes, and those Who
deliberately deceive people, for example by creating the universe 6000 
years ago (or last Tuesday) but making it seem much older. Most scientists feel
that we have pretty good reason to disbelieve in the first, simply because
we have lots of natural laws that have been exhaustively tested and always
seem to work well. Of course there is no way that science can disprove a
deceptive God; in this sense we must study the world as it seems to be,
not as it really is.  Theists might consider whether a self-respecting
person could worship a deceptive God
==
School boards think they have authority to dictate and make teachers teach
whatever they want, They are not teaching general knowledge 
but forcing beliefs.
==
If you assume there is a Designer, you can point up, down, in any direction,
and whatever you see will validate design. You point and say 
"It looks designed to me!"
==
Pa. House Panel Hears Testimony On Intelligent Design
June 20, 2005
HARRISBURG, Pa. -- A House panel heard testimony Monday on a bill that would
allow local school boards to mandate the teaching of intelligent design.
The House's subcommittee on basic education met Monday afternoon to hear
testimony on House Bill 1007.
Intelligent design is a concept that challenges the theory of evolution by
saying the universe is so complex, it must have been created by an unspecified
guiding force.
Dozens of people came to the informational meeting to hear the testimony of
those on both sides of the issue.
Among those testifying in support of intelligent design was Michael Behe, who
wrote a book in support of the topic. He touched on one of the key issues for
both sides, whether or not intelligent design is a religious theory.
"The theory of intelligent design contends simply that some parts of nature are
best explained as the result of purposeful activity. It is not a religious
argument. It is an argument based on empirical, physical data," Behe said.
"Since its inception, intelligent design has been a metaphysical, outside of
science. Intelligent design proponents seek to transform science back into a
pre-19th Century natural theology, the belief that a study of nature would
prove the existence and or nature of God," Randy Bennett said.
If House Bill 1007 gets passed, it won't go into effect until July of this
year. Then it would be up to individual school boards to decide if they want to
add intelligent design to the curriculum.
==
Students Hear Intelligent Design Statement January 18, 2005
DOVER, Pa. -- Students at Dover High School in York County will hear a
statement about intelligent design during high-school biology lessons Tuesday.
"Because Darwin's theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence
is discovered. The theory is not a fact. Gaps in the theory exist for which
there is no evidence," part of the statement says. "With respect to any theory,
students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion
of the origins of life to individual students and their families."
Opponents say intelligent design amounts to teaching religion in science class.
A letter was sent home to students last week, giving them the option of having
their children excused while the statement is read. The superintendent's office
said 14 parents chose to have their students removed from class.
Three members of the Dover School Board have resigned as a result of the
decision to have intelligent design taught in science classes, and a federal
lawsuit has been filed by 11 parents and the American Civil Liberties Union.
"I am surprised that they didn't change their minds to get out of the trouble
that they are in," said Angie Yingling, a school board member who resigned.
An attorney for the school district says teachers are excused from reading the
statement because of the pending federal lawsuit over the policy.
Science Professors Say Intelligent Design Is Not Science Members of the
scientific community are weighing in, and saying intelligent design is simply
not science.
Dozens of science professors from nearby universities are now speaking out.
They said intelligent design doesn't belong in science class.
As a professor of biology at York College, Karl Kleiner studies the natural
world. Kleiner pays close attention to how and why things work. In his opinion,
teaching intelligent design in high school science class does not work.
"We're looking at an issue, a debate -- I hate to call it a debate -- between
what is science and what is faith, religion or philosophy," Kleiner said.
Kleiner said science is based on observations that are rooted in fact, things
on which the scientific community can agree.
"Intelligent design leaves it up to some sort of supernatural force. That's not
what science is about," Kleiner said.
Supporters of intelligent design argue that evolution is a theory.
Kleiner said theories are part of the scientific process and that Darwin based
his theory on observations.
"A theory is not just a guess, not just a hunch. It is something that best
explains existing facts about what we see in the world around us," Kleiner
said. Kleiner and his colleagues feel so strongly that intelligent design
should not be part of the curriculum at Dover, they wrote a letter to the district.
"We just felt to introduce intelligent design as science would be doing the
students an injustice in terms of science curriculum," Kleiner said.
Kleiner said the place to teach intelligent design is in philosophy or religion
class, but not in science.
==
AUSTIN. TX - Biblical creationism could be taught side-by-side with
evolution in science textbooks under legislation pending in the Texas
House, according to the bill's sponsor.
State Rep. Charlie Howard, R-Sugar Land, said his House Bill 220 would
give the elected State Board of Education more control over the content
of school textbooks. Students should get information about creationism
if they are being taught about evolution, and he said his legislation
could lead the way.
I don't believe in evolution. I believe in creation, he said. Some
of our books right now only teach evolution, [but] if you're going to
teach one, you ought to teach both.
==
We've been attacked by the intelligent, 
educated segment of the culture.
  - Local Pastor defending Dover School Board action
==
Dr. Steve Case, who chairs the curriculum revision committee, gave the keynote
speech at Thursday's event in Lawrence to about 50 audience members and
stressed the importance for producing biologically literate students in
Kansas. Case said thoroughly understanding evolution was a necessary component
of a biological education, while including Intelligent Design, which he said
had no practical application would harm the scientific learning process.
Intelligent Design is a theory developed during the last three decades in
opposition to macro-evolution. Design states that a more intelligent force
designed the universe.
==
Origin of the Earthıs magnetic field
The Humphreys Proposal
Dr Humphreys proposed that God first created the earth out of water.1 He based
this on several Scriptures, e.g. 2 Peter 3:5 which concludes that the earth was
formed out of water and by water. After this, God would have transformed much
of the water into other substances like rock minerals. Now water contains
hydrogen atoms, and the nucleus of a hydrogen atom is a tiny magnet. Normally
these magnets cancel out so water as a whole is almost non-magnetic. But
Humphreys proposed that God created the water with the nuclear magnets aligned.
Immediately after creation, they would form a more random arrangement, which
would cause the earthıs magnetic field to decay. This would generate current in
the core, which would then decay according to Barnesı model, apart from many
reversals in the Flood year as Humphreysı model states.
==
You then have the difficulty of accounting for the existence of a creator, who
has to be more complex than the creation.  Doesn't seem like a good bargan to
say object A requires 100 complexity units which is impossible, so we postulate
that an object B of 200 complexity units created A.
==
One reason that you can't generate a normal test for creationism is it's
not just competing with evolution, but naturalism itself. There is no test
for naturalism, and there is no test for creationism. So the only test that
would imply creationism is one that would throw naturalism into doubt.
And that would have to be a whopper of a result.
So now it becomes the issue that naturalism as a generative idea seems
almost inexhaustible, whereas creationism is stillborn (i.e. it explains
everything and therefore nothing.) This is why it's frustrating when
creationists seem to think it's an arbitrary decision, like deciding to
start counting from zero rather than one.
Which is why all you can speak of is a naturalistic explanation being
more or less likely than a supernatural one. But this must be meaningful
since one can do a textual analysis of a work of fiction and determine
which is most likely the author's intent.
I believe a supertask might be able to because you have can an
infinite number of steps in a finite number of tasks:
http://www.public-domain-content.com/Philosophy/Supertask.shtml
It is an interesting argument, though.
I agree that statements like God did it as in God ate my homework
are more historical than scientific. Creationism might work better in
a history class.
==
One of the primary documents of the ID movement is the "Wedge Strategy"
which was put forward by Philip Johnson and details the strategy of the ID
movement.  This document is the official strategy document of DI's "Center  for
the Renewal of Science and Culture".
In the very first sentence of that document, the identity of the "Designer"
is made clear: "The proposition that human beings are created in the image of
God is one  of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was
built."    The purpose of ID is also made clear in the document when it
says: "Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture
seeks nothing less  than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural
legacies."    Notice, there is not a single word about advancing scientific
knowledge.   The focus is, instead, on philosophical issues.
The religious goal of the ID movement is clearly stated also:
"the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse
the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a
science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions..... we also seek to
 build up a popular base of support among our natural constituency,
namely, Chnstians......  To replace materialistic explanations with the 
theistic understanding that nature and hurnan beings are created by God."
==
In March of 2001 the Gallup News Service reported the results of their
survey that found 45 percent of Americans agree with the statement "God
created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within
the last 10,000 years or so," while 37 percent preferred a blended belief
that 'Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced
forms of life, but God guided this process,' and a paltry 12 percent
accepted the standard scientific theory that 'Human beings have developed
over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, [but God had no
part in this process].
==
There is nothing inherently wrong in inquiring into the truth-value of a body
of religious propositions for the sake of personal gratification, but to come
to the table with an admitted agenda and then claim that the orthodox
scientific community, which is made up of scholars representative of every
religious and ethnic background, is secretively manipulating the evidence to
support a hidden agenda is not only absurd, but also hypocritcal.
==
I can't take their objections to evolution on alleged scientific grounds
seriously when the things they do believe about the origins of the world and
humanity didn't come from any such study of objective facts and they will
proudly admit this when confronted with the absurdity of a faith which posits
a "miracle" in every gap that defies logic.
== 
A Kansas Board of Education member called evolution an "age-old fairy tale''
in a newsletter that was circulating. Board member Connie Morris, of
St. Francis, criticized fellow board members, news organizations and scientists
who defend evolution. She says their position used ``anti-God contempt
and arrogance.''
Remember, this is the side that claims it is SCIENCE and is NOT
about fundamentalist religion, not AT ALL.
===
Tree rings

Becker, B. & Kromer, B., 1993. "The continental tree-ring record - absolute
chronology, C-14 calibration and climatic-change at 11 KA". Palaeogeography
Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology, 103 (1-2): 67-71.

Becker, B., Kromer, B. & Trimborn, P., 1991. "A stable-isotope tree-ring
timescale of the late glacial Holocene boundary". Nature 353 (6345):
647-649.

Stuiver, Minze, et al, 1986. "Radiocarbon age calibration back to 13,300
years BP and the 14 C age matching of the German Oak and US bristlecone
pine chronologies". IN: Calibration issue / Stuiver, Minze, et al.,
Radiocarbon 28(2B): 969-979.

==
The Bible has confirmed some Science issues along time ago on the 
following issues:
 
The earth is a sphere Is. 40:22
Incalculable number of stars Jer 33:22
free float of earth in space Job 26:7
creation made of invisible elements Heb 11:3
each star is different I Cor 15:41
light moves Job 38:19, 20
air has weight Job 28:25
wind blows in cyclones Ecc 1:6
blood is the source of life and health Lev 17:11 
ocean floor contains deep valleys and mountains  2 Sam 22:16, Jonah 2:6
ocean contains springs Job 36:16
when dealing with desease, hands should be washed under running water Lev 15:13
==
It was clear scientists convinced anyone who could be convinced by the
evidence. Those who continued to oppose them clearly did it for political and
theological reasons alone.
==
June 10, 2005
Students in Kansas could soon be exposed to more criticism of
evolution in their science classes.Thursday night in Topeka, three
State Board of Education members approved proposed science standards
that give more exposure to backers of intelligent design. That's the belief
that some things found in nature are best explained by design, and not
evolution.
==
The same people who try to pick holes in evolution would probably not 
even dream of telling their car mechanic how to do his job or even 
though they like to criticize their teams coach, realise in their heart 
of hearts that they could not really do the job at all, let alone 
better, but somehow feel that they are qualified enough to put 
biologists, cosmologists, geologists etc. in their place. Add to that 
they often think they are coming up with new data that has never been 
dealt with before. It can get tiring.  It seems that a lot of people who 
want to criticize evolution are not even aware of what evolution is, yet 
feel no need to educate themselves to see if they are even talking 
sense. Scientists are normally open to suggestions that they are wrong, 
but generally the suggestions do not come form the man off the street, 
but from someone with a thorough knowledge of the science they are 
trying to overcome.
Chemistry is actually pretty easy to settle, since most of
it involves laboratory experiments.  If you have a criticism of
current theory, all you have to do is come up with an experiment
that violates current theory, and then test it.  If your results pan
out, the chemists will be dragged, perhaps kicking and screaming,
to accept your criticism.  Nothing like a good experiment to throw
a wrench into the workings of a theory.
If the creationists really want to disprove evolution, they're going
about it the wrong way.  An alternative explanation for experimental
results is never as convincing as a few good experiments which show
a theories predictions are false.   
Scientists are a conservative lot; you don't throw out a successful theory
until someone shows that its in error.  There are always an infinite
number ways to explain a finite number of facts; an alternative
explanation isn't enough.  For instance, there are thousands
of creation myths around the world.  You could give them all
equal time to the theory of evolution, but you'll find
your biology class has now turned into a class in comparative
religion.  You want to replace evolution, come up with an experiment
in which its predictions are shown not to be verified.  That's
the way science works.
===
The entire basis for your Christian God is a book, which actually is a
combination of smaller and inconsistent writings from different authors,
who's basis largely is information passed through mouth to mouth (and
therefore evolved information), from a time that there was no scientific
knowledge at all, only some practical skills. I'd hesitate to use it as a
reference, if at all.
Just because creationists takes a bunch of things we know to be true and then
declares them to be predictions of the biblical account of creation does not
make it so. Just because science does not know how something happened does not
make God did it the leading candidate.
The ToC is the Holy Grail of the origins debate - everyone talks
about it, but no one's ever seen it. If you argue against evolution, or
imply in any way that creationism is scientific, then you can count on
being asked to supply a theory. A scientific theory must have
predictive value, must be internally consistent, must be falsifiable,
and must explain at least those phenomena explained by the currently
dominant theory. Thus, such statements as God created the heavens and
the earth... are not theories, as they are neither predictive nor
falsifiable.
While no one has ever presented a scientific theory of creation to
us, we maintain that it is necessary for an honest comparison of
various ideas of origins. Because of the properties listed above,
theories provide specific points for comparison of the explanatory
value of different ideas. Without a predictive, falsifiable theory of
creation, it remains impossible to objectively evaluate the idea of
creation.
Science is methodologically natural. God, if it existed, would be 
supernatural and therefore is outside the realm of science.
Ross's theory is not internally consistent.
The ToC is the Holy Grail of the origins debate - everyone talks
about it, but no one's ever seen it. If you argue against evolution, or
imply in any way that creationism is scientific, then you can count on
being asked to supply a theory. A scientific theory must have
predictive value, must be internally consistent, must be falsifiable,
and must explain at least those phenomena explained by the currently
dominant theory. Thus, such statements as God created the heavens and
the earth... are not theories, as they are neither predictive nor
falsifiable.
While no one has ever presented a scientific theory of creation to
us, we maintain that it is necessary for an honest comparison of
various ideas of origins. Because of the properties listed above,
theories provide specific points for comparison of the explanatory
value of different ideas. Without a predictive, falsifiable theory of
creation, it remains impossible to objectively evaluate the idea of
creation.
Science is methodologically natural. God, if it existed, would be 
supernatural and therefore is outside the realm of science.
Ross's theory is not internally consistent.
It isn't easy to learn science well when you have been conned by the
Creationists and ID-olaters. They distort the language. With science you
have be careful. Misuse of language destroys the meaning (which is why its
opponents do so!).
So much for a Biblical model. There is no evidence that plants were created
before the Sun and moon and stars on day 4, or that birds came before any
mammals. In fact, we have mammalian fossils intermixed with the dinosaurs, and
most dinosaurs before birds.
Creationism and intelligent design are both arguments to stop investigating,
to stop doing science, and to remain blissfully ignorant.
This has been argued and roundly defeated.
Why do we find in different sections of the geologic table, similar but
different forms leading to forms like that of today the closer one gets to
us in geologic time?
==
 We are all infected.  Retroviruses transcribe their RNA
into DNA that they insert in our genes.  When this happens in
reproductive cells, it then becomes heritable and the virus 
gets a free ride on our reproductive system right down 
through the ages.  But it also makes a mark.  That is to say its 
insertion point is pretty much random (which means it usually 
doesn't hit anything vital--see that junk DNA has another purpose 
you perhaps missed) but remains the same in those that inherit 
the insertion.
So, if chimps and humans are separate creations, how did they 
get the same insertions in the same places so often?
 If they are descended from a common genetic ancestor, then we 
can see how that could happen.  But separate creations?
==
Creationists reject and denounce the scientific view of vestigial organs,
because that view doesn't square with religious beliefs about divine design.
The creationists claim that no vestigial organs exist, and they promote that
claim by using word-tricks. They pretend that "vestigial" means useless; then
they try to find or imagine some function for each organ that scientists regard
as vestigial; and then they assert that the organ isn't vestigial because it
isn't useless. This is absurd. "Vestigial" does not mean useless, so the
creationists' assertions don't make any sense. The theory of evolution
recognizes that a vestigial organ may retain some function or may even assume a
new function, distinct from the one that it originally performed.
==
In Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 (1968), they invalidated a statute that
forbade the teaching of evolution in public schools; in Edwards v. Aguillard,
482 U.S. 578 (1987), they invalidated a statute that required the teaching of
creationism whenever evolution was also taught;
==
In addition to misquotes of scientists, creationists also misstate or
misapply scientific principles. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is a
favorite - creationists will often claim that the second law proves
evolution can't happen. Creationists will also tend to use a shotgun
approach to try to convince people their views are correct. This is one
of the reasons why smart evolutionists generally avoid public debates
with creationists except in controlled environments. A creationist can
spew out a vast quantity of convincing-sounding misinformation in a short
amount of time. It could take days to correct the misinformation and
explain the actual theories and evidence.
==
The real reason for the disaster in American education is because of 
conservative values and particularly religiously based conservative 
values which overwhelmingly dictate how, what and when students are 
educated.  Local control leads to institutional parochialism and 
unionization by teachers to protect their backsides.
Local control also precludes teacher professionalization that is found 
in GB and Europe.  American conservatives are more nearly troglodytes 
than you can imagine.  Our ignorance is institutionalized, willful, and 
democratic.  That's what is meant when someone laments Only on America!
Cultural ignorance so profound that it will take several generations of 
concerted effort to overcome it, if we had the will.  It is also among 
the so-called educated classes such as college graduates. 
They have absolute and total control over
the curriculum.
In practice schools hire teachers educated in the particular
studies they are to teach.  The details of what they teach
are often laid out in lesson plans, detailed accounts of
exactly what will be gone over in class every single day.
These lesson plans are filed with the school authorities.
As far as I know they are mostly ignored.  But that's how
the control is manifested.
==
God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards. 
--Mark Twain
==
There is a  pending proposal from state Sen. Chris Buttars that Utah schools
be required to teach what he calls "divine design" alongside the established
processes of evolutionary biology is,
==
List of fundies
Jerry Bergman 
Dr Ed Boudreauxıs t 
Barry Setterfield 
Glen Collins 
Charles Lucas
==
Think of Einstein's theory of general relativity, a wonderful 
hypothesis with huge implications. Hundreds of tests have been 
proposed, and many of them have been carried out, sometimes at the 
cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. So far, Einstein's theory 
has stood up, but physicists are all convinced that his remarkable 
insight will eventually form only a part of a larger theory, and that 
this larger theory will be a better fit to the observations.
Intelligent design is not science, because it only goes partway 
through this process and leaves out the most important part. 
Advocates of intelligent design have observed the world, and have 
proposed the hypothesis that some vast intelligence must have created 
it because the world (or at least some portion of it) is too 
complicated to have arisen through natural processes.
This is their hypothesis, and it is in principle testable. For 
example, one could look for messages or other evidence for the 
existence of a vast intelligence (see Carl Sagan's novel "Contact" 
for a fictional example).
Or, in the case of evolution, one could search for sudden 
discontinuities in the history of life, in which a new structure or 
function has arisen without any previous history and no relationship 
to structures or functions in other related organisms. (Such new 
structures have not yet been found, by the way.)
But the intelligent designers have proposed no such experiments. 
Their hypothesis is therefore not subject to modification, much less 
eventual abandonment. As a consequence, intelligent design and its 
parent belief, creationism, are not science.
(Intelligent design) postulates the existence of a hypothetical and 
abstract entity, lacking any physical concrete presence, unobservable 
and impossible to experiment with in order to explain biological 
structures and processes whose origin can be perfectly explained by 
the simple rules of natural selection. It is based on the acceptance 
of the existence of a completely unnecessary conjecture ­ that of a 
supernatural "intelligent designer" ­ and violates one of the most 
basic principles of scientific philosophy, the principle of 
parsimony, which states that natural effects should be explained 
through natural causes and that unnecessary hypotheses should be 
discarded when trying to understand the way the natural world works.

­ Exequiel Ezcurra,
director of scientific research,
San Diego Natural History Museum
--
If proponents of intelligent design (ID) wish their hypothesis to be 
treated as a science, then they must be prepared to generate 
experiments that will prove ID incorrect and teach their students how 
to disprove ID. If an "intelligent designer" is equated with "God," 
then, if they are true scientists, they must now spend their time 
trying to disprove the existence of God. I am not sure if the 
proponents of ID are prepared to go down that route ­ training a 
classroom of students to design experiments that rule out the 
existence of God. Yet, if they wish to add ID to the scientific 
curriculum, that is precisely what they must be prepared to do. Those 
experiments would then take their place with all the other 
experiments designed to rule out any hypothesis, in other words, to 
show that the null hypothesis (the idea that events and phenomena are 
dictated solely by chance) cannot be rejected.

­ Dr. Evan Snyder,
neurologist and director of the Stem Cells and Regeneration Program 
at The Burnham Institute

QUESTION: A central tenet of intelligent design is that some aspects 
of life are "irreducibly complex." That is, certain biological 
systems are so complicated that they could not have evolved 
incrementally through random mutation and natural selection. Your 
response.

One cited example, among many, is how life began on Earth. Although 
we still do not fully understand the origin of life from a scientific 
point-of-view, research continues to provide vital information about 
the possible processes that may or may not have been involved.

There is optimism that science will eventually provide an 
understanding of at least the basic processes. Intelligent design 
claims that the processes involved are scientifically unknowable and 
thus must be explained by a supernatural or extraterrestrial creator.

This is akin to the widely held 19th century theory of panspermia 
that life on Earth began from a spore or seed from outer space. 
Scientific research subsequently demonstrated that panaspermia was 
not a testable and verifiable scientific theory and the same applies 
to intelligent design today.

­ Jeffrey Bada,
marine chemist, Scripps Institution of Oceanography

How can anyone say that something is irreducibly complex, thus 
evolution impossible? How do they know? Could it not just escape our 
present state of understanding? Weren't phenomena such as how 
inheritance takes place thought to be unfathomable not long ago?

These days, we are whittling away quite blissfully at the complexity 
of biology. For example, we have learned that "horizontal" 
transmission of whole packets of genes between species happened 
before and happens now. This means that evolution doesn't depend just 
on the accumulation of single mutations but that organisms can change 
wholesale. An example is the plague bacillus, which appears to have 
arisen by such a mechanism some 100,000 years ago.

It makes simple sense: How would you build a highly complex vehicle 
that can be driven, flown and navigated underwater? Would you start 
from scratch with some steel ingots, or would you use parts from 
existing cars, planes and submarines?

­ Moselio Schaechter,
adjunct professor of biology, SDSU

A very simple experiment performed decades ago showed that when a 
mixture of simple chemicals was placed in a closed chamber and energy 
was added, the building blocks of life (amino acids) spontaneously 
formed. The conditions of this experiment mimicked the state of the 
primordial planet billions of years ago.

Thus, the building blocks of life can easily be made through natural 
processes, and have been available for hundreds of millions to 
billions of years. It is not hard to conceive that, over this 
extended time, chance events and selective environmental pressure 
would create the remarkable and beautifully diverse forms of life we 
have today.

­ Dr. Mark Tuszynski,
neurologist/neuroscientist, UCSD

Infectious diseases have been a selective pressure on our species 
ever since people originated in Africa. The best understood example 
of this pressure is malaria. Malaria is transmitted by the bite of a 
mosquito that injects a parasite into the blood and the parasite 
lives inside the host's red blood cells.

Amazingly, we have made adaptations that make the red blood cells 
less hospitable to malaria parasites. These changes in our proteins 
generally have a cost to us, but when they keep people alive long 
enough to procreate in the midst of a malarial environment, then the 
mutations are preserved in nature. This accounts for most of the 
variants in hemoglobin structure.

If malaria in a tropical environment was the selective force that led 
to the prevalence of sickle cell anemia and thalessemia, are we to 
conclude that the intelligent designer used malaria for that purpose 
or that the designer overlooked malaria as a problem and there had to 
be a post-hoc fix to change the structure of red blood cells?

­ Dr. Joshua Fierer,
professor of medicine and pathology, UCSD

QUESTION: Many mainstream scientists have chosen to ignore or avoid 
the debate over intelligent design. Why?

Years ago, it was claimed that the Earth was the center of the 
universe. It was also claimed that the Earth was flat. Many 
scientists were persecuted and even killed because they presented 
evidence against these faith-based positions.

Debating intelligent design would be like debating someone who still 
insists that the Earth is flat, or that it is at the center of the 
universe, simply because he has not gone up in space in person and 
viewed the Earth and the solar system in person.

Since such positions would be based strictly on faith, there is 
little point in discussing them, let alone giving them undeserved 
legitimacy.

­ Dr. Ajit P. Varki,
professor of medicine, UCSD

One should never debate such lunacy. It implies that there is 
something to debate. It only gives it legitimacy it does not deserve. 
The cry that teaching intelligent design in the science classroom 
should be permitted because of intellectual freedom is a red herring. 
We don't teach alchemy, astrology and witchcraft in the science 
classroom, because like intelligent design, they are not science. By 
the same token, all Americans, not just scientists, should speak out 
and complain when their schools are forced to allow such intellectual 
drivel into their schools.

­ J. David Archibald,
professor of biology, SDSU


QUESTION: One key principle of intelligent design is the belief that 
there are questions about life and the universe that science cannot 
answer, now or in the future. Your response.

I have to admit that it is not that clear to me just what constitutes 
ID. Since I could find no research papers published in peer-reviewed 
scientific publications on the subject, I have had to rely on 
Internet sources. Most ID Web sites mention something about 
complexity, design and purpose and, using some form of legalese 
argumentation, conclude that because the natural world is so complex, 
it must have been created by an intelligent designer.

However, this is like resignedly saying, "I don't know!"

Do we really want our children to just accept that the natural world 
is too complex to understand, and that the idea of an intelligent 
designer is sufficient to satisfy our curiosity about such things as 
the structure and function of DNA, genes, cells and organisms? Do we 
also want our future scientists to be reluctant to tenaciously 
investigate the natural world no matter what discoveries and 
conclusions they reach and no matter what philosophical ideas of 
design and purpose are rejected?

If we as a society answer "Yes," to these questions, then I suppose 
we are also willing to accept Faith Healing 101 as a legitimate 
course in medical schools.

­ Tom Demere,
paleontologist, San Diego Natural History Museum

I don't know of any working scientist who is ready to throw in the 
towel on any question regarding the life sciences or physical 
sciences. Certainly, historical events that were not witnessed can 
never be understood with absolute certainty, but that doesn't mean we 
can't study them, test hypotheses or construct the most likely 
interpretation of them.

Breakthroughs may not occur during one's lifetime, but the explosive 
rate of technological advances gives us hope that we will always 
progress in our understanding of life and existence.

­ Michael Mayer, associate
professor of biology, USD

I believe this is basically a religious or faith question. It seems 
to me that many who support this notion of intelligent design are 
doing so to bolster their own religious beliefs, specifically that 
there is a God, a divine creator. They are disturbed and angry and 
frightened that what is central in their lives is not generally 
taught or even mentioned in public schools, and they might view 
science in general (and evolutionary theory specifically) as a 
threat, e.g., to a particular set of religious beliefs.

I do respect those who are searching for something beyond themselves, 
something meaningful in their lives. This is part of the human quest, 
to seek the mystery of existence. It is a noble and worthy goal.

But, it is also important to have clear and critical thinking, a 
means of checking ourselves, detecting bias against preconceived 
notions. There is a great deal of hokum out there. A few hundred 
years ago, the majority of people in the Western world believed in 
demons and regularly used them and other superstitious beliefs to 
justify their behavior and power over others.

I think it is possible to be both spiritual and a critical thinker: 
To use one's mind (the scientific method and common sense) in 
evaluating specific beliefs or claims or ideas, and yet to also seek 
that question of existence and continually embrace the wonder and 
awesome mystery of this world.

­ Michael Simpson,
professor of biology, SDSU
===
A story does not become science just because some authority or 
committee tells it or says it is science. It doesn't matter who makes 
the observation or runs the experiment, if others observe the same 
thing or get the same result from the experiment, the story must be 
consistent with those results.
==
See Tulsa Tribune. June 8,2005
In Tulsa, OK, the zoo had a statue of the Hindu elephant god Ganesh  The
Christians recently got the right to post creation material there too. Zoo
employees, religious leaders and others opposed the idea, saying religion
should not be part of publically funded scientific institutions.
A few years ago, some Christians tried to get an exhibit supporting
evolution removed but they failed.
==
ID is the brainchild of a sneaky creationist lawyer who 
wants to bypass the US constitution's prohibition against an 
establishment of religion.  It PRETENDS to be science because its 
inventor knows that it cannot admit to being religion.
."The point is ID is claiming to have PROVEN that some intelligent 
source has designed certain biological systems.  Their proof is 
logically flawed.  Not teaching logically flawed proofs in high 
schools shouldn't be a big issue, but certain religious theocrats 
with ambitions of political power are making it one.
IDists keep pretending that the intelligent source ISN'T God.  
What we're saying is that they are lying in their teeth about 
that.  I have yet to meet one of them that wasn't!  There might 
be one somewhere, but I haven't heard of him!
What are we supposed to call a bunch of people who run around 
lying about their own motives in such a transparent fashion?
ID scientists?  A seditious lawyer, a mathematician, and a tiny 
handful of fellow travellers with PhD after their names, all 
doing what science?  None really.  Mostly they are publishing 
apologetics and stirring up political action.
And liars usually lie about what they are doing.  It's part of 
their "thing."
ID will be science when it develops some positive, real evidence 
for a designer intervening in natural, physical processes.  So 
far it has developed a lot of rhetoric about how those processes 
could NOT be occurring by the means theorized by mainstream 
science but not one SHRED of positive physical evidence for their 
proposed ID.
ID uses the methods of evangelism and politics.  Rhetoric, 
grandstanding, the half truth and the outright lie.  And you ask 
why scientists generally don't welcome the "contributions?"
ID is using rhetoric to make a claim that evolution is not 
the only truth.  As far as that goes it is fine, since evolution 
probably ISN'T the whole truth, though most of the specious 
critiques of ID aren't really proof of that.  But when ID goes 
further and says that that they have proof that an ID has 
occurred, then they are outside the realm of honest science, 
since they have no such thing--only flawed logic AGAINST 
evolution, not positive evidence FOR ID.
There is no such theory as ID,.  There is a hypothesis that has no
positive evidence going for it.  This is a big drawback for a 
scientific hypothesis. 
==
"It is as though they [fossils] were just planted there, without any
evolutionary history. Needless to say this appearance of sudden planting
has delighted creationists. Evolutionists of all stripes believe, however,
that this really does represent a very large gap in the fossil record, a
gap that is simply due to the fact that, for some reason, very few fossils
have lasted from periods before about 600 million years ago. One good
reason might be that many of these animals had only soft parts to their
bodies: no shells or bones to fossilize. If you are a creationist you may
think that this is special pleading. My point here is that, when we are
talking about gaps of this magnitude, there is no difference whatever in
the interpretations of 'punctuationists' and 'gradualists'.  Both schools
of thought (Punctuationists and Gradualists) despise so-called scientific
creationists equally, and both agree that the major gaps are real, that
they are true imperfections in the fossil record. The only alternative
explanation of the sudden appearance of so many complex animal types in the
Cambrian era is divine creation and (we) both reject this alternative."
(Dawkins, Richard, The Blind Watchmaker, W.W. Norton & Company, New York,
1996, pp. 229-230)
==
http://www.ksde.org/outcomes/sciencestdexptest.html

May 21, 2005 
Creationism: God's gift to the ignorant
As the Religious Right tries to ban the teaching of evolution in Kansas,
Richard Dawkins speaks up for scientific logic
Science feeds on mystery. As my colleague Matt Ridley has put it: ³Most
scientists are bored by what they have already discovered. It is ignorance that
drives them on.² Science mines ignorance. Mystery ‹ that which we donıt yet
know; that which we donıt yet understand ‹ is the mother lode that scientists
seek out. Mystics exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious. Scientists
exult in mystery for a very different reason: it gives them something to do. 
Admissions of ignorance and mystification are vital to good science. It is
therefore galling, to say the least, when enemies of science turn those
constructive admissions around and abuse them for political advantage. Worse,
it threatens the enterprise of science itself. This is exactly the effect that
creationism or ³intelligent design theory² (ID) is having, especially because
its propagandists are slick, superficially plausible and, above all, well
financed. ID, by the way, is not a new form of creationism. It simply is
creationism disguised, for political reasons, under a new name. 
It isnıt even safe for a scientist to express temporary doubt as a rhetorical
device before going on to dispel it. 
³To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the
focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for
the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by
natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.² You
will find this sentence of Charles Darwin quoted again and again by
creationists. They never quote what follows. Darwin immediately went on to
confound his initial incredulity. Others have built on his foundation, and the
eye is today a showpiece of the gradual, cumulative evolution of an almost
perfect illusion of design. The relevant chapter of my Climbing Mount
Improbable is called ³The fortyfold Path to Enlightenment² in honour of the
fact that, far from being difficult to evolve, the eye has evolved at least 40
times independently around the animal kingdom. 
The distinguished Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin is widely quoted as
saying that organisms ³appear to have been carefully and artfully designed².
Again, this was a rhetorical preliminary to explaining how the powerful
illusion of design actually comes about by natural selection. The isolated
quotation strips out the implied emphasis on ³appear to², leaving exactly what
a simple-mindedly pious audience ‹ in Kansas, for instance ‹ wants to hear. 
The deceitful misquoting of scientists to suit an anti-scientific agenda ranks
among the many unchristian habits of fundamentalist authors. But such Telling
Lies for God (the book title of the splendidly pugnacious Australian geologist
Ian Plimer) is not the most serious problem. There is a more important point to
be made, and it goes right to the philosophical heart of creationism. The
standard methodology of creationists is to find some phenomenon in nature
which Darwinism cannot readily explain. Darwin said: ³If it could be
demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been
formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would
absolutely break down² Creationists mine ignorance and uncertainty in order
to abuse his challenge. ³Bet you canıt tell me how the elbow joint of the
lesser spotted weasel frog evolved by slow gradual degrees?² If the scientist
fails to give an immediate and comprehensive answer, a default conclusion is
drawn: ³Right, then, the alternative theory; Œintelligent designı wins by
default.²  Notice the biased logic: if theory A fails in some particular,
theory B must be right! Notice, too, how the creationist ploy undermines the
scientistıs rejoicing in uncertainty. Todayıs scientist in America dare not
say: ³Hm, interesting point. I wonder how the weasel frogıs ancestors did
evolve their elbow joint. Iıll have to go to the university library and take a
look.² No, the moment a scientist said something like that the default
conclusion would become a headline in a creationist pamphlet: ³Weasel frog
could only have been designed by God.² I once introduced a chapter on the
so-called Cambrian Explosion with the words: ³It is as though the fossils
were planted there without any evolutionary history.
² Again, this was a rhetorical overture, intended to whet the readerıs appetite
for the explanation. Inevitably, my remark was gleefully quoted out of context.
Creationists adore ³gaps² in the fossil record.  Many evolutionary transitions
are elegantly documented by more or less continuous series of changing
intermediate fossils. Some are not, and these are the famous ³gaps². Michael
Shermer has wittily pointed out that if a new fossil discovery neatly bisects
a ³gap², the creationist will declare that there are now two gaps! 
Note yet again the use of a default. If there are no fossils to document a
postulated evolutionary transition, the assumption is that there was no
evolutionary transition: God must have intervened. 
The creationistsı fondness for ³gaps² in the fossil record is a metaphor for
their love of gaps in knowledge generally. Gaps, by default, are filled by God.
You donıt know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You donıt understand how
memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly
complex process?
Wonderful! Please donıt go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal
to God.
Dear scientist, donıt work on your mysteries. Bring us your mysteries for we
can use them. Donıt squander precious ignorance by researching it away.
Ignorance is Godıs 
gift to Kansas. 
Richard Dawkins, FRS, is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public
Understanding of Science, at Oxford University. His latest book is 
The Ancestorıs Tale
==
John Patterson says;-
As a professor who taught thermodynamics to engineering students for
many years, I first entered the creation/evolution controversy in
1978. I was motivated to combat what I then considered -- and still
consider -- to be the promotion of grossly erroneous if not deceitful
arguments concerning entropy and the second law. I viewed this as
being particularly serious, not only because thermodynamics is an
important engineering science (in fact, it began as an engineering
analysis by Carnot) but also because I found that it was the engineers
in the creationist movement who were shaping the apologetics based on
the laws of thermodynamics. Indeed, I have since found that
engineering educators, senior engineers, and registered professional
engineers are perhaps the most prominent leaders of the creationist
movement. As an engineering professor and a registered engineer
myself, I felt it would be professionally irresponsible to let this
travesty continue without comment. -- An Engineer Looks at the
Creationist Movement, by Prof. John W. Patterson, published in
Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Science 89(2):55-58, 1982, is based
on a presentation given at the Iowa Academy of Science in 1981.
Another reason for engineers being so welcome to creationism derives
from their backgrounds in the rather difficult subjects of
thermodynamics and fluid mechanics. Creationism is so absurd
scientifically that it cannot be defended by any rational arguments
which are understandable to thinking laymen. Hence the need to develop
confusing and yet authoritative-sounding arguments which are
unintelligible to laymen. Clearly the second law, and especially
entropy, are ideally suited for this purpose...  -- An Engineer
Looks at the Creationist Movement, by Prof. John W. Patterson,
published in Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Science 89(2):55-58,
1982, is based on a presentation given at the Iowa Academy of Science in 1981.
The public utterances of the top creation 'scientists' -- together
with their published works, which appear in professedly authoritative
creation science' books and journals -- provide unequivocal,
documentable evidence that many of these authors are grossly
incompetent, not only in the area of science on which they expound
without proper credentials, but also in their own professed areas of
scientific and technical expertise.   -- An Engineer Looks at the
Creationist Movement, by Prof. John W. Patterson, published in
Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Science 89(2):55-58, 1982, is based
on a presentation given at the Iowa Academy of Science in 1981.
It is the responsibility of knowledgeable scientists, of professional
educators, and of their organizations, to expose the extent to which
scientific incompetence and intellectual dishonesty prevail in the
Îcreation science' movement. Only then can school officials be held
fully responsible for allowing the forced teaching of creationism as
Îscience.'   -- An Engineer Looks at the Creationist Movement, by
Prof. John W. Patterson, published in Proceedings of the Iowa Academy
of Science 89(2):55-58, 1982, is based on a presentation given at the
Iowa Academy of Science in 1981.
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/thermo_patterson.html

At the molecular level biological processes, or any other chemical
process for that matter, are not as totally-blind and random as you
try to make out.  Just as on the macro-scale where 'natural selection'
is a major evololutionary driver, on the sub-micro-scale there is such
a thing as 'chemical selection'. And since *all* mechanisms in biology
so far discovered follow natural chemical and physical processes,
there is absolutely no reason to think that it is impossible for these
chemical and biological selection processes to produce a primitive
cell over billions of years. As Prof. Michael Archer once observed;-
Arguments by creation `scientists' about the improbability of the
natural origin of life (i.e. without the intervention of a
supernatural Creator) have become extremely strained. There is a
rapidly accumulating experimental evidence to show that when
primordial conditions of Earth are recreated in laboratories, monomers
(e.g. amino acids), polymers (e.g. proteinoids comprised of over 200
amino acids) and even protocells (coacervate spheres and bacteria-like
spheres made of organic molecules) form spontaneously. Some of the
protocells even grow and reproduce. The only step that has not yet
been spontaneously demonstrated is the evolution of DNA, but all basic
units of which this molecule is made have appeared spontaneously.
(Prof. Michael Archer, School of Zoology, University of NSW,
Confronting Creationism: Defending Darwin, NSW University Press in
association with the Australian Institute of Biology, 1987, p.139).
When you quote the phrase by Davies;- built the first cell from
scratch, I hope you don't think it means that evolutionists imagine
that the first primitive cell suddenly sprang into existence fully
formed and functioning exactly as they do today. That is a popular
misconception of creationists and surprisingly, exactly the way they
think that their god did it.
In a biological sense saying that evolution, built the first cell
from scratch is the same as a geologist saying that erosion built the
Amazon river system from scratch, starting with a simple crack in the
ground. I would be surprised if Davies had any explanation other than the
experimentally proven processes of chemical selection I have already mentioned.
Knowing Davies, I am absolutely certain he is not suggesting Intelligent Design
or any other supernatural explanation.
That does not, of course, mean that biological organisms violate the
second law. Biosystems are not closed systems. They are characterised
by their very openness, which enables them to export entropy into
their environment to prevent degeneration. -- Prof. Paul Davies, The
Cosmic Blueprint, 1987, William Heinemann Ltd, p113-114.
==
The entire creationist program includes little more than a rhetorical
attempt to falsify evolution by presenting supposed contradictions
among its supporters. Their brand of creationism, they claim, is
`scientific' because it follows the Popperian model in trying to
demolish evolution. Yet Popper's argument must apply in both
directions. One does not become a scientist by the simple act of
trying to falsify a rival and truly scientific system... Faced with
the facts of evolution and the philosophical bankruptcy of their own 
position, creationists rely upon distortion and innuendo to buttress
their rhetorical claim. If I sound sharp or bitter, indeed I am... for
I have become a major target of these practices...
(Prof. Stephen Jay Gould, Evolution as Fact and Theory, Discover,
May 1981.)
==
Why do religionists have a fixation with authority, can't they think
for themselves. Instead of providing scientific evidence that clearly
refutes evolution, they attack the leading scientific authorities and
proponents of evolution using dishonest, unprofessional rhetorical
tactics. Don't they realize that the Theory of Evolution will stand or
fall on the scientific evidence... not on the ad hominem attacks of
some minority fundamentalist sect?
. A few years ago the fundies started pushing to have critical thinking taught
in school. They dropped that idea when they realized just what would happen if
the kids actually did some critical thinking.
==
 The problem is that no one has ever defined or described
what a creation event might be like, or distinguished it from
a naturalistic process like evolution.  There is no description
which is detailed enough so that we can tell whether or not
anybody has observed a creation event.  There is no prospect
that anybody has any interest in doing a better job of making
such a description.  There is no prospect of ever hearing about
something that we could say: There's a creation event.  (Or:
That is not a creation event.)
    And the same thing holds -- only more so, if possible -- for 
an intelligent design event, except in those cases where we 
know that purely naturalistic processes are all that are taking
place.
==
Either modern species have evolved out of older ones, *or* God has been
continuously creating new species over geologic time.  The second is outside
the realm of science.
==
Books
     I. _Darwin's Ghost_ by Steve Jones
    II.      The following books by Richard Dawkins:
         A. _The Blind Watchmaker_
         B. _The Extended Phenotype_
         C. _The Selfish Gene_
         D. _Climbing Mount Improbable_
         E. _The Ancestor's Tale_
         (Dawkins' books, while less urbane than Stephen Jay Gould's, have the
         advantage of being a lot more straightforward and expository than
         Gould's. Gould tends to digress and discuss many things along the way,
         which is very nice for a kind of richly-textured grasp of his topics,
         but not so good for getting a quick grasp of the evidence an
         argument.
   III.       _Biology_ by Neil A. Campbell
    IV.       _Biology_ by Levine and Miller
     V.       _Biology_ by Solomon, Berg, Martin. and Villee
    VI.       _Finding Darwin's God_ by Kenneth Miller
   VII.       These books by Stephen Jay Gould:
         A. _Ever Since Darwin_
         B. _The Panda's Thumb_
         C. _Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes_
         D. _The Flamingo's Smile_
         E. _Wonderful Life_
         F. _The Structure of Evolutionary Theory_
         (I've recommended _The Structure of Evolutionary Theory_
         before, but Morowitz, as if to prove just how dishonest he is,
         simply dismissed it with some lame remark that translated into
         normal English as: "I, Morowitz, don't REALLY don't want
         to see a case for evolution")
  VIII.       _The Wisdom of the Genes_ by Christopher Wills
    IX.       _Micro-Cosmos_ by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan
     X.      The section on evolution in John Casti's _Paradigms Lost_
    XI.       The section on "Evolution and Creationism" in
              Michael Shermer's _Why People Believe Weird Things_

        A.  "Mathematics, Information, Genetics, and Evolution"
         (at http://members.cox.net/ccogan/
         Mathematics,_Information,_Genetics,_and_Evolution.htm)
         B. "An Intelligent Intelligent Design Theory"
(http://members.cox.net/ccogan/An_Intelligent_Intelligent_Design_Theory.htm)
         C. "Morowitz's straw-man-of-the-moment" (1/30/2005 6:54 PM)
         D. "The Fossil Record Speaks" (3/26/2005 4:44 PM)
         E. "Any Case for Evolution?" (2/14/2005 7:42 PM)
         F. "Creationist 'Kind' Boundaries vs Chemistry (draft)"
         (in the thread "Evolutionism Priest Strikes Again," 2/6/2005 4:21 PM)
         G. "How Many Theories of Evolution?" (4/17/2005, 9:45 PM)
XIII.  The material in Eric's post, "PunkEek" (3/17/2005 4:18 PM)
XIV._The Pocket Darwin_, by Susan Cogan, at http://www.nuuf.org/darwin1.html
XV.  "Only a Theory? Some Common Creationist Arguments"
          (in "Darwin Day 2005" 2/13/2005 9:57 PM)
   XVI.   _Evolution_ by Mark Ridley
  XVII.   _The Origin of Species_ by Darwin
XVIII.    "Index to Creationist C
        http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html
              (One way to learn about evolution is to simply go through
              all of the creationist claims against it, and see why they
              are factually wrong, misleading or misrepresenting, or
              irrelevant.)
==
Creationists
William Dembski, Michael Behe, Fred Heeren, Walt Brown, Jonathan Wells,
Hank Hanegraaff, Duane Gish, Michael Denton, Henry Morris, Phillip Johnson, 
Walter Bradley, Charles Thaxton, Roger Olsen, Gary Parker, James Coppedge,
==
Supernova Sn1987a has been measured by direct trigonometry at  a 
distance of 167,000 ly.  The speed of light at the time and place of  Sn1987a 
can be calibrated using the decay rates of short half-life isotopes of  
Cobalt.  The half-life of radioactive Cobalt in the spectra of Sn1987a is  the
same as observed now on Earth. 
==
The intelligent-design movement seeks to allow a non-natural explanation into
science. By altering the definition of science, they seek a playing field where
the supernatural can have scientific meaning.  Doing so would be disastrous
for science education. The heart of scientific enterprise is to try to solve
these problems naturally, not just say, OK, this is intelligently designed, so
we're giving up.
==
Phillip Johnson's claim that "Darwinian evolution is not primarily im-portant
as a scientific theory but as a culturally dominant creation story. 
==
http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_2777333
Evolution battle to flare up in Utah
Backers of 'divine design' theory want equal time in schools
By Matt Canham
The Salt Lake Tribune
One state senator, backed by a powerful conservative lobby, wants 
Utah public schools to teach "divine design" side by side with 
evolution, allowing students to decide which theory is more valid.
   The decades-old debate expected to erupt during the next 
legislative session in January will also involve decades-old 
arguments, but with a new twist.
   Some school officials believe teaching a divine design could 
violate the constitutionally protected separation of church and 
state.
   "We don't teach religion in school," said Brett Moulding, 
curriculum director for the state Board of Education. "We don't 
believe this law would be in the best interest of public education."
    But the moral-crusading group Eagle Forum, which has often flexed 
its muscle on Utah's Capitol Hill, argues a community has a right to 
teach its values to its children.
    Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, plans to lead the fight for 
instruction of divine design in Utah public schools. He wants to 
defuse some of the expected controversy by avoiding the term 
"creationism" altogether.
   Instead, he favors "divine design," sometimes called "intelligent 
design," which "doesn't preach religion," he said. "The only people 
who will be upset about this are atheists."
   Supporters of intelligent design say nature is so complex that it 
could not have occurred without the guidance of some higher power, 
maybe God, maybe something else.
   They say this differs from traditional creationists who believe 
that God created the Earth, and argue the distinction means its 
inclusion in public school curriculum would not violate church-state 
separation.
   The Kansas School Board is now debating a new change to its 
science curriculum after hearing arguments from supporters of both 
evolution and intelligent design.
   The Kansas board expects to make a decision by the end of the 
summer.
   Other states across the country such as New York, Missouri, 
Georgia and Alabama continue to debate adding intelligent design to 
the curriculum.
    Buttars plans to add Utah to that list of states by sponsoring a 
bill requiring   educators to also tell students that some believe "a 
superior power" created the world.
   Buttars, who regularly takes up moral debates, sponsored a 2004 
state constitutional amendment that strengthened Utah's ban on same-
sex marriage. His next target is evolution and its domination of the 
science curriculum.
   ''The divine design is a counter to the kids' belief that we all 
come from monkeys. Because we didn't,'' said the conservative 
Republican and retired director of a private school for troubled 
boys. "It shocks me that our schools are teaching evolution as fact."
    Buttars doesn't disregard evolution completely, rather he 
believes God is the creator, but His creations have evolved within 
their own species.
   "We get different types of dogs and different types of cats, but 
you have never seen a 'dat,' '' he said.
   Buttars will have the backing of the Eagle Forum, led by 
conservative activist Gayle Ruzicka, who has independently pushed for 
divine design education in the schools.
   "What an insult to teach children that they have evolved from a 
lower life to what they are now, and then they go home and learn that 
they are someone special, a child of God," Ruzicka said. "This is not 
right."
   Buttars and the Eagle Forum can expect resistance from some 
education groups.
   The state education board is in the process of elaborating its 
position on evolution, after members of the public brought up 
intelligent design in a previous board meeting.
   Evolution is part of the core curriculum for high school science 
teachers. Creationism or divine design is not.
   That doesn't mean Utah teachers don't bring it up on their own.
   Scott Berryessa, president of the Jordan Education Association, 
representing about 2,100 teachers, says he more often gets complaints 
from students and families upset that divine design is mentioned in 
the classroom.
   "If either theory is shortchanged on exposure in Utah schools it 
would probably be the theory of evolution," Berryessa said. "Teachers 
wish that our Legislature would stop micromanaging the process of 
education - especially when it comes to issues as   personal as 
these."
   David Cox is both a legislator and a school teacher.
   The Lehi Republican believes in evolution, but he believes God 
started the evolutionary process.
   He says people are too easily offended when religion is mentioned 
in public, but he doesn't like the state dictating to teachers.
   "I'm conflicted," Cox said. "But I want the teachers to have the 
freedom to say there are different philosophies."
    mcanham@sltrib.com
    Evolution vs. 'intelligent design'
   * Public school science curriculum standards are evolving. 
Defenders of current evolution-based science curricula say the 
increasing clout of religious voters is behind a new movement to push 
creationism or intelligent design into the classroom. Critics of the 
status quo say current science curricula are biased and they point to 
a national movement to restore moral values in public institutions.
   l Lawmakers in a growing number of states (at least nine at last 
count) have   been looking at legislation related to teaching 
evolution in public schools.
   l A third of Americans believe that Charles Darwin's theory of 
evolution is a well-supported scientific theory. And a third of 
Americans consider themselves biblical literalists who believe that 
the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, 
word for word, according to a 2004 Gallup Poll. 
--
Should the state board adopt the minority report or any other creation inspired
changes to the standards, such a change will have a profound effect on our
institutions of higher learning. Colleges and universities that train future
science teachers are required to train them so that they are able to teach
using the state K-12 science standards. Our universities would be required to
teach that science allows supernatural explanations. Failure to do so would
result in the loss of accreditation. Our state would be left with no science
teacher preparation programs. 
==
Phillip Johnson, godfather of the ID movement,  30 November 1996 in 
World Magazine:
³This isnıt really, and never has been a debate 
about science.  Its about religion and philosophy.²

http://www.worldmag.com/displayarticle.cfm?id=374
http://www.worldmag.com/displayarticle.cfm?id=374
==
Michael Behe  on 20 March 2000 in a 
radio interview with Hank Hannegraff on ³The Bible Answer Man.²    
ŒI try to stay completely in my role as a scientist although I am certainly
a Christian and I believe the designer is God.ı
==
Charles Strozier, Ph. D., is Professor of History, Director
of the Center on Terrorism at John Jay College (CUNY), and author of
Apocalypse: On the Psychology of Fundamentalism in America.
==
Offered three explanations for the origin of humans in a CBS News/New York 
Times poll six months ago, 13 percent of respondents said they believed "we 
evolved from less-advanced life-forms over millions of years, and God did 
not directly guide this process." Twenty-seven percent believed "we evolved 
from less-advanced life-forms over millions of years, but God guided this 
process." And 55 percent believed "God created us in our present form." The 
poll, which questioned 885 people, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 
percentage points.

==
Perakh  "Unintelligent Design."
==
Henry Nominee for Textbook Committee Opposed
A block of senators opposed Gov. Brad Henryıs nomination of Dr. 
Virginia Ann Dell of Oklahoma City to the state Textbook Committee 
when her nomination was considered by the Senate Wednesday.
The Senate narrowly voted to advise and consent to Henryıs nomination 
of Dell on a 25 to 22 vote.
³Despite her impressive academic degrees and her service as a teacher 
at the Oklahoma School of Science and Math, her errant belief that 
the teaching of the Intelligent Design Theory blurs the line between 
the separation of church and state is the first of many problems to 
arise with her nomination,² stated Sen. Clark Jolley, R-Edmond.
Sen. Mike Mazzei, R-Tulsa, stated, ³Nothing exists in state or 
federal law that prohibits the discussion of creationism or 
Intelligent Design theory in the classroom. Letıs encourage open and 
honest discussion of all theories so students can learn to think 
critically and, with their parentsı guidance, develop their own 
worldview.²
Dellıs responses to questioning in the Senate Education Committee 
showed she is unwilling to even allow a mention or discussion of 
alternative theories on the origins of the universe.
³Dr. Dellıs blind allegiance to the theory of evolution ­ and her 
unwillingness to even consider the inclusion of other valid theories 
such as Intelligent Design or evolutionary creationism ­ makes her an 
unacceptable nominee in my view,² said Jolley.
The Intelligent Design theory holds that certain features of the 
universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent 
cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection.
³Dr. Dellıs views are too closed-minded and too liberal to qualify 
her for this critical position responsible for selecting textbooks 
for our schoolchildren,² Mazzei stated.
³Since this is Gov. Henryıs second appointee to the Textbook 
Committee to openly hold this viewpoint, I fear he is trying to stack 
the Textbook Commission with liberals whose goal is to stamp out all 
discussion of alternatives to the theory of evolution in Oklahoma 
classrooms,² Jolley said.
==
A recent CBS News poll found nearly 65 percent of Americans are in favor of
teaching creationism along with evolution in schools. Thirty-seven percent
favor banning evolution entirely.  
==
"Gish's Law" ---- "The more complete the fossil record is, the more 
transitionals Gish will demand to see".
If we have A and E, and Gish demands a transitional, we produce C.  
Gish then demands to see the transitional between A and C, and also 
between C and E.
And so on, and so on, and so on.
==
The equations you cited (A=B / B=C / therefore C=D) actually 
represent a kind of primitive thinking that happens when strong 
feelings hi-jack our thinking. Our reactive minds just start 
equating things that occur together and we jump to conclusions. 
Fanatical, totalitarian, extremist movements are based on this kind 
of mentality. They cater to people's fears and resentments. That is 
just what creationism feeds into, as it appeals to the 
disenfranchised who are looking for simple answers to scarey or 
threatening life circumstances. When a person's mind is hi-jacked by 
such strong emotion, they can't make fine-tuned distinctions. They 
just equate all the "bad things" together and slap the same label on 
them. In the case of creationism they come up with this equation:
Evolution = anti-God = immorality = sexual license = unrestrained 
violence = fascism/communism/anarchy/feminism/homosexuality. 
If you try to reason with them, the distinctions you make will fly 
right over their heads. They have such strong emotional attachment 
to believing these things that they will use tortured logic to 
defend them. You might actually have better luck if you try to 
understand "what's eating them" and work at that level. This is not just a
debate about science. It has far reaching social implications.
==
ID is not science for the simple reason that it doesn't produce testable
hypotheses that could be used in an empirically-based research, That's why the
best arguments against ID are philosophical in nature -- there really is little
a scientist can say.
==
Ignorant people like creationsits would sap our educational
system of the means to teach people how to cope with science
problems and then blame the consequences of rheir actions on the
victims, claiming that God is punishing them for something THEY did.
==
 The 'Daubert Test' has been used by the Court since 1993 in a wide
variety of cases where the reliability of expert scientific testimony
is measured.  This reliability rests upon these points:
     Whether the theory or technique has been tested or can be tested.
     Whether the theory or technique has been subjected to peer review
and publication.
     Whether there is a known or potential rate of error.
     Whether the theory/methodology has been generally accepted by the
scientific community.
    Obviously,  the Daubert Rules, on all the four points listed
above, would exclude ID creationism from Federal Courts.
    These rules were applied to Federal Courts by the 1993 Supreme
Court decision, but not to state courts.
    However, some states have adopted the Daubert rules, some have not
(e.g., California).  The rules came from Daubert vs Merrell Dow
Pharmaceuticals Inc. case and replaced previous guidelines established
in 1923 in the case of James Frye vs U.S. in the U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals fro DC.  The 'Frye rule' stated that when the question
involved is outside the range of common experience or knowledge, then
experts are needed; the thing from which the deduction is made, must
be sufficiently established to have gained general acceptance in the
field in which it belongs .The Frye rule, or very similar rules, are
apparently still used in some state courts, especially those that have
not adopted the Daubert rules.
    It is clear that' intelligent design' and 'scientific creationism'
do not meet either set of rules.  Should the attorneys for the
evolution side should attempt to apply these rules in forthcoming cases?
==
Kathy Martin, a member of the Kansas state Board of Education (and retired
science teacher), states: "..our nation is based on Christianity, not science." 
==
Tennessee, April 2003: Blount County's Board of Education votes not to adopt
three high school biology textbooks because they do not present creationism
alongside evolution.

California, September 2003: The Board of Trustees of the Roseville Joint Union
High School District (Placerville County) decide not to enact a district- wide
policy on teaching evolution. Science teachers have told the district that they
do not want to add anti-evolutionist materials that are not state- approved.

Oklahoma, April 2004: Textbook legislation passes after it is stripped of a
provision that all textbooks include a disclaimer describing evolution as "a
controversial theory which some scientists present as scientific explanation
for the origin of living things" and "the unproven belief that random,
undirected forces produced a world of living things."
==
The evolution debate reignited this month as Oklahoma Attorney 
General Drew Edmondson ruled that Oklahoma's State Textbook Committee 
doesn't have the authority to require that biology textbooks carry a 
disclaimer that calls Darwinism a "controversial theory." (Committee 
members plan to challenge the ruling.) Meanwhile, in Louisiana, the 
Tangipahoa School Board voted 5-4 against taking a defense of a 
similar disclaimer to the U.S. Supreme Court after an appeals court 
declared that the disclaimer is unconstitutional.
==
When the legislative session of the Missouri House of Representatives ended on
May 13, 2005, House Bill 35 died in the Education Committee. HB 35 provided
that:

All biology textbooks sold to the public schools of the state of Missouri shall
have one or more chapters containing a critical analysis of origins. The
chapters shall convey the distinction between data and testable theories of
science and philosophical claims that are made in the name of science. Where
topics are taught that may generate controversy, such as biological evolution,
the curriculum should help students to understand the full range of scientific
views that exist, why such topics may generate controversy, and how scientific
discoveries can profoundly affect society.
==
Science is the search for testable explanations of facts of nature, in terms of
discoverable regularities of nature.
God is not very subject to experimental investigation, or all that useful as 
a theoretical explanation for phenomena.  A theoretical explanation 
involves causes which can produce some effects, and cannot produce others, 
that will behave one way in a given set of circumstances and cannot behave 
another.  Given that God can do *anything*, and (given that His ways are 
above our ways) His choices might not be predictable, even partially, by us, 
how can you ever rule out God did it as an explanation for anything?
Or, more to the point, given that God is *not* forced to work in some ways 
and prevented from working in others (as all natural causes are forced to 
work in certain ways and prevented from working in others), how can God as 
creator *explain*, e.g. why humans share pseudogenes with chimps?  God could 
have made us that way, or some other way entirely, but evolution is 
constrained to have us inherit traits from our ancestors.  Or, look at it 
the other way around: if humans share a GULO pseudogene with chimps and 
macaques, then an evolutionists would also expect it to be shared with 
orangutans and baboons.  But what would a creationist expect, and on what 
grounds?  A theoretical explanation for the phenomena ought to give you some 
grounds for making a prediction.
Any God worthy of traditional theism can't be stuffed into the gaps in 
scientific knowledge and used to explain (in the sense of pasting a 
bandaid labelled design or creation over an admission of ignorance and a 
disinterest in research into the problem) problems that don't have proper 
explanations.
Darwinian evolution is based on populations that produce more offspring 
than the environment can support, and variation within populations, and on 
the fact that different variations give individuals a better chance of 
surviving (and leaving descendants) in different sorts of environments.
Alternatively, there might be (as Lamarck surmised) some unknown mechanism 
propelling lineages up some evolutionary ladder.  Currently, biologists are 
ignorant of any such mechanism and disbelieve in that ladder, but it is 
another possibility, neither Darwinian nor design (unless the Lamarkian 
mechanism was itself designed -- but then, the Darwinian mechanism might be 
designed, for that matter).
It occurred to me, reading Behe's review mentioned above, that design does 
not imply a long-range goal of evolution.  There might be (as several 
noncreationists have noted) multiple designers, perhaps with contrary goals, 
or one or more tinkerers who fiddle with life from time to time, but only 
with short-term goals (i.e. with no concern for what a bacterial flagellum 
might mean for species that aren't bacteria), or with goals that change from 
time to time (this often happens in long-range projects).  So you could have 
something that is design, but also chance (since the Designer[s] 
aquire[s] new goals which are random with respect to his/their former goals).
==
Since the evolution account is accurate and life is all about an undirected
material process, then Christian metaphysics and religious belief are fantasy.
==
Egyptians built their civilization and constructed monuments, and didn't
bother to take notice of the worldwide flood that was supposed to be
drowning them all. (Creationists estimate that the flood took place about
2000-3000 BCE, which was the height of the Egyptian civilization.)
Unfortunately for creationists, the Egyptians were very careful to write
down their history.  The documented history of Egypt stretches from about
8000 BCE. The history, that is, what was written down at the time,
stretches from ~3500 BCE through invasions by Hyksos, Hittites, Romans,
through floods, famines, insurrections, twenty-odd ruling dynasties,
massive building projects, and the mind-boggling minutiae of royal
bureaucracy. During this period the whole world was engulfed in a flood
which scoured the land clean. And in Egypt, nobody noticed.
==
 Intelligent Design Theory, otherwise known as Creationism Lite points out
the fuzzy areas of evolution, and reasons that if we don't know exactly how
it happened, then God did it, which is the same rock-solid process by which
the Greeks scientifically discovered that Zeus made lightning.
==
Report on a email message 
We gave a thirty second description of what makes a star shine (these
are typically 12 yo students) and what happens when the fuel is
consumed and, finally, that certain stars then can 'explode'. We
mentioned that this is where most of the heavy elements are
manufactured.  One of the parents was fuming as I said this.
At this point, we dropped the discussion, more specific information
about the types of stars that can undergo this process wasn't appropriate.
A couple of days later, we were presented with a formal complaint
submitted, I assume, by the angered parent.  He claimed that, "Science
has proven that no elements heavier than iron can be manufactured by
stars or anything else." And referenced some idiotic statement from
Hovind.
We tried to explain to the science teacher and the principal, the
error in the parent's objection.  The principal cut us off and said
that in the future we should just avoid that topic on astronomy nights.
==
2004, the Grantsburg, Wis., school district drew widespread attention when a
new policy urged teachers to explore alternative theories to evolution. 
==
"It's a cute book(about evolution)  "Our 
Family Tree". There's nothing wrong with it. We just
don't need that kind of debate," said Brad Sanderson, principal at Pinewood
Elementary.
With "educators" like this self-censoring the discourse, the kids are 
virtaully *guaranteed* to be "left behind."
==
New York
Assembly Bill 8036, introduced on May 3, 2005, and referred to the
Committee on Education, would require that "all pupils in grades
kindergarten through twelve in all public schools in the state ...
receive instruction in both theories of intelligent design and
evolution." It also charges New York's commissioner of education to
assist in developing curricula and local boards of education to
provide "appropriate training and curriculum materials ... to ensure
that all aspects of the theories, along with any supportive data, are
fully examined through such course of study."
Assembly bill A08036 requires that all students in New York state
public schools, from Kindergarten through Grade 12, receive
instruction in both "theories" of intelligent design and evolution.
The bill also requires the board of education or the trustees of
every school district to provide appropriate training and curriculum

To view the bills, visit: http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?bn=A08036
("intelligent design") and http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?bn=A08073
(Ten Commandments).

ALBANY ­ Assemblyman Daniel L. Hooker, R-Saugerties, introduced two
bills on May 3 requiring the teaching of intelligent design in New
York state public schools and allowing the posting of the Ten
Commandments on government property. Hooker is the sole sponsor of
both bills which have been referred to committee.
==
More is at stake in the evolution debate than what will be taught in Kansas
science classes. It could lead to millions of dollars of losses in the state's
fledgling bioscience industry as word gets around that Kansans can't agree on
basic scientific principles.
"It is ironic that at the same time the Legislature is pumping $500
million into the Kansas bioscience initiative to build a bioscience and
biotech industry in Kansas, the (state) board of education is trying to
remove and water down the basic fundamental concept of evolution that
underlies all of biology,"
--
 Steve Abrams, chairman of the Kansas Board of Education, is an avowed
"young Earth creationist," someone who believes that God created the world no
more than 6,000 years ago. 
==
Creationists and ID proponents are making an end run around the scientific
process, because they know their beliefs can't pass muster as a scientific
concept, much less a real alternative theory to evolution. Again, if the IDers
had any scientific evidence, we'd expect to see it presented by the scientific
method.  It would NOT be shopped around to school boards.
==
I read a new term today Baraminology - Classification of Created Organisms.
It seems to me that the definition of kinds is getting progressively
broader as Creationists come to grips with the overwhelming evidence in
support of evolution.
At one time, Creationists completely denied that the evolutionary
process even existed; when that position became untenable, even for
them, they modified it by making the micro/macro distinction. They
clearly defined micro/macro evolution as changes within/without the
species boundary. They accepted that only the micro version could be possible.
Now I read that they are beginning to accept that evolution from one
species to another is possible....but they have apparently re-defined
micro to include a broader range of kinds [donkeys and horses being
different species, but part of one kind].
Before we know it.....all organisms will be grouped into one kind
[carbon-based, with DNA?] and all defined as falling under
microevolution.
Frank Lewis Marsh coined the term baramin way back in 1941
and baramins were part of Whitcomb and Morris's _The Genesis Flood_
that in many ways launched the scientific creationism movement
in the early 1960s. . 
If you are interested in baraminology you might find the YEC book
_Understanding the Pattern of Life_ by Todd Charles Wood and 
Megan J. Murray.  
==
(THE WORLD IS FLAT: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century creationism.
==
In Texas, the Legislature is considering a bill that would give the 
conservative Board of Education more say over the content of 
textbooks, and the textbook battle is what this is all about.

The acceptance of textbooks will come up in about 20 states over the 
next three years.
==
Pasteur did more to end ID's hold on scientific
thinking that just about anyone.  We have the germ theory of disease
instead of evil spirits or the wrath of God.  We have life from life
instead of lifeforms popping out of the vacuum.  It always struck me as
odd that creationists find Pasteur's experiments in spontaneous
generation to be a creationist success.  If lifeforms were popping out
without natural explanations they would really have something to put
forward.  Pasteur just supported common descent without even knowing
what he was doing.  If Pasteur is correct where do new species come
from?  Since we observe them coming from existing species this point is
now moot, but what good does Pasteur's work on spontaneous generation
do for creationists?  He demonstrated that special creation doesn't happen.
==
[I]n its relation to Christianity, intelligent design
should be viewed as a ground-clearing operation . . .
                             - William A. Dembski -
==
Creationists are not contending, within the scientific community, for a
scientific proposition, they are vying within the wider society, including
business and economics, to influence the favorably disposed general public to
accept the Christian worldview.
==
Science has many mysteries. Creation is ALL mystery.
==
From the Gallup 2001 Poll on Evolution: 37% intelligent design,
45% creationist, 12% no godly involvement in human development, 6% other.
==
Fundamental Theorem of designology that irreducible complexity indicates
design.  So we apparently have a Designer who likes to make different kinds
of flagella.
==
Look at Behe's last chapter, where he says that scientists have to get used
to the reintroduction of the supernatural into science. 
==
Here are some facts about the hero of some creationists, Kent Hovind:
                                                                            
... claims to have a Ph.D. in education. His degree is actually in         
Christian Education from Patriot University, an organization described as  
a "diploma mill" by various sources. Patriot University, which offers      
college credit for "life experience," has only one graduate-level          
"science" course in its curriculum, Biblical Basis of Modern Science.      
                                                                            
... cited a fabricated story intended as an April Fools joke as evidence   
to support his claim that humans lived with dinosaurs.                     
                                                                            
... has asserted that he is not obligated to pay federal income taxes,     
claiming that he is "a non resident alien to the federal government." In a 
sworn statement to the IRS, he claimed that he owned no property and had   
no income when in fact he owned three automobiles and a $90,000 home.      
                                                                            
... opposes the vaccination of children, claiming that vaccines are part   
of a plot hatched in the UN by Bill Clinton and Ted Turner to reduce the   
world's population. He also has stated that 26,000 military personnel died 
"of Gulf War Syndrome from the vaccines they were given."                  
                                                                            
... claims that AIDS was developed in a Maryland laboratory, also to       
reduce the world's population.                                             
                                                                            
... has suggested that "our government" may have "conspired to plan the    
events surrounding Sept. 11 including the release of anthrax" to justify   
increases in defense expenditures.                                         
                                                                            
... claims that his doctoral dissertation was 250 pages in length. The     
actual manuscript on file at Patriot University is 101 pages and contains  
rampant errors and misspellings, such as "Caanan" for "Canaan," "Voltair"  
for "Voltaire," "Shintu" for "Shinto," "peersuaded" for "persuaded,"       
"centrifical" for "centrifugal," "aught" for "ought," "disippated" for     
"dissipated" "immerged" for "emerged," and "epic" for "epoch."             
                                                                            
... has asserted he has an IQ of 160 and suggests that he may understand   
the theory of relativity better than Albert Einstein himself.              
                                                                            
... was recently arrested and jailed on charges of burglary, battery and   
assault.                                                                   
                                                                            
... has claimed to have discovered a cure for cancer, asserting that a     
vitamin B17 deficiency causes cancer and that taking B17 plus vitamin C    
will cure your cancer.                                                     
                                                                            
... believes that in the 13th century A.D., the Emperor of China was       
raising fire-breathing dragons to pull his chariots in parades.            
                                                                            
... has said the following: "New World Order, coming to a city near you.   
They are starting next month in South America, putting microchips in       
people. That's the plan. America is slated for this fall. Put microchips   
in the palm of the right hand."                                            
                                                                            
... and: "As far as cloning goes, it is defiantly [sic] not being done,    
and probably would be an impossibility."                                   
                                                                            
... and: "Democracy is evil and contrary to God's law."                    
                                                                            
... and: "'the mark of the beast' from Revelations 13:16 is actually the   
UPC bar code. Four people have called me from Arkansas and Missouri to     
report seeing customers at the grocery store pay for purchases by scanning 
their hand."            

"Claiming to be a ministry of Hilltop Baptist Church, the college charges 
between $15 and $32 per credit and offers degrees through the doctoral 
level. Their catalog contains no information on the school's faculty or 
their credentials. Patriot claims accreditation by the American Accrediting 
Association of Theological Institutions (see Chapter 3), an accrediting 
mill associated with Christian Bible College in Rocky Mount, North 
Carolina.Advertises or has advertised in 'Pulpit Helps'."          

Note that this is unusual in two ways.  First, the dissertation was not 
already available to the public.  Second, the dissertation was still being 
worked on ⤳ even though Hovind was claiming that he had received his degree 
in 1991 ⤳ nine years earlier! 

In 2000 when the copy was obtained, and up to the current time, Hovind 
claims that his dissertation is 250 pages long (see 
http://web.archive.org/web/20010816220051/http:/www.drdino.com/
FAQs/FAQmisc13.jsp). 
  However the copy obtained by Skip Evans was only 101 pages long.  That's 
quite a difference.  It is also significant because even PU (an appropriate 
acronym) at its web site says that its requirements for a Ph.D. thesis are: 
"Minimum of 150 typewritten pages".  Hovind's dissertation meets only about 
2/3 of this requirement (and this from a clearly bogus "university"). 

The title of Hovind⤁s four-chapter dissertation is: "The Effects of 
Teaching Evolution on the Students in our Public School System".  However 
NONE of the four chapters of the Patriot University document addresses this 
subject.   While the document speaks a great deal about evolution, the 
phrase "public schools"? does not appear anywhere.  Nor does it talk about 
â¤Ĥstudentsâ¤?.  It would probably be impossible to find another dissertation 
anywhere in which the topic suggested by the title is completely ignored 
within the body of the document.

The pages of Hovind's thesis are NOT numbered.  While this may seem to be a 
minor point, it is EXTREMELY unusual not to have numbered pages.  As 
mentioned earlier doctoral dissertations are at least partially intended to 
be information sources for other research ⤳ which should then be 
referenced.  Without numbered pages such references are difficult to make 
(someone would have to manually count the pages).  The lack of page numbers 
says implicitly that the writer of the dissertation feels that no one would 
ever use any of the information presented within their dissertation for any 
other research.  (Of course it should be recognized that this is a valid 
point of view for Hovind to hold.  It is unimaginable that anyone would 
ever use his dissertation for any research information.) 

The single illustration, the electromagnetic spectrum, is cut with a 
scissors out of a science textbook and taped on; it does not fit the page. 
Additionally, there are substantial formatting errors typical of a draft, 
but not a final, version. The final version is printed on a dot-matrix 
printer, an absolute no-no, even in 1991. 

Misspellings and typographical errors run throughout the thesis.  It is 
certainly true that dissertations are primarily of interest because of the 
new ideas that they may present.  It is also true that typos and 
misspellings are easy to correct.  Nonetheless, such mistakes are expected 
to be eliminated from a completed, edited and approved Ph.D. dissertation. 
A review committee would never accept a dissertation with the obvious 
mistakes that appear in Hovind's dissertation.  Examples are "Caanan" for 
â¤ĤCanaanâ¤?, "Voltair" for â¤ĤVoltaireâ¤?, "Nyles Eldridge" instead of "Niles 
Eldridge�, Madelyn Murray "O'Hare" - just like the airport- instead of 
"¤'Hair"?, "peersuaded",  "centrifical" instead of "centrifugal"?, "aught" 
rather than "ought"?, "disippated" rather than â¤Ĥdissipatedâ¤?, "immerged" 
(from the slime) rather than "emerged"?, or "epic" rather than "epoch"? (as 
in geological).  There are a number of other examples. 

There is no original research in the dissertation.  Hovind himself admits 
this.  In the first chapter of this dissertation, Hovind says that there is 
nothing new in the document, and explains that the dissertation is just an 
explanation of the things that he has learned.  At any fully accredited 
university this fact, by itself, would disqualify the dissertation. 

There are no references anywhere within the dissertation.  Note the 
previous paragraph.  Any document, even if it is not a Ph.D. dissertation, 
which has no references and no original research, is simply someone⤁s 
rambling comments. 

Neither Hovind nor Patriot University can present any documentation that 
the dissertation was reviewed by a review committee.  This is an absolute 
requirement at any fully accredited university.                                    
==
To many teachers, "teaching the controversy" means letting 
ideologues manufacture controversy where there is none. And that, 
they say, could set a disastrous precedent in education.

"In some ways I think civilization is at stake because it's about how 
we view our world," Nimz says. The Salem Witch Trials of 1692, for 
example, were possible, she says, because evidence wasn't necessary 
to guide a course of action.

"When there's no empirical evidence, some very serious things can 
happen," she says. "If we can't look around at what is really there 
and try to put something logical and intelligent together from that 
without our fears getting in the way, then I think that we're doomed."

Hovind is quoted as saying: 
"Now, when National Geographic put the picture of Lucy's knee in there, the 
knee joint that they used was not from the same skeleton. Now, they labeled 
it Lucy. And I think Donald [Johanson] knew about this and just didn⤁t say 
anything. But National Geographic had the wrong knee. It was found a mile 
and a half away and 200 feet deeper in the strata." 

This is a total lie.  Dr. Johanson has never claimed that the Lucy fossil 
had a knee joint.  Published pictures of the fossil do not show it with a 
knee joint (see http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/lucy.html). The claim 
is not only false, it is clearly shown to be false in Johanson's published 
writings about "Lucy" (e.g., Johanson, Donald C. and Edey, Maitland A. 
(1981) Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind. N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, ch. 
7-8) and it has been pointed out repeatedly to its proponents that it is 
false. Despite this, none of the major proponents of the claim - including 
Hovind - has publicly retracted it
==
Critics of evolution are supplying students with prepared questions 
on such topics as:

€ The origins of life. Why do textbooks claim that the 1953 Miller-
Urey experiment shows how life's building blocks may have formed on 
Earth - when conditions on the early Earth were probably nothing like 
those used in the experiment, and the origin of life remains a 
mystery?

€ Darwin's tree of life. Why don't textbooks discuss the "Cambrian 
explosion," in which all major animal groups appear together in the 
fossil record fully formed instead of branching from a common 
ancestor - thus contradicting the evolutionary tree of life?

€ Vertebrate embryos. Why do textbooks use drawings of similarities 
in vertebrate embryos as evidence for common ancestry - even though 
biologists have known for over a century that vertebrate embryos are 
not most similar in their early stages, and the drawings are faked?

€ The archaeopteryx. Why do textbooks portray this fossil as the 
missing link between dinosaurs and modern birds - even though modern 
birds are probably not descended from it, and its supposed ancestors 
do not appear until millions of years after it?

€ Peppered moths. Why do textbooks use pictures of peppered moths 
camouflaged on tree trunks as evidence for natural selection - when 
biologists have known since the 1980s that the moths don't normally 
rest on tree trunks, and all the pictures have been staged?

€ Darwin's finches. Why do textbooks claim that beak changes in 
Galapagos finches during a severe drought can explain the origin of 
species by natural selection - even though the changes were reversed 
after the drought ended, and no net evolution occurred?

€ Mutant fruit flies. Why do textbooks use fruit flies with an extra 
pair of wings as evidence that DNA mutations can supply raw materials 
for evolution - even though the extra wings have no muscles and these 
disabled mutants cannot survive outside the laboratory?

€ Human origins. Why are artists' drawings of apelike humans used to 
justify materialistic claims that we are just animals and our 
existence is a mere accident - when fossil experts cannot even agree 
on who our supposed ancestors were or what they looked like?

€ Evolution as a fact. Why are students told that Darwin's theory of 
evolution is a scientific fact - even though many of its claims are 
based on misrepresentations of the facts?

Source: Discovery Institute
==
A Gallup poll late 2004 showed that only 28 percent of Americans 
accept the theory of evolution, while 48 percent adhere to 
creationism - the belief that an intelligent being is responsible for 
the creation of the earth and its inhabitants.
==
Eldridge, N., 1983, The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at
     Creationism: New York, Washington Square Press.

Kitcher, P., 1982, Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism:
     Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 213 p.

Freske, S., 1981, Creationist Misunderstanding, Misrepresentation and
     Misuse of the Second Law of Thermodynamics: Creation/Evolution,
     v. 2, p. 8-16.

Banach, M., 1988, Henry Morris Visits His Old Haunts: Creation/Evolution
     Newsletter, v. 8.

Bennetta, W. J., 1987, The Meaning of 'Balanced Treatment':
     Creation/Evolution Newsletter, v. 7, p. 6-7.

---, 1988, It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Satan!: Creation/Evolution
     Newsletter, v. 8, p. 21.

Brush, S. G., 1983, Ghosts from the Nineteenth Century: Creationist
     Arguments for a Young Earth, {iin} Godfrey, L. R., ed., Scientists
     Confront Creationism: New York, Norton, p. 49-84.

Cole, J. R., 1981, Misquoted Scientists Respond: Creation/Evolution,
     v. 6, p. 34-44.

Davis, H. G., 1986, Don't Fault the Lord for Taking Time: Gainesville
     (Fla) Sun.

Dawkins, R., 1986, The Blind Watchmaker: New York, W. W. Norton.

Diamond, J., 1985, Voyage of the Overloaded Ark: Discover, v. 6, p.
     82-92.

Dolphin, W. D., 1983, A Brief Critical Analysis of Scientific
     Creationism, {iin} Wilson, D. B., ed., Did the Devil Make
     Darwin Do It? Modern Perspectives on the Creation/Evolution
     Controversy: Ames, Iowa, Iowa State University Press, p. 19-36.

Ferre, F., 1973, Design Argument, {iin} Weiner, P. P., ed., Dictionary
     of the History of Ideas: New York, 1973, Charles Scribner's Sons,
     v. 1, p. 670-677.

Fezer, K. D., 1988, Paul Ellwanger Strikes Again: Creation/Evolution
     Newsletter, v. 8, p. 5-6.

Frye, R. M., 1983, Is God a Creationist? The Religious Case Against
     Creation-Science: New York, Scribner's.

Galston, A. W., and Slayman, C. L., 1979, THe Not-So-Secret Life of
     Plants: American Scientist, v. 67, p. 337-344.

Godfrey, L. R., 1985, Foot Notes of an Anatomist: Creation/Evolution, v.
     5, p. 16-36; {i in Cole, JR and Godfrey, LR, eds., (1985) The Paluxy
     River Footprint Mystery-Solved. Creation/Evolution 5 (Special Issue).

Goodgame, D., 1989, Calling for an Overhaul: Time, v. 134, no. 15, p.
     60,69.

Hammond, A., and Margulis, L., 1981, Farewell to Newton, Einstein,
     Darwin: Science 81, v. 2, no. 10, p. 55-57.

Mattill, A. J., 1982, Three Cheers for the Creationists!: Free
     Inquiry, v. 2, no. 2, p. 17-18.

McGowan, C., 1984, In the Beginning: A Scientist Shows the Creationists
     are Wrong: Buffalo, New York, Prometheus Books, 208 p.

McIver, T., 1988, Creationist Misquotation of Darrow: Creation/Evolution,
     v. 23, p. 1-13.

---, 1988, Formless and Void: Gap Theory Creationism: Creation/Evolution,
     v. 24, p. 1-24.

Miller, K. R., 1982, Answers to the Standard Creationist Arguments:
     Creation/Evolution, v. 3, p. 1-13.

Montagu, A., 1984, Science and Creationism: New York, Oxford University
     Press, 415 p.

Moore, R. A., 1983, The Impossible Voyage of Noah's Ark:
     Creation/Evolution, v. 4, p. 1-43.

Ruse, M., 1988, But Is It Science? The Philosophical Question in the
     Creation/Evolution Controversy: Buffalo, New York, Prometheus Books,
     406 p.

Strahler, A. N., 1987, Science and Earth History: The Evolution/Creation
     Controversy: Buffalo, New York, Prometheus Books, 552 p.

Thwaites, W. M., 1983, An Answer to Dr. Geisler - From the Perspective of
     Biology: Creation/Evolution, v. 4, p. 13-20.

Godfrey, L. R., 1983, Scientists Confront Creationism: New York, W.W.
     Norton, 324 p.

Lewontin, R. C., 1971, The yahoos ride again: Evolution, v. 25, p. 442.

Ruse, M., 1981, Darwinism Defended: Dordrecht, Reidel.

Lewin, R., 1982, Creationism on the defensive in Arkansas: Science, v.
     215, p. 33-34.

---, 1982, Where is the science in Creation science?: Science, v. 215,
     p. 142-146.

---, 1982, Judge's ruling hits hard at Creationism: Science, v. 215, p.
     381-384.

Overton, J. W. R., 1982, Memorandum on Rev. Bill McLean et al.
     LR C 81 322.

Milne, D. H., 1981, How to debate with creationists - and "Win": American
     Biology Teacher, v. 43, no. 5, p. 235-245.

Awbery, F. T., and Thwaites, W. M., 1981, Evolution Vs. Creation. Aztec
     Lecture Notes. San Diego State University (San Diego, California.,
     92182) 77 pp.

---, 1984, Evolutionists Confront Creationists: San Francisco,
     California, American Association for the Advancement of Science,
     v. 1, Part 3, 213 p.; Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of
     the Pacific Division.

Bambach, R. K., 1983, Response to creationism: Science, v. 220, p.
     851-853.

Zeisel, H., 1981, Letters to editor: Science, v. 212, p. 873.

Root-Bernstein, R. S., 1984, Ignorance versus knowledge in the
     evolutionist-creationist controversy, {iin} Awbery, F. T., and
     Thwaites, W. M., eds., Evolution Vs. Creation: San Diego,
     California, San Diego State University, p. 8-24; Aztec Lecture
     Notes.

Lammerts, W., 1961, Personal Communication to Dr. Henry M. Morris, {iin}
     Whitcomb, J. C., and Morris, H. M., eds., The Genesis Flood:
     Philadelphia, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, p.
     189-191.

Lewin, R., 1982, Molecules come to Darwin's aid: Science, v. 216, p.
     1091-1092.

Mayr, E., 1971, Evolution vs. special creation: American Biology
     Teacher, v. 33, no. 1, p. 49-50.

Hardin, G., 1984, "Scientific Creationism"--marketing deception as
     truth, {iin} Montagu, A., ed., Science and Creationism: New
     York, Oxford University Press, p. 159-166.

Hastings, R. J., 1986, Tracking those incredible creationists--the
     trail continues: Creation/Evolution, v. 5, p. 5-15.

---, 1987, New observations on Paluxy tracks confirm their dinosaurian
     origin: Journal of Geological Education, v. 35, p. 4-15.

Hildeman, W. H., 1982, "Creative Evolution." Letter to the Editor:
     Science, v. 215, p. 1182.

Dutch, S. L., 1982, Notes on the nature of fringe science: Journal of
     Geological Education, v. 30, p. 6-13.

---, 1982, A critique of creationist cosmology: Journal of Geological
     Education, v. 30, p. 27-33.

Ebert, J. D. [C., Committee on Science and Creationism]., 1984, Science
     and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences:
     Washington, D.C., National Academy Press, 28 p.

Edwords, F., 1983, An answer to Dr. Geisler--from the perspective of
     philosophy: Creation/Evolution, v. 4, p. 6-12.

Fair, C., 1974, The New Nonsense: The End of Rational Consensus: New
     York, Simon and Schuster, 287 p.

Fezer, K. D., 1984, (Editor's comments): Creation/Evolution
     Newsletter, v. 4, p. 4-5.

Fritz, W. J., 1980, Reinterpretation of the depositional environment
     of the Yellowstone "fossil forests": Geology, v. 8, p. 309-313.

Cloud, P. E., 1977, "Scientific creaetionism"--A new inquisition
     brewing?: The Humanist, v. 37, no. 1, p. 6-16.

Weber, C. G., 1980, The fatal flaws of flood geology: Creation/Evolution,
     v. 1, p. 24-37.

---, 1982, Answers to creationist attacks on Carbon-14 dating:
     Creation/Evolution, v. 3, p. 23-29.

Wilson, C., 1972, Crash Go the Chariots: New York, Lancer Books, 126 p.

York, D., 1979, Pleochroic halos and geochronology: Eos, v. 60, no.
     33, p. 618-618.

Dietz, R. S., 1983, Gish's Law: Geotimes, v. 28, no. 8, p. 11-12.

Doolittle, R. F., 1984, Some Rebutting Comments to Creationist Views on
     the Origin of Life, {iin} Awbery, F. T., and Thwaites, W. M., eds.,
     Evolutionists Confront Creationists: San Francisco, Ca., American
     Association for the Advancement of Science, v. 1, Part 3, p. 153-163;
     Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division.

Godfrey, L. R., 1981, An analysis of the creationist film, {uFootprints in
     Stone}: Creation/Evolution, v. 2, p. 23-30.

---, 1983, Creationists and Gaps in the Fossil Record, {iin} Godfrey, L. R.,
     ed., Scientists Confront Creationists: New York, W.W. Norton, p.
     193-218.

Milne, D. H., 1984, Creationists, population growth, bunnies, and the
     Great Pyramid: Creation/Evolution, v. 4, p. 1-5.

Milne, D. H., and Schafersman, S. D., 1983, Dinosaur tracks, erosion
     marks and midnight chisel work (but no human footprints) in the
     Cretaceous limestone of the Paluxy River bed, Texas: Journal of
     Geological Education, v. 31, p. 111-123.

Soroka, L. G., and Nelson, C. L., 1983, Physical constraints on the
     Noachian Deluge: Journal of Geological Education, v. 31, p. 135-139.

Patterson, C., 1984, Letter in reply to Steven Binkley, June 17, 1982:
     Creation/Evolution Newsletter, v. 4, p. 4-5.

Patterson, J. W., 1983, Thermodynamics and Evolution, {iin} Godfrey,
     L. R., ed., Scientists Confront Creationism: New York, W.W.
     Norton & Co., p. 99-116.

---, 1984, Thermodynamics and Probability, {iin} Awbery, F. T., and
     Thwaites, W. M., eds., Evolutionists Confront Creationists: San
     Francisco, American Association for the Advancement of Science,
     v. 1, Part 3, p. 132-152; Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting
     of the Pacific Division.

Petto, A. J., 1982, The turtle: Evolutionary dilemma or creationist
     shell game?: Creation/Evolution, v. 3, p. 20-29.

Stokes, W. L., 1986, Alleged human footprint from Middle Cambrian
     strata, Milford County, Utah: Journal of Geological Education,
     v. 34, p. 187-190.

Strahler, A. N., 1983, Toward a broader perspective in the creation-
     evolution debate: Journal of Geological Education, v. 31, p.
     87-94.

Thwaites, W. M., and Awbery, F. T., 1982, As the world turns: Can
     creationists keep time?: Creation/Evolution, v. 3, p. 18-22.

Holden, C., 1990, Irrationality-skeptics strike back: Science, v.
     248, p. 165.

Harrold, F. B., and Eve, R. A., 1987, Cult Archeology and Creationism:
     Understanding Pseudoscientific Beliefs about the Past [1st ed.]:
     Iowa City, Iowa, University of Iowa Press, 163 p.

Gould, S. J., 1987, William Jennings Bryan's last campaign: Natural
     History Magazine, v. 96 (November), p. 16-26.

Dietz, R. S., and Holden, J. C., 1987, Creation/Evolution SATIRICON:
     Creationism Bashed [1st ed.]: Winthrop, Washington, The Bookmaker,
     140 p.

Huxley, T. H., 1896, Mr. Gladstone and Genesis: The Nineteenth Century.

Wolf, J., and Mellet, J. S., 1985, The role of "Nebraska Man" in the
     creation-evolution debate: Creation/Evolution, v. 5, p. 31-43.
==
"The American Family Association of Ohio believes that God has
communicated absolute truth to man through the Word of God (the Bible)
which is inerrant and infallible, and that all men are subject to the
authority of God's Word at all times. Therefore, a culture based on an
adherence to Biblical truth best serves the well being of our country,
in accordance with the vision of our founding fathers."
==
Pattern is one meaning of design, the only one that does not imply a designer
If this is your definition of design, then you should use the word pattern,
because that will eliminate the ambiguity and possibility of equivocation.
==
Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a
fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not on reasoning but on
doctrinaire adherence to religious principles. (James D. Watson)
==
Austin may have Ph.D. credentials, but his work is so distorted by the
necessary twisting and bending required to fit geology into a young-earth
worldwide flood framework that it scarcely resembles scientific research.
Furthermore, Austin also casts aspersions on the work of legitimate scientists
with the intent to cast doubt on their expertise.   That's just plain ugly.
==
"Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating
to be quoted again and again by creationists--whether through design or
stupidity, I do not know--as admitting that the fossil record includes no
transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species
level, but they are abundant between larger groups."
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory," 
   _Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes_, 1983, Norton, New York.
==
Some creationists such as Henry Morris do precisely this type of
prejudging.  Morris says:
"Often the Hamites, especially the Negroes, have become actual personal
servants or even slaves to the others. Possessed of a genetic character
concerned mainly with mundane matters..."
Note than Morris says that someone's "character" should be associated with
their race.  That is the worst kind of racism.
==
Creationism, despite what some people think, is not a belief held
exclusively by uneducated Protestant fundamentalists who interprete the
Bible literally.
A September 10, 1993 Gallup Poll asked:Which of the following statements
comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings:
1) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced
forms of life, but God guided this process; 2) human beings have developed
over millions of years from less advanced forms Developed, with God = 35%
Developed, no God = 11% God created, in present form = 47%
==
A recent Gallup poll indicated that 47% of American adults believed
humans came into existence 10,000 years ago, in spite of evidence to the 
contrary.

According to polls, 95% of Americans believe in God. 59% say that
religion is very important in their lives, and another 29% rate it as
fairly important. Only 4% identify themselves as agnostics or atheists.
68% belong to a church or synagogue and nearly half of our
populace, 46%, describe themselves as born-again.
==
God is essentially irrelevant to the science that Davies has tried to explain.
I mean no disrespect to Davies, who is a very good writer and an accomplished
physicist, but when I learned that his popular-science writing had earned him
the Templeton prize, it seemed to me that the intellectual pickings at the
interface of science and religion must be pretty slim.Subsequent mailings from
the Templeton foundation have reinforced that impression. For example, in the
list of directors of the 11 regional centers for its programs in science and
religion, I could not find a single physical scientist working at a sectarian
institution. 
One need not feel as strongly as the Nobel laureate Steven L. Weinberg -- who
went against the tide at the Templeton-A.A.A.S. conference, calling religion
"an insult to human dignity" -- to recognize that whether or not the earth
orbits the sun is a matter to be settled not by theological debate, but rather
by observation and experiment. Similarly, the ultimate arbiters of the origin
and evolution of life will be biology and perhaps astrophysics, not theology.
By the same token, the moment that scientists attempt to prove or disprove the
existence of God, or divine purpose, they have stopped being scientists.
Perhaps most important, science has discovered absolutely nothing in the past
century of remarkable activity that has any spiritual implications. As far as
we can tell, simple laws of nature explain every event that has happened since
the big bang. 
There is a war going on for the hearts and minds of the U.S. public, and
science -- the driving force behind the technology that makes the modern world
possible --is losing because scientists often are too timid to attack nonsense
whenever and wherever it appears.
a year to do it. Many people simply do not have the tools to distinguish
charlatans from honest researchers. 
It is perhaps the most immutable but most widely misunderstood 
property of modern science: a proposition can never be proved to be
absolutely true. There can always be some experiment lurking around
the corner to require alteration of any model of reality.
Science's legacy of endlessly testing evidence meant that "science is not
fair," since not all ideas are proved to deserve equal treatment in the
classroom. The goal of science, he maintained, is to "learn to accept the
universe the way it is, whether we like it or not."

 Zogby International poll from Ohio
Commissioned by the Discovery Institute, the poll shows Ohioans solidly
back full disclosure when it comes to teaching origins.
According to the survey, 65% of Ohioans polled agreed with the
statement, ³Biology teachers should teach Darwin's theory of evolution, but
also the scientific evidence against it.² Only 19 percent thought that
³biology teachers should teach only Darwin's theory of evolution and the
scientific evidence that supports it.² Sixteen percent were either not sure
or didnıt like either option
An even larger number of respondents (78 percent) agreed that students should
learn about scientific evidence that points to an intelligent design of
life.² 13% disagreed, and 9% werenıt sure.
==
If creationism were so powerful a science model, we'd be able to see an
example of creationism in action somewhere on earth, but we don't. 
==
Creationists are attempting to deny the validity of their
God's actual "work" (the physical universe) in order to preserve their
own interpretation of scripture.  In short, they are treating the
words of the Bible as more important than the labors of their God. 
Thus they are idolators who worship the Bible, rather than the God it
describes, but even there, they are hypocrites, since the Bible
explicitly forbids idolatry.

Antievolutionists seem stuck in the 19th century and fixated on 
Darwin as though he were the founding prophet of a rival sect that 
would collapse if he were discredited
==
"No body of beliefs that has its origin in doctrinal material [the Bible]
rather than scientific observation should be admissible as science..."
 - National Academy of Science)
==
http://www.talkorigins.org"
and its many informative FAQs and links, like
http://www.talkorigins.org"origins"faqs.html
http://www.talkorigins.org"origins"outline.html
http://www.talkorigins.org"origins"faqs-qa.html
http://www.talkorigins.org"origins"faqs-mustread.html
http://www.talkorigins.org"faqs"faq-misconceptions.html
http://www.talkorigins.org"origins"faqs-evolution.html
http://www.talkorigins.org"faqs"faq-intro-to-biology.html
http://www.talkorigins.org"origins"other-links-gensci.html
http://www.talkorigins.org"origins"other-links.html#evolution
==
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND CREATIONISM.

The Scientific Method
1.  Examine all the evidence.
2.  Formulate a hypothesis about that evidence.
3.  Test the hypothesis.  If the hypothesis fails, go back to the
drawing board and either reformulate or tweak the existing hypothesis.
Do this again and again until your hypothesis withstands all testing
and can even be used to predict some of the things you will find as
more evidence comes to light.  If new evidence shows that there is a
problem with the hypothesis, you take it back and change it some more
until you answer all the evidence.
4.  Upgrade to a theory.

Now, the method of creationism:
1. Start with a hypothesis based on a book of ancient mythology.
2.  Compare the hypothesis with the available evidence.
3.  Throw out or rationalize the evidence that disagrees with the
    hypothesis, since the conclusion is already foregone.
4.  Throw rocks at the known theory in the mistaken belief that if you
    could disprove evolution and natural selection (which you can't) then
    creationism would be accepted by default.
However, it doesn't work that way.  In order to "prove" creationism,
you have to:
1.  Produce god.  Not just any god, but Yahweh himself, the Old
    Testament god of the Bible.
2.  Produce evidence that shows the world was created in just 6 days.
3.  Produce DNA evidence that shows that all of mankind came from just
    two people, Adam and Eve.
==
Does anyone out there know of anything which might be called 
research, even as a possibility?  Other than collecting quotes,
that is. 
If I decided to enter a doctoral program in Intelligent Design, 
what kind of dissertation research might I engage in
==
Scientific creationism is committed to the following propositions:
(1) There was a sudden creation of the universe, energy, and life from
    nothing.
(2) Mutations and natural selection are insufficient to bring about
    the development of all living kinds from a single organism.
(3) Changes of the originally created kinds of plants and animals
    occur only within fixed limits.
(4) There is a separate ancestry for humans and apes.
(5) The earth's geology can be explained via catastrophism,
    primarily by the occurrence of a worldwide flood.
(6) The earth and living kinds had a relatively recent inception
    (on the order of ten thousand years).
These six tenets taken jointly define scientific creationism for legal
purposes. The Court in Edwards ruled that taken jointly this group of
propositions may not be taught in public school science classrooms.
(Nevertheless, the Court left the door open to some of these tenets
being discussed individually.
==
Missing day
Brunvand, Jan Harold (1991) "The Missing Day in Time," paper
 presented at the annual conference of the Committee for the
Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP),
Berkeley, California, May 4. 

Loftin, Robert W. (1991) Origin of the Myth About a Missing
Day in Time. Skeptical Inquirer. vol. 15, no. 4, Summer, pp. 350-351. 

http://geneva.rutgers.edu"src"faq"missing-day.txt  hoax data *
http://christiananswers.net"q-aig"aig-a001.html missing day hoax
http://sunnyokanagan.com"joshua"index.html  missing day wild *
http://www.urbanlegends.com"science"missing_day.html   missing day *
http://www.infidels.org"library"magazines"tsr"1998"6"986hours.html missing day
http://www.infidels.org"library"magazines"tsr"1998"6"986flap.html  missing day
www.grmi.org"renewal"richard_riss"evidences"7longday.html
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov"docs"ask_astro"answers"970325g.html *
http://www.asa3.org"ASA"newsletter"JULAUG99.htm *
http://www.snopes.com"index.html *
==
 Scientific American recently published a survey about the teaching of
creationism in schools in the US. It completed the article with the
statement that it is estimated that around 43% of the US
population believe the Earth to be less than 10,000 years old."
==
 Present Creationist Scientists;

 Dr Paul Ackerman, Psychologist
 Dr Steve Austin, Geologist
 Dr S.E. Aw, Biochemist
 Dr Thomas Barnes, Physicist
 Dr Don Batten, Plant physiologist, tropical fruit expert
 Dr John Baumgardner, Electrical Engineering, Space Physicist, 
Geophysicist,
 expert in supercomputer modeling of plate tectonics
 Dr Jerry Bergman, Psychologist
 Dr Kimberly Berrine, Microbiology & Immunology
 Prof. Vladimir Betina, Microbiology, Biochemistry & Biology
 Dr Raymond G. Bohlin, Creationist Biologist
 Dr Andrew Bosanquet, Biology, Microbiology
 Dr David R. Boylan, Chemical Engineer
 Prof. Linn E. Carothers, Associate Professor of Statistics
 Dr David Catchpoole, Creationist Plant Physiologist
 Prof. Sung-Do Cha, Physics
 Dr Eugene F. Chaffin, Professor of Physics
 Dr Choong-Kuk Chang, Genetic Engineering
 Prof. Jeun-Sik Chang, Aeronautical Engineering
 Dr Donald Chittick, Physical Chemist
 Prof. Chung-Il Cho, Biology Education
 Dr Harold Coffin, Palaeontologist
 Dr Bob Compton, DVM
 Dr Ken Cumming, Biologist
 Dr Jack W. Cuozzo, Dentist
 Dr Malcolm Cutchins, Aerospace Engineering
 Dr Lionel Dahmer, Organic Chemistry
 Dr Raymond V. Damadian, M.D., Pioneer of magnetic resonance imaging
 Dr Chris Darnbrough, Biochemist
 Dr Douglas Dean, Biological Chemistry
 Prof. Stephen W. Deckard, Assistant Professor of Education
 Dr David A. DeWitt, Biology, Biochemistry, Neuroscience
 Dr Don DeYoung, Astronomy, atmospheric physics, M.Div
 Dr Geoff Downes, Creationist Plant Physiologist
 Dr Ted Driggers
 Dr André Eggen, Creationist geneticist
 Prof. Dennis L. Englin, Professor of Geophysics
 Prof. Danny Faulkner, Astronomy
 Prof. Carl B. Fliermans, Professor of Biology
 Prof. Robert H. Franks, Associate Professor of Biology
 Dr Duane Gish, Biochemist
 Dr Werner Gitt, Information Scientist
 Dr Dianne Grocott, Creationist Psychiatrist
 Dr Stephen Grocott, Creationist Industrial Chemist
 Dr Donald Hamann, Food Scientist
 Dr Barry Harker, Philosopher
 Dr Charles W. Harrison, Applied Physicist, Electromagnetics
 Dr George Hawke, Creationist Environmental Scientist
 Dr Margaret Helder, Science Editor, Creationist Botanist
 Dr Harold R. Henry, Engineer
 Dr Jonathan Henry, Astronomy
 Dr Joseph Henson, Entomologist
 Robert A. Herrmann, Professor of Mathematics, US Naval Academy
 Dr Kelly Hollowell, Molecular and Cellular Pharmacologist
 Dr Ed Holroyd, III, Atmospheric Science
 Dr Russell Humphreys, Physicist
 Dr Pierre Jerlström, Creationist Molecular Biologist
 Dr Jonathan W. Jones, Plastic Surgeon
 Dr Raymond Jones, Creationist Agricultural Scientist
 Prof. Leonid Korochkin, Molecular Biology
 Dr Valery Karpounin, Mathematical Sciences, Logics, Formal Logics
 Dr Dean Kenyon, Biologist
 Prof. Gi-Tai Kim, Biology
 Prof. Harriet Kim, Biochemistry
 Prof. Jong-Bai Kim, Biochemistry
 Prof. Jung-Han Kim, Biochemistry
 Prof. Jung-Wook Kim, Environmental Science
 Prof. Kyoung-Rai Kim, Analytical Chemistry
 Prof. Kyoung-Tai Kim, Genetic Engineering
 Prof. Young-Gil Kim, Materials Science
 Prof. Young In Kim, Engineering
 Dr John W. Klotz, Biologist
 Dr Leonid Korochkin, M.D., Genetics, Molecular Biology, Neurobiology
 Prof. Jin-Hyouk Kwon, Physics
 Prof. Myung-Sang Kwon, Immunology
 Prof. John Lennox, Mathematics
 Dr John Leslie, Biochemist
 Prof. Lane P. Lester, Biologist, Genetics
 Dr Alan Love, Chemist
 Dr Ian Macreadie, Creationist molecular biologist and microbiologist:
 Dr John Mann, Agriculturist
 Dr John Marcus, Creationist Molecular Biologist
 Dr George Marshall, Creationist Eye Disease Researcher
 Dr Ralph Matthews, Radiation Chemist
 Prof. Andy McIntosh, Combustion theory, aerodynamics
 Dr David Menton, Creationist Anatomist
 Dr Angela Meyer: Creationist Plant Physiologist
 Dr John Meyer , Physiologist
 Dr John N. Moore, Science Educator
 Dr Henry M. Morris, Hydrologist
 Dr John D. Morris , Geologist
 Dr Len Morris, Physiologist
 Dr Graeme Mortimer, Geologist
 Prof. Hee-Choon No, Nuclear Engineering
 Dr David Oderberg, Philosopher
 Prof. John Oller, Linguistics
 Prof. Chris D. Osborne , Assistant Professor of Biology
 Dr John Osgood, Medical Practitioner
 Dr Charles Pallaghy, Botanist
 Dr Gary E. Parker , Biologist, Cognate in Geology (Paleontology)
 Dr John Rankin, Cosmologist:
 Dr A.S. Reece, M.D.
 Prof. J. Rendle-Short, Pediatrics
 Dr Jung-Goo Roe, Biology
 Dr David Rosevear, Chemist
 Dr Jonathan D. Sarfati, Physical chemist " spectroscopist
 Dr Joachim Scheven Palaeontologist:
 Dr Ian Scott, Educator
 Dr Saami Shaibani, Forensic physicist
 Dr Young-Gi Shim, Chemistry
 Prof. Hyun-Kil Shin, Food Science
 Dr Mikhail Shulgin, Physics
 Dr Emil Silvestru, Creationist geologist"karstologist
 Dr Roger Simpson, Engineer
 Dr Harold Slusher, Geophysicist
 Dr Andrew Snelling , Geologist
 Prof. Man-Suk Song, Computer Science
 Prof. James Stark , Assistant Professor of Science Education
 Prof. Brian Stone, Engineer
 Dr Charles Taylor, Linguistics
 Dr Michael Todhunter, Forest Genetics
 Dr Lyudmila Tonkonog, Chemistry"Biochemistry
 Dr Royal Truman, Organic Chemist:
 Dr Larry Vardiman, Atmospheric Science
 Prof. Walter Veith, Zoologist
 Dr Joachim Vetter, Biologist
 Dr Tas Walker, Mechanical Engineer and Geologist
 Dr Keith Wanser, Physicist
 Dr A.J. Monty White, Chemistry"Gas Kinetics
 Dr Carl Wieland, Medical doctor
 Dr Clifford Wilson, Psycholinguist and archaeologist
 Dr Kurt Wise, Palaeontologist
 Dr Bryant Wood, Creationist Archaeologist
 Prof. Seoung-Hoon Yang, Physics
 Dr Thomas (Tong Y.) Yi, Ph.D.,
 Dr Ick-Dong Yoo, Genetics
 Dr Sung-Hee Yoon, Biology
 Dr Patrick Young, Creationist Chemist and Materials Scientist
 Prof. Keun Bae Yu, Geography
    I noticed they neglected to include Kent Hovind. You know, it speaks
volumes of the man that even other CREATIONISTS are embarrassed about him.

http://www.icr.org"creationscientists.html
http://www.answersingenesis.org"home"area"bios"default.asp

What creationist research have they done and in which peer reviewed
journal have they published it?

http://www.icr.org"pubs"imp"imp-idx.htm
_Impact_ is not a peer reviewed science journal. 

_Back to Genesis_ is not a peer reviewede science journal.

==
Specimen Ridge in the petrified forest in Yellowstone has been declared by
many scientists as evidence of millions of years because trees are
buried in some 27 or more horizontal layers of consolidated volcanic
material. Trees grew, a volcano buries the trees, a few hundred years later
another forest grows, with the trees having up to 400 rings. 
==
Creationism isn't contrary to evidence. It's failure is that it's consistent
with any evidence. Why is the DNA of a human so similar to the DNA of a
chimpanzee. Answer: It's the will of God. Why are fossils of mammals found in
younger rock and fossils of extinct reptiles found in older rock.
Answer: It's the will of God. That approach is unscientific because it
has no predictive power, so it's can't be tested by science.  Teachers should
just explain to their students that competing models are compared according
to how consistent they are with observations. Creationism places itself
outside the whole test process. We can compare Darwinism to Lamarcksm,
etc., but creationism doesn't have a single necessary consequence that
might be observed.
==
MARIETTA,Ga., Aug. 23 2002‹  School board members in this conservative Georgia
school district said they donıt see the harm in encouraging critical thinking
about evolution, even if that means teaching creationism.
THE SCHOOL BOARD voted unanimously to give its teachers 
permission to introduce students to different theories on the origin of life,
including creationism.
The measure says the district believes ³discussion of disputed views of
academic subjects is a necessary element of providing a balanced education,
including the study of the origin of species.²
Opponents said the decision opened a backdoor to letting religion into
classrooms. They said Thursdayıs vote would not end the debate.
ŒSUE MEı SIGN?
³It would be as if Cobb County were putting up a giant Œsue meı sign,² said
Barry Lynn, executive director for Americans United for Separation of Church
and State.Biology professors at every major university in Georgia and the
National Science Teachers Association told the school board it would be a
mistake to approve the resolution.
The Rev. Greg Ward, a Unitarian minister, called the boardıs decision
irresponsible.
³Itıs inappropriate for the Bible to be taught in conjunction with science,² 
he said. ³They just donıt go together.² The theory of evolution, accepted by
nearly all scientists, says evidence shows life developed from earlier forms
through slight variations over time and that natural 
selection determines which species survive. Creationism credits the origin of
species to God.
In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled creationism was a religious belief that
could not be taught in public schools along with evolution.
==
Teaching Alternative To Evolution Backed 
Ohio Lawmakers Cite Reform Legislation 
Two House Republicans are citing landmark education reform legislation in
pressing for the adoption of a school science curriculum in their home state
of Ohio that includes the teaching of an alternative to evolution.
In what both sides of the debate say is the first attempt of its kind,
Reps. John A. Boehner and Steve Chabot have urged the Ohio Board of Education
to consider the language in a conference report that accompanied the major
education law enacted earlier this year.
"Where topics are taught that may generate controversy (such as biological
evolution), the curriculum should help students to understand the full range
of scientific views that exist," the lawmakers wrote in aletter to the Ohio
board, quoting the conference report language.
That language was crafted with the help of a leading proponent of "intelligent
design theory," which contends that the very complexity of life is evidence
that the world was organized by a guiding intelligence.
The growing movement behind that theory, which does not attribute the world's
creation to God, is supported by conservative Christian groups, whose drive to
include the teaching of Bible-based "creation science" in public schools was
ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1987.
David Schnittger, a spokesman for Boehner, stressed that the conference report
language cited in the March13 letter to Ohio's state board "does not endorse
the teaching of any particular topic or philosophy or curriculum."
While conference report language does not have the force of law, it has in the
past been used as the basis for regulations that guide how laws are enforced.
But many officials from science and education groups, most of whom back
teaching only evolution, call the language part of a wider campaign to force
intelligent-design theory into the nation's science classrooms. They fear that
the congressional language will be used to challenge the teaching of evolution
across the country.
"When language like this is included on the national level, it provides
ammunition that people use in local battles," said W. Eric Meikle, outreach
coordinator for the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit
organization that defends the teaching of evolution.
 Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and a supporter of the conference
report language, said he opposes the teaching of intelligent design.
"I believe that public school classes should focus on teaching students how to
understand and critically analyze genuine scientific theories. Unlike
biological evolution, intelligent design is not a genuine scientific theory,
and therefore, has no place in the curriculum of our nation's public school
science classes," he said in a statement.
The Ohio school board has been embroiled for months in a controversy over
whether to include intelligent-design theory, along with evolutionary science,
in a revised science curriculum scheduled to be approved later this year.
Evolutionary science holds that all existing organisms developed from earlier
life forms through natural selection.
Proponents of the intelligent-design theory have cited language in the federal
law as the basis for including lessons on the theory wherever evolution is
taught. The letter from Boehner and Chabot was written in an attempt to
clarify how federal law affects the debate in Ohio. Still, the head of the
Ohio Board of Education is not sure what impact the House members' letter may
have.
"[It] seems to suggest that science should be taught in the spirit of free
inquiry, including the discussion of the pros and cons of theories," said
Jennifer L. Sheets, the board's president.
Other board members say, however, that the letter could be interpreted as
supporting intelligent design. "Supporters of that viewpoint will use that
letter to bolster that point of view," said Virgil E. Brown, a Cleveland
lawyer who sits on the state panel.
"I look at the letter as misleading," said Cyrus B. Richardson Jr., the board
vice president. "It makes it sound like the law says you have to teach
intelligent design, when that isn't in the law."
For that reason, science groups had opposed the conference report language,
which was approved late last year.
"The apparently innocuous statements in this resolution mask an anti-evolution
agenda that has been repeatedly rejected by the courts," said a joint letter
signed by 80 educational and scientific groups, from the American
Anthropological Association and the Society of Protozoologists to the National
Association of Biology Teachers.
The nation's leading science organizations generally view intelligent-design
theory as a pseudo-scientific way to teach creationism, the latest front in a
battle that dates to the well-known 1925 conviction of Tennessee science
teacher John T. Scopes for teaching evolution.
But intelligent-design theory apparently resonates with the public. In their
letter to the Ohio board, Boehner, chairman of the House Committee on
Education and the Workforce, and Chabot cited a 2001 Zogby poll that found
that 71% of those surveyed supported offering students the "scientific
evidence against evolution." The two lawmakers suggested that the exclusion of
such evidence would amount to a "censorship of opposing points of view."
While Ohio is now the main battleground, in recent years legislatures or
school boards in such states as Pennsylvania, Georgia, Hawaii, New Mexico,
Kentucky, Oklahoma and Kansas have also been wrestling with the issue.
Intelligent-design proponents -- such as Phillip E. Johnson, a University of
California at Berkeley law professor whose 1991 book "Darwin on Trial" lifted
the fledgling intelligent-design movement from obscurity -- hope to bring the
concept to other state curricula.
"If you are going to teach the Darwinist view that organisms may look like
they were designed but weren't, then you have to allow for the possibility
that they look like they were designed because they were designed," said
Johnson, who helped draft the language that was eventually distilled into the
conference report.
Johnson's writings make clear, however, that his aims extend into the realm of
religion. "When people are taught for years on end that good thinking is
naturalistic thinking, and that bringing God into the picture only leads to
confusion and error, they have to be pretty dense not to get the point that
God must be an illusion," he wrote in another book, "Defeating Darwinism by
Opening Minds."
The language that Johnson helped craft was originally introduced as a
nonbinding resolution by Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.). The resolution passed the
Senate last June in a 91 to 8 vote. Eight Republicans,who considered the
measure an unwarranted intrusion into local curriculum matters,voted against it.
Senate supporters shrugged off the concerns of science groups, calling the
measure an innocuous statement of the elements of good science education.
"We want children to be able to speak and examine various scientific theories
on the basis of all of the information that is available to them," said
Kennedy, who backed the Santorum measure.
Federal law has long barred Washington from controlling state and local school
instructional content -- a prohibition that has been guarded by GOP lawmakers
through the years. With little attention, however, that outright prohibition
was weakenedby Congress in 1994 when it barred the federal government only
from controlling "specific" state or local instructional matters.
The education bill enacted earlier this year also suggested that Washington
could exercise some general control over state and local curricula but not
require the teaching of specific subjects. Federal education officials,
however, said they have no intention of interpreting the language as requiring
local school systems to teach alternatives to evolution.
     The judge narrowly constructed the case on the issue of
whether Scopes had in fact broken the law banning the teaching of
evolution, making the potential truth of evolution a moot point. 
Gould (1983) points out that the drama of the case, as
fictionalized in the play and movie Inherit the Wind, focused on
a speech by Bryan and a later examination by Darrow of Bryan, who
was called as an expert witness on the Bible.  Legally, however,
the case was easily resolved: the jury found Scopes guilty of
violating the Butler Act.  Judge Raulston fined Scopes $100, an
action which would doom the ACLU's long-planned appeal to the
U.S. Supreme Court.  An appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court led
it to uphold the Butler Act, but throw out Scopes's conviction
because any fine over $50 had to be recommended by the jury. 
This technicality brought the case to a close, with the Tennessee
Supreme Court stating, "nothing [is] to be gained by prolonging
the life of this bizarre case" (Scopes v. State of Tennessee,
1927).
     The aftermath of the trial was mixed.  Both sides claimed
they won a moral victory, but anti-evolution legislation
stalemated while the treatment of evolution in textbooks declined
noticeably (Eve & Harrold, 1991; Gould, 1983; Nelkin, 1982). 
Oklahoma had already repealed its anti-evolution law in 1926 (see
Epperson v. Arkansas, 1968) and most bills introduced in
legislatures in the later 1920's failed (Eve & Harrold, 1991),
although Arkansas passed a referendum banning the teaching of
evolution (Initiated Act No. 1 of 1928).  Later textbooks often
failed to mention Darwin or evolution (Eve & Harrold, 1991) and a
1942 nationwide survey found that less than half of the nation's
high school biology teachers taught anything about evolution
(Nelkin, 1982).  Four decades would pass after Scopes before the
courts revisited the issue.

   Arkansas' 1928 referendum had made it "unlawful for a
teacher in any state-supported school or university 'to teach the
theory or doctrine that mankind ascended or descended from a
lower order of animals,' or 'to adopt or use in any such
institution a textbook that teaches' this theory" (Epperson v.
Arkansas, 1968).  Susan Epperson, who taught 10th grade biology
at Little Rock's Central High School, asked a state court to void
the statute, which it did on the basis that it violated the
freedom of speech clause in the First Amendment, as applied to
the states by the Fourteenth Amendment.  The Supreme Court of
Arkansas reversed that decision, holding that the state had
validly exercised its power to specify the curriculum in its
public schools.

In the Epperson  case, the Assistant Attorney General for the State of Arkansas
testified to the  Supreme Courtthat the mere mention there is a theory of
evolution was  sufficient to trigger sanctions against an offending teacher.
Creationists took the matter out of the scientific arena and chose to pursue it
in the legislatures.  The legal remedy was forced on the evolution side.  So we
see creationists bleating for "fairness".

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/hist409/scopes.html  Scopes/Darrow vs Bryan
==
When Kansas officials removed evolution from the state science curriculum they
not only subjected their state to ridicule in the national media, they set off
a backlash that had serious potential economic consequences for the state.
Several major national corporations announced plans to reconsider relocating to
Kansas because of concerns about the education the children of their employees
would receive. Heads of universities in several states announced that they
would reconsider accepting students from Kansas schools, as possibly unprepared
for higher education.
==
I understand that there are Hindus who believe that the world was created in a
cosmic butter churn and Nigerian peoples who believe that the world was created
by God from the excrement of ants. Surely these stories have as much right to
equal time as the Judeo-Christian myth of Adam and Eve. - Richard Dawkins,
in a speech to American Humanist Association.
==
  http://home.austarnet.com.au"stear"kent_hovind's_lies.htm
  http://www.geocities.com"SouthBeach"Pier"1766"hovindlies"A.html
  http://www.yvesbarbero.com"plimer.htm
  http://www.digisys.net"users"hoppnrmt"miscindex.htm
  http://www.talkorigins.org"faqs"abioprob"abioprob.html
  http://www.creationism.ws"the_lie.htm
  http://www.creationism.ws"intro_frameset.htm
==
Is the godless theory of evolution any more godless than any other
scientific theory? Do you similarly complain about the godless
science of meteorology or the godless study of atoms or electromagnetism?
==
The fundamentalists, by 'knowing' the answers before they start
(examining evolution), and then forcing nature into their straitjacket
of their discredited preconceptions, lie outside the domain of
science--or of any honest intellectual inquiry.  -- S. J. Gould
==
Creationists can accept a stick can turn to a snake  in minutes but require
absolute proof for a species changing to another species in millions of years.
==
I would defend the liberty of consenting adult creationists
to practice whatever intellectual perversions they like in
the privacy of their own homes; but it is also necessary to
protect the young and innocent.  [Arthur C. Clarke]
==
Andy McIntosh, professor of thermodynamics and combustion theory
at the University of Leeds and author of Genesis for Today, a creationist.
==
Even the president has cast his opinion on the matter of science versus 
religion. 
During his election campaign, George W Bush made the following assertion. 
"On the issue of evolution," he said, "the verdict is still out on how God
created the Earth."
==
ACCREDITATION  LOST OVER CREATIONISM
The Washington Post 5"02
       Patrick Henry College, the  Purcellville, Va. based Christian college
founded two years ago primarily for home-schooled students, has been denied
accreditation by a national group because it requires professors to sign a
statement of faith including that they will teach creationism.
       The college of about 150 students, which will graduate its first class
this month, is appealing the decision by the American Academy for Liberal
Accreditation, a private group approved by the U.S. Department of Education to
accredit liberal arts colleges.
        At issue is the school's Statement of Biblical Worldview, in which
professors agree that all courses will be taught with the understanding that
God created the world in six 24-hour days. In a letter, academy president
Jeffrey Wallin told Patrick Henry that the statement conflicts with the
requirement that liberty of thought and freedom of speech are supported and
protected, bound only by such rules of civility and order as to facilitate
intellectual inquiry and the search for truth.
        Patrick Henry President Michael Farris said, It took us by total
surprise.  Apparently, there are some [AALE] board members whose views on
diversity just simply do not allow them to believe that someone who believes in
creationism should be in the big tent of academic freedom.
        When the school begins offering biology in the fall, Farris said,
professors will explain evolution but will teach that creationism is true,
based on faith and science.
==
Josephus saw the Garden of Eden tale as a myth that 
explained these questions that early humans had undoubtedly wondered about.
==
Recent lava in Hawaii tested to be very old--Creationist claim.
The date testing in question is OFTEN misquoted by creationists. The lava
rocks from 1801 near Hoanalai, Hawaii were being tested by K-Ar dating. The
geologists, who were testing the rocks to find out the limits of K-Ar
dating, found that the ages of the rocks came to 160 million to 3 billion
years. However the story is not that simple.
The anomalously old ages are atributed to xenoliths, pre-existing rocks
found within magma. The xenoliths are generally much older than the
surrounding lava. Also, excess Ar is often found in magma chamber, prior
to the eruption. This may explain why the decomposition from K to Ar
would appear so high and also make the rocks look much older than they
are. This only proves that K-Ar can not be reliably used for lava flows. It
does not in anyway prove that all of radiochronlogical dating techniques
are flawed.
Samples from 26 different sources, 25 of them gave results less than
250,000 years (which is essentially zero to within measurement accuracy,
because it represents an error of less than 0.0002 half-lives).
The 26th was the oft-misused-by-creationists Hualalei flow, which is not
suitable for K-Ar dating in the first place because it contains ultramafic
inclusions (which were solid before the flow reached the surface) that
carry excess argon.
Dalrymple, G.B., 1969.  ³40Ar"36Ar Analyses of Historic Lava Flows²
in _Earth and Planetary Science Letters_ vol. 6, pp. 47-55.
==
Refuting Evolution
Jonathan Sarfati, Ken Ham
http://www.religioustolerance.org"ev_publi.htm
Statistics on belief in evolution

Evolution - The Ultimate Compromise
By Kelly Hollowell, J.D., Ph.D.

In Six Days - Why 50 Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation 
John F Ashton, Ph.D. 

Scientific Approach to Christianity 
by Robert W. Faid

Not By Chance - Lee Spetner

*	Refuting Evolution 2: What PBS and the Scientific Community 
Don't Want You to Know Jonathan Sarfati, With Mike Matthews

*	101 Signs of Design Timeless Truths from Genesis Ken Ham

*	Why Won't They Listen: The Power of Creation Evangelism Ken Ham

: Creation: The Facts of Life - Dr. Gary Parker
==
"The basic Creationist strategy is thus:  If Evolutionists point out 
uncountable examples in nature, claim it isn't science because it can't be 
reproduced in a lab.  If Evolutionists conduct successful experiments in a 
lab, claim it is irrelevant because it wan't in a natural environment."
==
Fundamentalists are often accustomed to thinking about things very differently
than most people - everything has a moral significance, any observations are
taken to be expressing a philosophical viewpoint, and so on... so when
scientists observe things that suggest a different scenario for our ancestry
than a particular literal reading of Genesis, it is taken as a philosophical
statement. 
==
Simply the act of putting intelligent design as a theory on par with evolution
reduces evolution from science to myth, or elevates intelligent design from
myth to science. The result is doubly pernicious. It demeans scientific
standards to the realm of quackery. And it cloaks essentially religious
explanations as scientific fact. In that sense, teaching intelligent design is
worse than teaching creationism which doesn't hide its reliance on biblical
conjecture because it skews students' understanding of the scientific method
while pretending to answer questions of cosmology. 
==
The Old Testament, from its manifestly false history of the earth, was no more
to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindus, or the beliefs of any
barbarian. The New Testament is a damnable doctrine. [I can] hardly see how
anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true. [Charles Darwin, The Origin of
Species (London: A.L. Burt, 1859).]
==
Inerrancy is often a negative mode of thought; a blocking of reality to prop
up the wobbly faith. Just as inerrantists often simply can't cope with the
idea that the Bible has errors (it isn't the belief it isn't true, it's the
inability to process the concept. They can't cope with the idea that "God's
creation" didn't work, because God has to be perfect 
==
Genesis 1:14-16 has God placing the Sun, the Moon, and the stars in the
firmament of heaven, and Genesis 1:7 locates the firmament of heaven between
the two layers of water.
==
Science has unanswered questions. That is why science involves research.
The difference between science and creationism is that science has a
method to get valid answers...and it does eventually.
==
 We will not go very far if we pretend to teach our kids that we cannot
tell the difference between real and phony science. Yet that was the gist of
all those 'equal time' laws in the 1970s and 1980s: the Arkansas and
Louisana legislatures were actually telling the teachers in their public
schools to pretend not to know the difference between real science - flaws and
all and outmoded or simply bad science. I cannot imagine anything more
peverse, more deliberately harmful, than teaching kids that their elders cannot
tell the difference between the real and phony. Some of them, of course,
cannot. But all but the relatively few creation-leaning science teachers
throughout the fifty states most assuredly can, and requiring them in essence
to lie to their students sends about the worst message imaginable to the
younger generation. And kids, of course, can see right through that."
Niles Ethridge
==
  Both Kentucky and Illinois have adopted the term ³change over time² in their
science standards to avoid references to evolution, because of political
pressure in both states. However, a tin can rusting is also "change over
time",  but it is hardly biological evolution.

In Michigan, nine legislators in the House of Representatives have introduced a
bill to put intelligent design on an equal basis with evolution in state
education standards.

In Pennsylvania, where biblical creationists and design theorists have operated
in concert, state officials are close to adopting educational standards that
would allow the teaching of theories on the origin of life other than
evolution.
==
Geologists observe basalts, originally pillow lava, that had formed under the
ocean about 3.5 billion years ago.  They were found in both southern Africa
and South America. The Canadian Shield greenstone is at least 3.5 billion years
old and appears to have been part of a very early earth surface. There
are fossilized beds of blue-green algae that also date to 3.5 billion years. 
Read March 1998 National Geographic for details of early life.
Scientific American Jan. 1993 has a major article on the oldest earth rocks,
4 billion years  old.
==
The governing body of the American Physical Society has released the following
official statement on the matter: 
The Council of The American Physical Society opposes proposals to require
"equal time" for presentation in public school science classes of the biblical
story of creation and the scientific theory of evolution. The issues raised by
such proposals, while mainly focused on evolution, have important implications
for the entire spectrum of scientific inquiry, including geology, physics, and
astronomy. In contrast to "Creationism," the systematic application of
scientific principles has led to a current picture of life, of the nature of
our planet, and of the universe which, while incomplete, is constantly being
tested and refined by observation and analysis. This ability to construct
critical experiments, whose results can require rejection of a theory, is
fundamental to the scientific method. While our society must constantly guard
against oversimplified or dogmatic descriptions of science in the education
process, we must also resist attempts to interfere with the presentation of
properly developed scientific principles in establishing guidelines for
classroom instruction or in the development of scientific textbooks. We
therefore strongly oppose any requirement for parallel treatment of scientific
and non-scientific discussions in science classes. Scientific inquiry and
religious beliefs are two distinct elements of the human experience. Attempts
to present them in the same context can only lead to misunderstandings of both
==
_Finding Darwin's God_ by Kenneth Miller.  Miller is a biologist, and
also a very devout Christian.  He explains why creationism is nonsense,

Donald Patten  ³Catastrophism and the Old Testament²

³Ancient Secrets of the Bible² by Charles E. Sellier and Brian Russell

Robert T. Pennocks "Tower of Babel" opposes creation
==
PRINCETON, NJ -- Kansas Board of Education members are debating whether to
reverse a two-year-old policy that places less emphasis on the teaching of
evolution in school science classes. In 1999, by a 6-4 margin, the board voted
to change the stateıs science education standards to place more emphasis on
creationism, the biblical theory that God created the earth and man in seven
days. However, two board members who supported that policy change failed to
win re-election last November, and were replaced by candidates who support the
teaching of evolution. 
The American public favors teaching creationism in schools along with evolution
68% favor and 29% oppose), but is opposed to the idea of teaching creationism
instead of evolution, by a 55% to 40% margin. Further, Gallup polls conducted 
last year suggest that a quarter of Americans believe teaching creationism 
should be required of the public schools, while another 56% say creationism 
should at least be offered to students as a subject of study. 
Survey Methods 
The results reported in this article are based on two Gallup polls, both with
telephone interviews of a randomly selected national sample of about 1,000
adults, 18 years and older. The most recent poll was conducted August 24-26, 
1999, while the other Gallup poll was conducted June 25-27, 1999. For results 
based on sample of this size, one can say with 95 percent confidence that the 
maximum error attributable to sampling and other random effects is plus or 
minus 3 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, question wording and
practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into 
the findings of public opinion polls. 

This creationist Kansas board was replaced in the next election.

Here are a variety of proposals concerning religion and public 
schools. For each one, please tell me whether you would generally favor or 
oppose it. 

Teaching creationism ALONG WITH evolution in public schools 
Favor 68% 
Oppose 29 
No opinion 3 

Teaching creationism INSTEAD OF evolution in public schools 
Favor 40% 
Oppose 55 
No opinion 5 
Next, I'm going to read you some areas of instruction the high schools might
offer. Please say whether you think each one should be required instruction,
could be offered as an elective but should not be required, or should not be
taught at all. How aboutŠ 
The theory 28% 
Offered but not required 49 
Not offered at all 21 
No opinion  2 

The theory of creationism 
Required 25% 
Offered but not required 56 
Not offered at all 16 
No opinion  3 
==
Science is not a worldview philosophy, but rather a world-viewing philosophy.
The metaphysics of science rests on the idea that observations must be
apprehendable through the human senses (possibly augmented through
instrumentation), comprehendable through human reason, with observations and
theories being communicatable through human language, in such a way that the
resulting information is public knowledge. A major underpinning of all normal
"common sense" dealings with the world is that we have a self consistency and
regularity in the operation of phenomena. Science simply is a more formalized,
more precise, and because scientific results are public knowledge, potentially
less subjective version of common sense. Our experience of regularity in the
operation of the universe presses us to consider a requirement of
"knowledge" that it have no inconsistencies or contradictions, either with
itself, or with new acquired observations of the world. The major religions
arrived on the scene before the concept of "natural law" became entrenched in
human civilization. The religions also came on the scene before "history" in
its modern sense of the word, as a "science of studying past events"
became entrenched in society. Indeed, the clashes that we see on this group
result because, as a society, we recognize the power of science to illuminate
"natural law," and the power of natural law to explain phenomena.
Furthermore, we tend to expect "history" to be, in some sense, capable of
being made consistent in the same fashion as the body of scientific knowledge.
The upstart of this is that religious texts are not enough, all by themselves
for some people. They have to have religion that is historical and agrees
with science, and science which agrees with religion, or rather agrees with a
specific reading of certain religious texts. The modern fundamentalist reads
his or her religious text with the idea that the text, itself, must be
consistent with plain reading, and must invent science that will be consistent
with that reading. Hence, we have "creation science".
It doesn't matter to the religious fundamentalist that "creation science" is
viewed as an absurdity by the scientific community, he or she simply will not
accept his or her worldview philosophy as being trumped by the world-viewing
philosophy of science. Indeed, because "creation science" is viewed as being
somehow Bible-based, it automatically inherits the believers' unyielding
belief as though it were part of the Bible, itself. Science gives us the
ability to build from the ground up models of our world and universe which are
testable against the phenomena of the universe and have clocks which
can be turned forward or backward. As a crystal ball, the results of these
models become increasingly fuzzy as we turn these clocks either farther
forward or backward in time. I really see science as being versus religion
only when one (either science or religion) asserts expertise in an area of
percieved expertise of the other (either religion or science, respectively).
Creationists, for example, make the mistake of throwing the Bible on the same
table as the science book or the history book. Judged by the criteria of our
requirement of regularity, the Bible doesn't do very well as either a science
book or as a history book. Of course, it isn't really the Bible, but the Bible
wrapped in a jacket (or shroud, more precisely) of creation science.
==
If we create a simple formula using today's population of ~6 billion, and
figure in the starting population (8 individuals), and the starting time (4360
YBP), we get an annual growth rate of about 0.0047. Since that IS what
happened, according to creationists, and it IS the only possible explanation
for today's human population then... 
(a) At Christ's death there were only about half a million people in the whole
world! 
(b) At the time the Israelites entered Canaan, (about 1180 BCE) we get a world
population of 2024! By the time you divide that up between Egypt, Canaan, the
rest of the world, and Israel, that leaves maybe 6 or 7 people for the
Israelite army! 
(c) If we go back to the time that the Jews were expelled from Egypt, in 1560
BCE, we get a world population of only 340 people! 
(d) In 2300 BCE there were only about 10 people on Earth! How did fewer than a
dozen people build the pyramids?
==
To give any credence to creation science one must first accept that
cosmology is wrong, astronomy is wrong, geology is wrong, anthropology is
wrong, archeology is wrong, paleontology is wrong, biology is wrong,
thousands of tons of bone, rock and fossils are wrong, all public museums,
libraries and universities are wrong, two million scientists along with 76
Nobel laureates who signed a document stating creation science are in error.
And on the other side? A few pages of one old book.
==
In September of 1993, an anti-evolution majority of newly elected board of
education members in Vista, California voted to implement a "creation-science"
component as part of their biology curriculum. The science teachers of the
district were critical of the decision, and their textbook selection committee
flatly rejected a book put forward to support anti-evolution teachings. Backing
down only slightly, the elected local board has now instructed the schools to
include "discussions of divine creation " at "appropriate times" in the social
science and language arts curricula. Similar actions have been urged upon
scores of school boards around the country, and in some places, challenges to
evolution are already part of the standard curriculum. Since 1986, for example,
the school board of Louisville, Ohio, has directed its teachers to teach
"alternate theories to evolution" The centerpiece of these challenges to
evolution is something that has become known as "intelligent design theory."
==
'Science and creationism' by the Committee on Science and Creationism of the
National Academy of Sciences,  1984, National Academy Press.,Washington, D.C.
==
Arch-Deacon William Paley (1743-1805) was quite clever.  His
_Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of The Deity, Collected
from the Appearances of Nature_ was a masterpiece for its day (1802).  It
contains a very valuable summary of the knowledge that was then contemporary.
He has the excuse of writing this work 57 years before Darwin published OtOoS,
so Paley's "creationism" is justified, in terms of the knowledge that was then
available.  Since 1859, one has had to either avoid or "explain away" the
evidence in order to maintain creationist beliefs, but it is anachronistic to
accuse Paley of this.  He can't be held responsible for knowledge that hadn't
been published yet, obviously.  That he was eventually proven wrong does not,
in my opinion, detract from his efforts at ammassing all the knowledge
available at the time.  Paley, unlike modern creationists, was actually trying
to do science as best he could, in order to explain, rather than explain away,
the available data.  He was quite an interesting man, too.  I suspect today's
creationists would have hated him because he was such a
"bleeding heart" liberal.
==
Cult archaeology and creationism : understanding pseudoscientific
beliefs about the past  edited by Francis B. Harrold and Raymond A. Eve.
Iowa City : University of Iowa Press, 1987. 
This is a collection of papers.  One is a study of the correlation between
teaching "scientific creationism" and belief in same.  The study finds
that exposure of high school students to "scientific creationism"
significantly lowers the number of students in the population who accept
it. It lends support to the argument that if we give creationists what
they want it will destroy their support base.
==
Christianity in the dark ages halted all intellectuals queries about the 
world,
which didn't fit their small view of it. We lost not only time, but they
actively destroyed knowledge, philosophy, and history. It took science
approximately 300 year after Christianity stop activity destroying knowledge
to regain some but not all of that lost knowledge.
==

The American Council of Christian Colleges strongly recommends acceptance of
Adam and Eve as literal people, and denial of evolution. "
....denial of Adam and his sin ...it is a slippery slope that leads to
questioning the very existence of our Lord and Saviour,
a direct descendent of Adam."
==
At 77 degrees F. the amount of water vapor in air at 100% humidity is 23
grams per cubic meter. A cubic meter of liquid water contains 1,000,000
grams. These figures are equivalent to 0.043 cubic meters per gram of water
vapor, and 0.000001 cubic meters per gram of liquid water. Therefore the
volume ratio of water vapor to liquid water is 0.0430.000001 = 43,000. 
If all of the moisture in air at 77 degrees F. and 100% relative humidity
were converted to liquid water one mile deep, it would require an atmosphere
43,000 miles in thickness to hold that amount of water!
==
Duane Gish,Ph.D. in his 1978 book. "EVOLUTION? THE FOSSILS SAY NO!,
"By creation we mean the bringing into being by a supernatural Creator of the
basic kinds of plants and animalsby the process of sudden, or fiat, creation.
We do not know how the Creator created, what process He used, for He used
processes which are not now operating anywhere in the natural universe."

This puts creation outside of science, not part of science.
==
<http:www.answersingenesis.orgdocs502.asp:
"By definition, no apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field,
including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the
Scriptural record."

http:www.creationresearch.orghisaims.html
Creation Research Society (CRS)
W.H. Rusch, 1982. "A brief statement of the history and aims of the
CRS." CRS Quarterly 19(2):149
All members must subscribe to the following statement of belief:
1. The Bible is the written Word of God, and because it is inspired
throughout, all its assertions are historically and scientifically true
in the original autographs. To the student of nature this means that
the account of origins in Genesis is a factual presentation of simple
historical truths.
2. All basic types of living things, including man, were made by direct
creative acts of God during the Creation Week described in Genesis.
Whatever biological changes have occurred since Creation Week have been
accomplished only changes within the original created kinds.
3. The great flood described in Genesis, commonly referred to as the
Noachian Flood, was an historic event worldwide in its extent and
effect.
4. We are an organization of Christian men and women of science who
accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. The account of the special
creation of Adam and Eve as one man and one woman and their subsequent
fall into sin is the basis for our belief in the necessity of a Savior
for all mankind. Therefore, salvation can come only through accepting
Jesus Christ as our Savior.

So these "men and women of science" will only dispute the "facts" in
Genesis, special creation of species (opps, "kinds"), the Noachian
Flood and the uniqueness of H. sapiens on pain of their immortal soul.
Yep, thats a formula for objective review of data!

If (1) holding all theories as provisional is required
scientific practice, *and* if (2) CRS members have made an oath
to hold certain theories as irrefutable, *then* (3) it directly
follows that they have indeed made an oath to refrain from
scientific practice.  It is very simple logic, and it is true
since (1) and (2) are true.
==
Snakes are more crafty than any other animal (Gen 3:1)
Snakes are "wise" (Matt 10:16)
One snakes could talk (Gen 3:1-5)
Snake image can protect against snakebite (Num 21:8-9)-
==
The shadow of Ahazıs sun dial moved back, or change ten
³maalah² in length. Isaiah 38:7-8. ³Maalah² can mean step,
grade-mark, degree, etc. This occured during the reign of King
Hezekiah, King Ahazıs son. 2nd Kings 18:1. Read what else happened at
this time. 2nd Kings 19:32-20:11. Isaiah 37:14-22,33-38:22. Isaiah
chapter 38 verses 5-7 are especially important.
Astronomers note no changes in the solar eclipse patterns around
this time period.
==
http:www.talkorigins.orgfaqspunc-eq.html
Creationist misquotes
http:www.rtis.comnatuserelsberryevobioevcsc_misq.html
http:www.geocities.comCapeCanaveralHangar2437misquote.htm
http:www.cs.colorado.edu~lindsaycreationquotes.html
http:www.talkorigins.orgfaqsicr-whoppers.html
http:www.talkorigins.orgfaqsce3part5.html.
==
Stephen Jay Gould, who testified for the plantiffs, mentions this in his book
ROCK OF AGES: SCIENCE AND RELIGION IN THE FULLNESS OF LIFE.

Michael Ruse, "Can a Darwinian Be a Christian?"

God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution  by John F. Haught

Can a Darwinian Be a Christian? by Michael Ruse.

When Science Meets Religion  by Ian G. Barbour

John Polkinghorne, "Belief in God in an Age of Science"

The Wedge of Truth : Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism by
Phillip E. Johnson 

Darwin's Black Box : The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
by Michael J. Behe

Intelligent Design : The Bridge Between Science & Theology 
by William A. Dembski, Michael J. Behe 
The Design Inference : Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities
(Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction and Decision Theory) 
by William A. Dembski 
Mere Creation; Science, Faith & Intelligent Design by 
William A. Dembski(Editor), et al
Dembski, No Free Lunch,

Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? by Jonathan Wells, Jody F.

Dr. Carl Baugh, "Why Do Men Believe Evolution Against All Odds"
http:members.aol.comPaluxy2degrees.htm about the "Dr." degree

Creation Science Made Easy
Elizabeth Ridlon and Robert Ridlon
==
The world's coal deposits contain, or at least, contained, forty
times the carbon in the Earth's current biomass. The  carbonate deposits have
much more carbon than this.
..).
==
Genesis days
http:www.therain.orgappendixesapp11.html
http:www.answersingenesis.orgdocs4204tj_v5n1.asp
http:www.answersingenesis.orgdocs188.asp
http:www.answersingenesis.orgdocs2452.asp
http:www.geocities.comAthens5948Gendays.htm
==
EVOLUTION: WAS THERE A KANSAS BEFORE THERE WERE PEOPLE?  The
Grace Dangberg Foundation was created in 1982 ³to improve the quality of
history education.²  Eight months ago, it proudly announced that it was
developing a new textbook on the history of Kansas for seventh and eighth
graders.  The book was to begin with the rich fossil record of the inland sea
that once covered the state. That was before the Kansas School Board deleted
Darwin from the curriculum.  ³You donıt want to offend any group in Kansas,²
the foundationıs director said, explaining why the book will now start with
the arrival of native Americans.
Tom Willis, a member of the geocentrist Creation Science Association for
Mid-America, was instrumental in the recent change to the Kansas school board
standards that heavily de-emphasized evolution. These have since been reversed
by a later school board.

NS: "Do you believe that sun goes round the earth or the earth
goes round the sun?"
Tom Willis: " I'm sure your readers will love this, but I don't know.  Every
physicist who's looked at it seriously has realised that we don't know for
sure."
==
The Creation Science Movement in the UK  (www.csm.org.uk)
links to Malcolm Bowden, who has a paper on his website: "The basic
Scientific arguments for Geocentricity."  

http:www.lhup.edu~dsimanekfe-scidi.htm
The whole point of the Copernican theory is to get rid of Jesus by saying
there is no up and no down," declares Johnson. "The spinning ball thing just
makes the whole Bible a big joke."  Flat Earth believer
==
"Tornado in a Junkyard: The Relentless Myth if Darwinism" by James Perloff,
Refuge Books, PO Box 191, Arlington, MA 02476-0002. 
==
Fundie definition:
"A kind is a thing that no other kind can evolve into".
==
The fundie book   _Pandas and People_.
Pandas is a ³supplement² to conventional biology texts which defends
Intelligent Design as an alternative to conventional evolutionary theory.
The book argues largely from ignorance and by second guessing the intentions
of the designer.  The designer in Pandas is a tinkerer who starts with one
basic pattern and tries a huge number of variations on that one basic design.
He simply allows his mistakes to go extinct.  This designer bears little
resemblance to the omni-everything Middle Eastern deity of Xianity but is
more like the powerful but limited gods of European paganism.
==
³Telling Lies for God² by Ian Plimer, Paper, 303 pages, Random House, $14.95
==
http:www.geocities.comCapeCanaveral8851young-earth.html
Refutation of young earth claims.
==
Some bristlecone pine trees in the White-Inyo mountain range of California
date back  beyond 2000 BCE. One,labelled ³Methuselah² germinated in 2726 BCE.
But their tree rings have been matched with those of dead trees; this shows
that the latter germinated about 6000 BCE, which predates the year 4004
BCE by 2000 years.  We know what the levels of 14C-12C were for the past
13,000+ years based on calibration with dendrochronology.

Consider the bristlecone pine, European oak, and Scotch pine chronologies.
The dendrochrononogies established using these very differenent
species, in very different chronologies, agrees over the thousands of
years represented by the chronologies. Furthermore, the 14C wiggle
matched floating chronologies also agree to high precision
(Again [Becker, et all, 1991]).

Furthermore, we have the totally independent verification of the
14C calibration using U-TH isochron dating of corals both in the Pacific
[Edwards, et al., 1993] and the Atlantic [Bard, et al., 1990].

The isochron method.
It uses multiple samples of different minerals from the same rock melt and at
least three isotopes measured, giving two ratios that will then, if 
the samples
are cogenetic and undisturbed since crystallizing, plot to a straight line
graph.  The slope of the line increases with the age of the rock, 
the intercept
(where the line crosses zero) is the amount of original daughter 
isotope in the
rock.  Thus it is actually MEASURED by this method and not "assumed" at all. 
The only thing that IS assumed by this method is that the straight lines
actually represent isochrons (in rare instances sheer coincidence 
might produce
a line but it would have to be a VERY rare instance indeed) and that the
radioactive decay rate of the parent isotope has not changed significantly
during the time the rock has been a solid set of mineral crystals.  We have
tested these rates to extinction under all sorts of conditions and 
the only way
to produce even the tiniest measurable change is to subject the rock to
conditions that would vaporize it!
==
The majority opinion of Edwards v. Aguillard found that Lousiana's 
Creationism Act which forbid the teaching of evolution unless accompanied
by similar teaching of creation science was unconstitutional.  
The court held that the act did not further its stated secular purpose of 
promoting academic freedom: that banning the teaching of evolution under
any circumstances didn't enhance anyone's academic freedom, and that teachers
were already able to present alternative scientific theories about the origin
of life.
The court went on to find that the act was impermissible in that
it impermissibly endorces religion by advancing the religious belief
that a supernatural being created mankind, and was therefore in violation
of the First Amendment.
  In the Held opinion, section 1b, 
the court found that the Lousiana Creationism Act endorsed religion
by advancing the religious belief that a supernatural being created
human kind, and that it was an impermissible violation of the 
First Amendment.  
The public schools, being publically funded,  are considered
extensions of the US and State governments, and are held to the
same First Amendment standards as any other public office.

The Court has been particularly vigilant in monitoring
        compliance with the Establishment Clause in elementary and
        secondary schools. Families entrust public schools with
        the education of their children, but condition their trust
        on the understanding that the classroom will not purposely
        be used to advance religious views that may conflict with
        the private beliefs of the student and his or her family.
        Students in such institutions are impressionable and their
        attendance is involuntary. See, e.g., Grand Rapids School
        Dist. v. Ball, 473 U.S. 373, 383 (1985); Wallace v. Jaffree,
WALLACE v.  JAFFREE (1985) where the high court struck down a law
which specifically called for a period of silence to include
"meditation or daily prayer."
        472 U.S. 38, 60, n. 51 (1985); Meek v. Pittenger, 421 U.S.
        349, 369 (1975); Abington School Dist. v. Schempp, 374 U.S.
        203, 252-253 (1963) (BRENNAN, J., concurring). The State
        exerts great authority and coercive power through mandatory
        attendance requirements, and because of the students'
        emulation of teachers as role models and the children's
        susceptibility to peer pressure (5). See Bethel School
        Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser, supra, at 683; Wallace v. Jaffree,
        supra, at 81 (O'CONNOR, J., concurring in judgment).
        Furthermore, the public school is at once the symbol of
        our democracy and the most pervasive means for promoting
        our common destiny. In no activity of the State is it more
        vital to keep out divisive forces than in its schools . .
        . . Illinois ex rel. McCollum v. Board of Education, 333
        U.S. 203, 231 (1948) (opinion of Frankfurter, J.).
        Consequently, the Court has been required often to invalidate
        statutes which advance religion in public elementary and
        secondary schools. See, e. g., Grand Rapids School Dist.
        v. Ball, supra (school district's use of religious school
        teachers in public schools); Wallace v. Jaffree, supra
        (Alabama statute authorizing moment of silence for school
        prayer); Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39 (1980) (posting copy
        of Ten Commandments on public classroom wall); Epperson v.
        Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 (1968) (statute forbidding teaching
        of evolution); Abington School Dist. v. Schempp, supra
        (daily reading of Bible); Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421,
        430 (1962) (recitation of denominationally neutral prayer).
In the case of Engel v. Vitale, it wasn't a state law that required
the recitation of a prayer.  The prayer was composed and mandated
by the New York State Board of Regents, a state agency, but it was
not the subject of any state law.  The court ruled that it was
unconsitutional for a government agency like a school or government
agents like public school employees to require their students to
listen to a prayer.
Given the findings of Edwards v. Aguillard, it is hard to imagine how
the court might allow the teaching of religious beliefs (the court
did find the teaching of creationism to be a religious and not a 
scientific belief) by public school employees given their prohibition
on requiring the recitation of school prayer.

  The Louisiana Creationism Act advances a religious doctrine by
     requiring either the banishment of the theory of evolution from
     public school classrooms or the presentation of a religious
     viewpoint that rejects evolution in its entirety. The Act
     violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because
     it seeks to employ the symbolic and financial support of
     government to achieve a religious purpose.

if Louisiana had acted
in good faith then the law would have been constitutional.  Of course,
by refering to Stone v Graham, Brenne makes it quiet clear that it is
unlikely that the court would find any similar law to be sincere.

In 1(b), the court concludes that
  The legislative history demonstrates that the term creation
   science, as contemplated by the state legislature, embraces this
   religious teaching [that a supernatural being created humankind]
but the held opinion went just short of finding that creation
science was not a scientific theory. From 1(b) again
  The District Court did not err in granting summary judgment upon
   a finding that appellants had failed to raise a genuine issue of
   material fact. Appellants relied on the uncontroverted
   affidavits of scientists, theologians, and an education
   administrator defining creation science as origin through abrupt
   appearance in complex form and alleging that such a viewpoint
   constitutes a true scientific theory. The District Court, in its
   discretion, properly concluded that the postenactment testimony
   of these experts concerning the possible technical meanings of
   the Act's terms would not illuminate the contemporaneous purpose
   of the state legislature when it passed the Act.
From Brennan's opinion (part IIIB)
  We do not imply that a legislature could never require
   that scientific critiques of prevailing scientific theories
   be taught.  Indeed, the Court acknowledged in Stone that its
   decision forbidding the posting of the Ten Commandments did not
   mean that no use could ever be made of the Ten Commandments,
   or that the Ten Commandments played an exclusively religious
   role in the history of Western Civilization. 449 U.S., at 42. In
   a similar way, teaching a variety of scientific theories about
   the origins of humankind to schoolchildren might be validly done
   with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness
   of science instruction. But because the primary purpose of the
   Creationism Act is to endorse a particular religious doctrine,
   the Act furthers religion in violation of the Establishment Clause.
It seems to me that the court leaves open the possibility of
teaching creationism. It does in various places state that
creation science  as contemplated by the state legislature
embraces religious teaching; but this appears to leave open
the possibility of teaching a kind of secular creationism.
Many creationists attempt to present just such a fraud; and
my guess is that it could be taught without being found illegal.
From Part 2 of Powell's additional comments:
  Even though I find Louisiana's Balanced Treatment Act
   unconstitutional, I adhere to the view that the States and
   locally elected school boards should have the responsibility for
   determining the educational policy of the public schools. Board
   of Education, Island Trees Union Free School Dist. No. 26 v. Pico,
   457 U.S. 853, 893 (1982) (POWELL, J., dissenting). A decision
   respecting the subject matter to be taught in public schools does
   not violate the Establishment Clause simply because the material
   to be taught 'happens to coincide or harmonize with the tenets of
   some or all religions.' Harris v. McRae, 448 U.S. 297, 319 (1980)
   (quoting McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 442 (1961)). In
   the context of a challenge under the Establishment Clause,
   interference with the decisions of these authorities is warranted
   only when the purpose for their decisions is clearly religious.


References:
Bard, E., Hamelin, B., Fairbanks, R.G., and Zindler, A. (1990),
Calibration of the 14C timescale over the past 30,000 years using
mass spectrometric U-Th ages from Barbados.

Becker, B., Kromer, B., and Trimborn P., 1991, A stable-isotope
     tree-ring timescale of the Late GlacialHolocene boundary:
     Nature, vol. 353 (17 Oct 1991), 647-649.

Dickin, A.P.(1995) Radiogenic Isotope Geology, Cambridge University press.

Edwards, R. L., Beck, J. W., Burr, G. S., Donahue, D. J.,
      Chappell, J. M. A., Bloom, E. R. M., Druffel, E. R. M.,
      Taylor, F. W., 1993, A large drop in atmospheric  14-C12-C
      and reduced melting in the Younger Dryas*, documented with
      230-Th ages in corals: Science, vol. 260 (14 May 1993),
      962-967.

Lowe, John J. ed. (1991) Radiocarbon Dating: Recent Applications and
     Future Potential, Quaternary Proceedings #1 1991, published on
     behalf of the Quaternary Research Association by Wiley.

http://www.atheists.org"courthouse
==
C14
If you can find a ³suitably large pure sample.ıŒ The problem is that
the bigger the sample, the more difficult it is to mitigate contamination.
In AMS, the problems of contamination result still result in a background
that makes the technique limited to samples that are of  age of less
than about 45,000-50,000 years. [Hedges, 1991], [Dickin, 1995]
See also American Scientist, Jan, 2000. for a major article on C-14
dating.

If you read the references at the bottom, you will see that the tree-ring
calibration curves and coral calibration curves which span the range
of time back to 10,000-13,000 are valid, what you agree is
the ``higher precisionıŒ method of counts, using bigger samples.
The purity of the wood in the tree ring samples was ensured through
an involved method of chemical treatment to remove possible contaminants,
so that all of the carbon came from the cellulose from the wood
[Becker, et all., 1991].

The calibration curve using corals, which goes back to 30,000 years
was done using AMS, because the samples were smaller.

References:
Bard, E., Hamelin, B., Fairbanks, R. G., and Zinder, A.(1990)
Calibration of the 14C timescale over the past 30,000 years using
using mass spectrometric U-Th ages from Barbados corals, Nature,
345, 405-410.
Becker, B., Kromer, B., and Trimborn P., 1991, A stable-isotope
     tree-ring timescale of the Late GlacialHolocene boundary:
     Nature, vol. 353 (17 Oct 1991), 647-649.
Dickin, A. P. (1995) Radiogenic Isotope Geology, Cambridge University Press.
Edwards, R. L., Beck, J. W., Burr, G. S., Donahue, D. J.,
       Chappell, J. M. A., Bloom, E. R. M., Druffel, E. R. M.,
       Taylor, F. W., 1993, A large drop in atmospheric  14-C12-C
       and reduced melting in the Younger Dryas*, documented with
       230-Th ages in corals: Science, vol. 260 (14 May 1993),
       962-967.
Hedges, R.E.M, (1991), AMS Dating: Present Status and Potential Applications,
in Radiocarbon Dating: Recent Applications and Future Potential, ed.
John J. Lowe, Quaternary Proceeding

-Baillie,M.G.L. & Munro,M.A.R.: Irish tree rings, Santorini and
     volcanic dust veils, Nature, vol. 332, 24 March 1988, p.344-346.

-Hammer,C.U.& Clausen,H.B.& Dansgaard,W.: Greenland ice sheet
     evidence of post-glasial volcanism and its climatic impact,
     Nature, vol.288, 20 november 1980, p.230-232.
==

-Baillie,M. & Pilcher,J.: Make a date with a tree, New Scientist, 17
     March 1988, p.48.

-Johnsen,S.J. et al: Irregular glacial interstadials recorder in a
     new Greenland ice core, Nature vol.359, 24 September 1992,
     p.311-313.

Broecker,Wallace S.& Denton,George H.:What Drives Glacial Cycles?,
Scientific American January 1990,p.43-50.
In Sea floo,000 and 100,000 years cycles. Those cycles were  already
known in astronomy over 100 years. Cycles can be calculated by
Newton laws. Now those were found in sediments. These cycles are due to
variations in the tilt, orientation, and orbit shape for the earth.

Scientific American: An Indian Hunterıs Camp for 20,000 years,
May 1984, p.104-108

Amereican Scientist Jan 2000, major article on C14 dating

Becker & al: Nature, 353, 1991 s.647 -649,
³9,928 years absolute dated dendrochronological recorded
Holocene Oak²  (Oak=tammi) over 6000 dendro graphs analysed for this

Why is there no evidence of a flood in tree ring dating? Tree ring
records go back more than 10,000 years, with no evidence of a
catastrophe during that time. [Becker & Kromer, 1993; Becker et al,
1991; Stuvier et al, 1986]

 References
Alley, R. B., D. A. Meese, C. A. Shuman, A. J. Gow, K.C. Taylor, P. M.
Grootes, J. W. C. White, M. Ram, E. W. Waddington, P. A. Mayewski, &
G. A. Zielinski, 1993. Abrupt increase in Greenland snow accumulation
at the end of the Younger Dryas event. Nature 362: 527-529.

Becker, B. & Kromer, B., 1993. The continental tree-ring record -
absolute chronology, C-14 calibration and climatic-change at 11 KA.
Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology, 103 (1-2): 67-71.

Becker, B., Kromer, B. & Trimborn, P., 1991. A stable-isotope
tree-ring timescale of the late glacial Holocene boundary. Nature 353
(6345): 647-649.

Johnsen, S. J., H. B. Clausen, W. Dansgaard, K. Fuhrer, N. Gundestrap,
C. U. Hammer, P. Iversen, J. Jouzel, B. Stauffer, & J. P. Steffensen,
1992. Irregular glacial interstadials recorded in a new Greenland ice
core. Nature 359: 311-313.

Stuiver, Minze, et al, 1986. Radiocarbon age calibration back to
13,300 years BP and the 14 C age matching of the German Oak and US
bristlecone pine chronologies. IN: Calibration issue  Stuiver, Minze,
et al., Radiocarbon 28(2B): 969-979.
==
  The appellants tried to
support the teaching of creationism by introducing affidavits from
scientists, theologians and an education administrator that
creationism was a scientific theory which meant origin through
abrupt appearance in complex form, and the District court didn't
buy it.  The District Court held (and the SCOTUS upheld that they
acted properly) that such testimony after the enactment of the law
did not properly illuminate the rationale that the state legislature
possessed when they passed the Act.
What is the practical result of this?  I'm completely unsure.  I don't
think it materially changes much because it doesn't make any determination
on whether creationism itself is a scientific theory or not.  It merely
upholds the District Court's decision to grant summary judgement on 
the appellants.
Justice Brennan goes on to say:
        Abington School District v. Schempp, supra, at 224, it also
        has made clear that the Bible may constitutionally be used
        in an appropriate study of history, civilization, ethics,
        comparative religion, or the like. Stone v.  Graham, 449
        U.S., at 42 (citing Abington School District v.  Schempp,
        supra, at 225). The book is, in fact, the world's all-time
        best seller (9) with undoubted literary and historic value
        apart from its religious content.  The Establishment Clause
        is properly understood to prohibit the use of the Bible
        and other religious documents in public school education
        only when the purpose of the use is to advance a particular
        religious belief.
I would guess that this establishes a criterion for deciding whether
or not a particular curriculum is prohibitited under the First
Amendment.  I also suspect that this is the loophole that many of the
`intelligent design' crowd hope to exploit in order to get alternative
theories of origins into the curriculum of public schools.
Note that the earlier assertion that the Consitution doesn't prohibit
the teaching of anything is incorrect (at least as far as public
schools go).  Brennan clearly states that the establishment clause
of the First Amendment _does_ apply to public schools, and therefore
they are prohibited from teaching religion.
I suspect it would largely depend on the case.  If the judge deciding
such a case found that such teaching (say) intelligent design was
not teaching religion, then I suspect that creationism could be
legally taught.  I believe it is precisely this kind of approach
that has lead to the rise of intelligent design and `secular'
creationism.  It is highly disigenuous of the religious right to
utilize this type of subterfuge to advance their own anti-science
agenda.

It is clear
that the state can not pass laws to establish religion, but in the case
Engel v. Vitale, the SCOTUS found that state officials may not compose
an official state prayer and recite it in public schools.  Note that there
was never any law enacted which required such a thing to be done, the 
New York Board of Education directed their School District's principal
to do so using their own official capacity.
Justice Black:
        We think that, by using its public school system to encourage
        recitation of the Regents' prayer, the State of New York
        has adopted a practice wholly inconsistent with the
        Establishment Clause. There can, of course, be no doubt
        that New York's program of daily classroom invocation of
        God's blessings as prescribed in the Regents' prayer is a
        religious activity. It is a solemn avowal of divine faith
        and supplication for the blessings of the Almighty. The
        nature of such a prayer has always been [p*425] religious,
        none of the respondents has denied this, and the trial
        court expressly so found:
In Engel v. Vitale, there was no law passed by the state legislature
mandating the recitation of a non-demoninational school prayer,
the school board acted on its own authority to do so.  It is unclear
to me how members of the state board of education are somehow
distinguished from other state employees (public school teachers)
in their inability to mandate the recitation of school prayer.  It
seems that individual school teachers are in violation of the
establishment clause of the First Amendment by reciting a prayer
during their classes, and that similar reasoning could be used to
claim that their are in violation of the same when they teach
religion in the form of creation science.
Again, I merely make the argument above, especially with respect to 
Engel v. Vitale.

 Therefore, this case does not present the issue of whether, or
     under what circumstances, a school board may completely eliminate
     material from the curriculum. Cf. Zykan, 631 F.2d at 1305-06
     (school may not flatly prohibit teachers from mentioning relevant
     material). Rather, the principle that an individual teacher has
     no right to ignore the directives of duly appointed education
     authorities is dispositive of this case. Today, we decide only
     that, given the allegations of the complaint, the school board
     has successfully navigated the narrow channel between impairing
     intellectual inquire and propagating a religious creed.

 In fact, in Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577, 598-99 (1992), a case
erroneously touted by some as definitive proof that prayer is never
to be allowed at graduation, Justice Kennedy stated:
^^asahunt^^: We recognize that, at graduation time and throughout
the course of the educational process, there will be instances when
religious values, religious practices and religious persons will have
some interaction with the public schools and their students.

 Students enjoy a wide range of constitutional freedoms on campus, and
specifically "do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of
speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." Tinker v. Des Moines 
Independent School District, 393 U.S. 503, 506 (1969).
==
Lost day of Joshua.
³Did you know that the space program is busy proving that what has
been called ³myth² in the Bible is true? Mr. Harold Hill, President of the
Curtis Engine Company in Baltimore Maryland and a consultant in the space
program, relates the following development.²

Your story is an urban legend and has been conclusively debunked. See
http:www.urbanlegends.comsciencemissing_day.html
http:www.infidels.orglibrarymagazinestsr19986986hours.html (quote of
myth)
http:www.infidels.orglibrarymagazinestsr19986986flap.html

It is so patently false that about two years ago Reason and Revelation
published a warning to its readers not to use it in their evangelistic efforts.

This story has been circulating in its NASA version at least since the 1960s,
largely due to its promulgation by one Harold Hill, who says that he was
present at NASAıs Goddard Space Flight Center when the above events allegedly
took place. NASA denies that this ever occurred, and Hill, the former
president of the Curtis Engine Company of Baltimore, was involved in diesel
engine operations at Goddard and had no involvement with any computer
operations. The story predates Hillıs NASA version, and goes back to Charles
A. L. Tottenıs _Joshuaıs Long Day and the Dial of Ahaz: A Scientific
Vindication_ (1890). Hill published his version in Harold Hill, as told to
Irene Burk Harrell, _How to Live Like a Kingıs Kid_, 1974, Logos
International. (Logos International was a Christian publisher with no qualms
about publishing phony testimonies--it also published Mike Warnkeıs_The Satan
Seller_, Michael Essesı _Michael, Michael, Why Do You Hate Me?_, and Fernand
Navarraıs _Noahıs Ark--I Touched It_, all of which have been debunked.)

James Kiefer made an analysis of the ³NASAıs Missing Day² UL, in which
he traces it back over 100 years.
The July 1989 issue of ³Bible-Science Newsletter² carries an excellent
article which debunks this story.
http:geneva.rutgers.edusrcfaqmissing-day.txt  hoax data
http:christiananswers.netq-aigaig-a001.html missing day hoax
http:sunnyokanagan.comjoshuaindex.html  missing day wild
http:www.urbanlegends.comsciencemissing_day.html
http:www.infidels.orglibrarymagazinestsr19986986hours.html
http:www.infidels.orglibrarymagazinestsr19986986flap.html
==
The Bible teaches a flat earth, not a round one. The cosmology of the Bible
is that of the Babylonians, which had a flat earth with a vault for ³heaven².
As such, the cosmology is embedded in several passages of the OT. These are:
Genesis 1:2-8, Genesis 7:12, Isaiah 40:21-22, Job 22:14, Job 37:18, and
finally Daniel 4:11. The passage in Daniel can only be literally true if the
earth is flat, otherwise the view is impossible on a spherical earth. There
is another passage in Isaiah that refers to the earth as a circle, but I
remind you that a circle still lies all in one plane and is FLAT. Finally,
there are astronomical sections in the noncanonical but influential Book of
Enoch that refer to the earth as flat.

These passages led early Church fathers like Lactantius, Tertullian, and
Clement of Alexandria to be flat-earthers. About 550 AD Cosmas Indocopleutes
published the book Christian Topography that explicitly spelled out a flat
earth. This is discussed in A.D. White's book "History of the Warfare...",
which is available on www at

http:abob.libs.uga.edubobkwhitewtc.html   AD White  science vs religion
http:www.infidels.orglibraryhistoricalandrew_whiteAndrew_White.html
HISTORY OF THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE WITH THEOLOGY IN CHRISTENDOM(1896)A D White
http:atheism.about.comcultureatheismlibrarytextswhitebl_white
_chapter01.htm http:www.santafe.edu~shaliziWhite

However, the Bible states in plain Hebrew that the earth is immovable.
I Chronicles 16:30, Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, and Psalm 104:5.

In contrast, the Greek Eratosthenes once hypothesized that the earth was
round and, using shadows in wells in Egypt, calculated the circumference
about 500 BC, a thousand years BEFORE Cosmas wrote his erroneous book.
http:hven.swarthmore.eduastro1eratosthenes.html   Eratosthenes
==
I know of no metric for complexity or orderliness, so tangible measurements
don't exist.
==
The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe
in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow
that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles
may happen. 
==
 "Creation ..... is inaccessible to the scientific method. It is impossible to
devise a scientific experiment to describe the creation process, or even to
ascertain whether such a process can take place. The Creator does not create
at the whim of a Scientist."
(Henry Morris, "Scientific Creationism" as quoted in "Origins" by
Robert Shapiro p. 262)
"Elsewhere Morris has written: '... we are completely limited to what
God has seen fit to tell us, and this information is in His written
Word. This is our textbook on the science of Creation!' Duane Gish
has supported the same concepts in his book _Evolution: The Fossils
Say No!_: 'We do not know how the Creator created, what processes He
used, for he used processes which are not now operating anywhere in
the natural universe. This is why we refer to creation as special
creation. We cannot discover by scientific investigation anything
about the creative processes used by the Creator.'

Professor Robert Shapiro, "Origins: A skeptic's guide to the creation of life
on earth" 
==
Have you considered that creationism was THE scientific theory in the early
1800s? It was discarded BEFORE Darwin for the same reason that all scientific
theories are discarded --it didnıt fit the evidence in the physical universe.
In 1830, Rev Adam Sedgwick, Anglican minister and president of the Royal
Society, announced that his version of creationism had been falsified. Darwin
hadnıt even started writing the Origin yet.
==
³The alternative to thinking in evolutionary terms is not to think at all,²
said the Nobel-prizewinning British biologist Sir Peter Medewar.
==
"Young-earth "proof" #25: The current population of Earth (5.5 billion) could
easily be generated from 8 people in less than 4000 years. If the earth were
really billions of years old, the human population would have gone through
the roof!

25. Yes, and by the same reasoning 8 germs could populate every cubic
inch of available living space on Earth with 1 million germs in less than a
week! That is, after 158 generations, assuming a generous die-off rate such
that the fourth generation has about 40 germs instead of 128, and assuming
that the population divides every hour, each and every cubic inch of living
space on the earth, from 100 feet below ground to a mile above, would have
1 million germs by that time. I guess, by creationist reckoning, the earth
must be a week old! If it were a few thousand years old, the germ population
would have gone through the roof!
Yes, given unlimited living space, a good deal of luck in the early stages,
protection from mass destruction by disease or other disasters, and a high
motivation of purpose throughout, eight people could probably populate the
earth in a few thousand years. Eight germs could do it in less than a week.
Eight bunny rabbits would fall somewhere in between. Eight cats would give us
yet another figure. What do any of these figures have to do with the age of
the earth? Nothing! What do these figures have to do with actual growth
rates? Absolutely nothing!
The human exponential growth rate of the last few hundred years is possible
only because of technology. When our ability to stay one jump ahead of
starvation and disease fails, when our resources give out, then you'll see a
dramatic change in that growth rate! It will no longer be exponential. 
It will be disastrous!
When man lived in scattered tribal groups, which is what he did for 99% of
his history, the net human population growth was zero most of the time, just
as it is for animals today. Animal populations may undergo cycles of boom and
bust, especially small animals such as rabbits or mice, but their net growth
is zero.
No permanent increase in population can be sustained unless it is reflected
by a permanent change in the environment. Such a change might include the
loss of a predator due to the colonization of new territory, a permanent
increase in the food supply due to climatic change or a change in dietary
habits, or a variety of other factors. In the case of man, the development of
agriculture and the use of fossil fuels have played major roles. After a
favorable change in the environment, a population of animals (or people) may
record a permanent jump before leveling off at a zero net growth again. Thus,
the growth rate, before technology intervened in a major way, necessarily
involved a series of plateaus where the population was in approximate
equilibrium with the environment. Indeed, many tribal groups probably died
out. There was no assurance that early man would even survive. Jumps between
plateau levels would likely have been exponential. Indeed, the exponential
growth rate of the last 300 years or so can be thought of as one long jump to
a new plateau which has Those who imagine that eight people gave rise to all
living today according to a simple exponential growth curve have demonstrated
an inability to think things through. Let's look at the equation involved in
these growth rate calculations.

P(n) = P(1 + r)*n

P(n) is the population generated after n years. (With the proper adjustment
of r, n could be months or generations, etc. For our purposes, years will do
nicely and r will be adjusted accordingly.) P is the initial population
which, in our case, is eight. The growth rate is r which would be close to
zero for humanity per year. A negative value would indicate a population
decline. Henry Morris used a value for r of 0.0033 [0.33%] in a similar
calculation which started with Adam and Eve. However, since the flood
supposedly reduced the population to eight people 1656 years after creation,
a figure Dr. Hovind gives based on patriarchal ages, we should start our
exponential curve at the latter date. If we assume, for the sake of this
argument, that the earth is 6000 years old, then we start our calculation
with 8 people 4344 years ago. We must wind up with the present population of
5.5 billion people, the figure given by Dr. Hovind. 
It turns out that if r = 0.0047 then after 4344 years we would wind up with
about 5.6 billion people, which is close enough. After substituting the
values for P and r into the above equation we are at liberty to try out
different values for n to obtain the population at different times. At the
time the Israelites entered Canaan, we get a world population of 2024! By the
time you divide that up between Egypt, Canaan, the rest of the world, and
Israel, that leaves maybe 6 or 7 people for the Israeli army! If we go back
to the time that the Hyksos were expelled from Egypt, in 1560 BC, we get a
world population of 325 people!
We can't calculate the population at the time the Great Pyramid of Cheops was
built, around 2500 BC, because it was supposedly washed away by Noah's flood!
Being an antediluvian structure, many people might have been available to
work on it. Odd, that the Great Pyramid of Cheops shows no water marks.
Stranger still, that the Egyptians should be unaware of Noah's flood! I would
think that Noah's flood, coming a mere century or thereabouts after the Great
Pyramid of Cheops was built, would have found a prominent place in the
Egyptian annuals.  As you can see, an exponential growth curve leads to
absurdity when we assume that 8 people generated today's population.
Creationists, of course, could jack the r value way up at the start, jack it
way down in the middle, and jack it up again for modern times, but the ad hoc
nature of such an argument becomes a little too obvious. Regarding the
Nobody who has ever studied the population explosion would make such an
unwise extrapolation. It is well known that growth rates have increased
enormously in recent centuries. Population expert Paul Ehrlich gives world
average yearly growth rates of 0.9 per cent between 1850 and 1930, 0.3
per cent between 1650 and 1850, and a mere 0.07 per cent in the thousand
years prior to 1650. And in the fourteenth century the population increase
must have been very small indeed, and it may even have been turned into a big
decrease, because of the Black Death. Ehrlich's figures are not just guesses;
they are based on historical records. These facts show how misguided it is to
extrapolate present
population trends into the remote past. (Hayward, 1985, p.136)
The Times Atlas of World History (1978) estimated that the world population
increased 16 times between 8000 BC and 4000 BC. That yields a growth rate 
(r =0.069%) which is almost identical to the figure quoted above by Hayward
for ancient times.
Try plugging in some real data! It does make a difference. If we assume a
growth rate of 0.07% before 1650 (a rate already a bit high because of
agriculture), a growth rate of 0.3% between 1650 and 1850, a growth rate of
0.9% between 1850 and 1930, and a growth rate of 2.0% between 1930 and 1994
you will find that Noah and his crew are the ancestors of a whopping 1740
people today!"
==
http:www.hsv.tis.net~ke4volevolvech5p2ng.html
This is a quote from the above fundie source:
³Animals of similar density would tend to be buried together. The reason
most dinosaur bones are found in similar layers is most dinosaurs are
lizards, and weigh about the same as lizards. The reason birds are found
on the top soil of the geologic column is not because they evolved last
but because the birds were the last ones to drown in the flood. When
they do drown, they float because they have hollow feathers and hollow
bones. ³ In addition it says ³The glaciers were roaring across the terrain,
possibly hundreds of miles an hour. As the ice pushed out further and
further, it carved out all the glacial effects we now see today. They
were then covered by two giant cold spots. When cold air meets cold air
it rains. ³UnQuote--
==
Creation science has been rejected by no fewer than 15 denominations,
including the Episcopal, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, United (Baptist)
Ministries, United Methodist and United Presbyterian churches.
==
The work of Biblical creationists demonstrates that even they donıt believe
the Biblical record.  Whitcomb & Morris, for example, explicity disagree that
the Flood killed all land animals, not to mention their disagreement with
Biblical chronology.
==
³The creationists have this creator who is evil, who is small-minded,
who is malevolent, and who is not very bright and canıt even get his
science right. Creationists have made their creator in their own image,
in my view.²   Ian Plimer, The Skeptic,
==
Creationists talk about proofs, proof texts, etc.  A thing can be proved,
i.e., shown to be a logical necessity, only within a system of axioms which
are stipulated, and cannot themselves be proved.  This works perfectly well
within a formal system such as mathematics (note that different mathematics
systems with diametrically opposed axioms may be used by the same
mathematician for different purposes).  But proof is impossible in the
physical world, where axioms do not exist.
1+1=2(Any base greater then 2)   1+1=10(Binary)   1+1=1(Boolean Logic)
are all true in their respective math systems.
The best that we can do is to show that a proposition is logically
impossible (i.e., to disprove it).  This is the method by which science
works.  An hypothesis is proposed to explain a set of observed occurences
(³facts²).  If this hypothesis is true, then under specified circumstances
certain other consequences must be observed (predictions).  If observation
demonstrates that these predicted occurences are not observed, then the
hypothesis is disproved.  If they _are_ observed the hypothesis is _not_
proven, because the observed phenomena may actually result from some
unsuspected cause unrelated to the hypothesis.  But the hypothesis _has_
survived an attempt to disprove it, and is said to be tested.  A system of
interconnected tested hypotheses is called a theory.  A good theory has
enormous explanatory and predictive power.
A theory can be overthrown by a single test which disproves a critical
hypothesis of the theory.  But what happens more commonly is that a failed
hypotheis shows a portion of the theory to have been based on mistaken
ideas, and so the theory is changed to incorporate the new hypothesis.
Sometimes this makes the theory more cohesive, and improves itıs predictive
power.  Sometimes the accumulation of ad hoc modifications produces a theory
so ramshackle that it is replaced by a new, more coherent theory.  So far,
all the changes to the theory of evolution by natural selection have been of
the first sort, making the theory more coherent and improving its
explanatory and predictive power.
The consequence of this is that to a scientist, all knowledge is conditional,
and there are no absolute ³Truths².  This attitude is both extremely
difficult to understand and highly disturbing to Creationists.
An incompete or approximate scientific model is not equivalent to a false
scientific model.
==
M. Eden in P.S. Moorhead and M.M. Kaplan, eds., Mathematical Challenges to the
Neo-Darwinian interpretation of Evolution,
Wistar Institute Press, Philadephia, 1967, pp. 47, 64,67, 71.
==
In Waterloo, Ontario, Canada where he, in a florish of righteous indignation
Kent Hovind blurted out, ³how can we let this happen -- this is America,²
failing to notice which country he was actually in.
==
Fundie version of reality.
These are refuted elsewhere in these files and particularly the
Matson_vs_Hovind file(B20).
Some reasons that the earth cannot POSSIBLY be 4.6 billion years old.
Young Universe Evidence
1) Insufficient number of supernovas  rate at which they occur. A new
supernova event is observed about every 30 years, and we see only a few
thousand in existence.
2) Absence of field galaxies. With stellar evolution, it would seem that
some galaxies would not be gravitationally bound and would just spread out
in a ³field².
3) Gravitationally bound star clusters with stars of different ages. If a
star cluster is gravitationally bound, under stellar evolution theory one
would expect all the stars would be the same age.
Young Solar System Evidence
1) Rate of bombardment of meteoritic dust  amount of dust measured on the
moon. Should be several hundred feet of dust on the moon. Several years ago
this creationist argument was dismissed, and many creationists themselves
stopped using it. However, in light of the latest scientific research, this
argument has been revived.
2) Existence of short-period comets. They can only last a maximum of several
thousand years because they give off copious material each orbit.
3) Continued presence of small meteorites in the face of the
PoyntingRobertson effect. Poynting-Robertson effect should sweep the solar
system clean of small particles.
4) Existence of unstable rings around planets like Saturn. Rings are not
stable and will not last.
5) Extensive tectonic activity on Jupiterıs moon Io. Inadequate heat sources
for a small moon so far from the sun to still be geologically active.
6) Presence of magnetic fields around solar system bodies (Mercury,
Jupiterıs moon Ganymede, Neptune, Uranus) without an obvious internal
dynamo. No natural process is known which could sustain a magnetic field
around these bodies - their magnetic fields should have decayed out of
existence if they ever had any.
7) Rock flow and lunar craters - Rock flow should have eliminated old
craters on the moon.
8) Recession of the moon from the earth. Moon is moving away from the earth
gradually due to tidal activity. Movement is too fast for earth-moon system
to be 4.6 billion years old.
9) Shrinking sun - Sun may be shrinking a few feet each year. Canıt
extrapolate this trend back to the past very far without effecting earthıs
environment.
10) Absence"shortage of solar neutrinos. Nuclear fusion in the sunıs core
should give off neutrinos. Experiments have not detected an adequate number
of neutrinos - this is a well known problem. Some creationists have argued
that this implies solar heat is due to gravity and not fusion - this would
imply a young sun. Later observations show these neutrinos vary their 
11) Heat level of the sunıs corona. Not sustainable for extended time
period. Later expeiments show neutrinos chamge their form as they go
through space, preventing all being detected by original detectors.
12) High concentration of Uranium-236 on the moon. Should have decayed.
13) High concentration of Thorium-230 on the moon. Should have decayed.
Young Earth Evidence
1) Exponential decay in the earthıs magnetic field (half-life of 1400-2000
years). This half-life cannot be extrapolated back more than about 10,000
years without the field becoming intolerably powerful. Creationists have
been criticized for taking the original work on this matter out of context
and failing to show that the magnetic field is cyclic (decaying then
strengthening). However, it is the old earth believers that have concocted
this data in an imaginary hypothetical cyclic extrapolation. It is the
creationist who has used only the empirical evidence, to devise a theory
that truly explains that data now available to us.
2) Insufficient mass of helium in earthıs atmosphere to account for 4.6
billion years of radioactive decay. Helium is a by-product of radioactive
decay of some elements. It is a noble gas which doesnıt combine with any
other element, but there is not enough of it to account for the radioactive
decay which should have occurred in an old-earth scenario.
3) Despite inferior medical and nutritional practices, evidence indicates
that the human species should have populated the earth much more quickly if
they had been around for millions of years.
4) Earliest known human civilizations are only a few thousand years old.
5) Tree rings, including rings on petrified forest trees, cannot be traced
back more than several thousand years.
6) Dating of Niagara falls. Erosion of the system indicates it is only a few
thousand years old.
7) Dating of Mississippi river delta. Erosion rate and amount of sediment
accumulated indicate that it is only a few thousand years old.
8) Lack of equilibrium of Carbon-14Carbon-12 ratio. This ratio should reach
equilibrium in the atmosphere in only some thousands of years, but it hasnıt
reached that point yet.
9) Erosion rate of the continents. Continental mass divided by net erosion
rate (that is, despite accretion due to volcanism, tectonic activity, and
geosyncline) would wash all of the continents into the ocean in about 14
million years.
10) Amount of salts in the ocean divided by rate of influx. This is actually
many dating methods - one for each salt which can be measured. For example,
all the sodium chloride in the ocean would have been ashed in about 62
million years, if the ocean was pure water to begin with.
11) Amount of water on earthıs surface  rate at which it is expelled from
below ground. Enough water is expelled from deep below the earth via
volcanoes, etc. to rapidly produce more than all the water on the earthıs
surface.
12) No plausible explanation for the pressure in oil reservoirs remaining so
high for millions of years.
13) Existence of uranium halos.
14) Existence of polonium halos.  Some believe that the polonium halos
disqualify radiometric dating as a reliable dating method because they may
indicate that the rate of radioactive decay has not been constant throughout
history. Others feel these halos indicate a rapid (instant) creation of the
earth.
--
Subject: Re: Polonium Halos
http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/creation.html
The short overview is:
1) Po halos occur only where there is a source of 238U
2) It takes billions of decay events to make a halo
3) By simple relative dating using the fact that the halos occur
   in cross cutting dikes, these are not primordial.
4) The pegmatites are likely the result of chemical crystalization,
   rather than crystalization from the molten state, so there is
   no problem with the Po features taking ten's of thousands to millions
   of years to form. This conclusion is further supported by the fact that
   halos occur in fluorite, which has low temperature of formation.
5) Fractures often visible in Gentry's photos. Also, fractures may be
   invisible under polarizing microscopy. An alternate technique called
   cathodic luminescence will show fractures invisible in visible light.
6) Biotite and fluorite have significant cleavage planes that further
   allow 222Rn to propagate through the minerals.
7) 222Rn decays into 218Po, 214Po, and 210Po, all of which are doubly
   ionized (-2 charge) as a result of the decay process, which makes them
   both similar in charge and in size to hydroxyl ions. Both biotite
   and fluorite have hydroxy-accepting sites to which these ions may become
   attached.
8) The steady stream of 222Rn throughout the rock, expedited by the presence of
fractures and cleavage planes, and the presence of hydroxyl accepting  sites
allows for the repetetive attraction, and subsequent decay of the Po ions at
roughly the same locations, allowing for the formation of 
halos.
9) Thus, the halos do not form instantaneously, but over tens of thousands to
millions of years.
==
 Through the use of ancient observations of
eclipses, it is possible to determine the average deceleration of the
Earth to be roughly 1.4 milliseconds per day per century. This is the
rate at which the Earth's rotation is slowing.   -1.4E-6 seconds per
day times 365 days per year divided by 100 years per century is
-0.000005 seconds per year per year.
Ancient Eclipses of the Sun, Scientific American, Oct 1984
==
³Evidence for a Rapidly Formed Geologic Column²
The geologic column (representing all the earthıs observed sedimentary rock)
in classical geology  represents hundreds of millions of years of
evolutionary history. Evidence that this column formed rapidly rather than
over millions of years is therefore evidence for a young geologic column and
a young earth. It should be noted that the ³geologic column² is purely
hypothetical and cannot be found in a complete form anywhere on earth other
than in a textbook.
1) Lack of meteorites in the geologic column. If the geologic column is
billions of years old one would expect to find meteorites throughout.
2) Ripple marks, rain drops, and animal tracks in sedimentary rocks. This
implies very rapid burial and hardening because these fragile features could
not survive even trivial erosion.
3) Polystrate fossils. These are fossils which cut across multiple geologic
layers that were supposedly laid down millions of years apart. Fossilized
trees and animals are often found in tact and spanning supposedly millions
of years of geologic layers.
4) Regional deposition. Current known geologic processes donıt account for
regional deposits (covering multiple U.S. states, for example). This applies
to certain types of rocks, as well as coal and oil reserves.
5) Deformation of strata implies it was soft when deformed and hadnıt
hardened into rock.
6) Absence of bioturbation in the geologic column. Biological activity soon
disturbs sedimentary deposits formed by modern catastrophes (hurricanes and
floods) but is not evidenced in the geologic column. This implies that the
geologic column was buried very deeply and rapidly.
7) Lack of recognizable soil layers in the geologic column. Soil material is
seldom found in the geologic column. One would think that the earth had soil
layers in the past, and if it was slowly buried, some would be preserved.
8) Undisturbed bedding planes. Different geologic rock layers often show
sharp, knife-edge breaks between layers, with no evidence of erosion
between. This is not realistic if the layers formed over long periods of
time.
9) Clastic dikes. Clastic dikes are formed from soft sand squeezed up
through newer layers of rock. This implies that the sandy older (lower)
layer was still soft enough to squeeze sand up (like squeezing a toothpaste
tube) through the younger upper layers.

The Earthıs Magnetic Field
The earthıs magnetic field is a powerful witness for a world much younger
than the billions of years required by evolutionary theories. Letıs start
the story with the most prominent feature of the field today--its very rapid
decay.

³The Field Is Decaying Rapidly²
The average Œintensityı of the earthıs magnetic field has decreased
exponentially by about 7% since its first careful measurement in 1829.  The
fieldıs intensity includes components of strength and direction and tells us
the amount of force turning a compass needle northward. By estimating the
field intensity everywhere (in, on, and above the earth), we can calculate
the total electrical ³energy² stored in the field. Such calculations show
that the total energy in the field has decreased by about 14% since 1829.
This rapid decay of both energy and intensity was not widely known, even
among scientists, until Dr. Thomas Barnes, a creationist physicist, began
publicizing it in 1971.  He pointed out that such a decay would occur very
naturally if the electrical current producing the field were slowly losing
energy because of the electrical resistance of the core.  This theory is
called Œfree decay.ı The observed decay rate is exactly what one would
expect from the electrical properties of the materials most likely to be in
the core.

³Evolutionary Theories Havenıt Worked²
The free-decay theory contradicts the evolutionary ³dynamo² theories, which
claim that complex processes in the earthıs core have converted heat energy
into electrical energy, much like an electric  generator, maintaining the
field for billions of years.  Many intelligent scientists have been working
on dynamo theories for over four decades without great success. Furthermore,
recent measurements of electric currents in the sea floor weigh heavily
against the most popular class of dynamo theories.
Thus evolutionary dynamo theories do not have a good explanation for the
rapid decay of the field, whereas the free-decay theory does. However, our
historical data on the intensity of the field only goes back to 1829. Was
the field decaying before that? Fortunately, there is a scientific way to
answer that question.

³Archaeomagnetism² is the study of the magnetization of bricks, pottery,
campfire stones, and other man-related objects studied by archaeologists.
Iron oxides in those objects retain a record of the strength and direction
of the earthıs magnetic field at the time they last cooled to normal
temperatures. Archaeomagnetic data taken worldwide show that the intensity
of the earthıs magnetic field was about 40% greater in 1000 A.D. than it is
today, and that it has declined steadily since then.
Such a rapid decay could not have been going on continuously for millions of
years, because the field would have to have been impossibly strong in the
past in order for it to still exist today. Creationists of the 1970s
extrapolated todayıs decay back into the past, showing that the field could
not be more than about 10,000 years old, assuming a constant decay of
intensity.²

³The Fieldıs ŒEnergyı Has Always Decreased²
According to the dynamic-decay theory, the Œenergyı in the field has always
decreased rapidly. In fact, the energy loss during reversals and
fluctuations would have been even faster than todayıs rate. This information
allows us to estimate the age of the field.
The data and the dynamic-decay theory imply that, ever since creation, the
field has always lost at least half its energy every 700 years. Figure 2
illustrates the factors involved. The maximum energy in the figure comes
from another theory I proposed about the nature of the field when God
created the earth, a theory which successfully predicted space probe
measurements of planetary magnetic fields.  Extrapolating todayıs energy
decay rate back (along the dotted straight line labeled Œfree decayı) to
that limit yields a maximum age of 8700 years. According to the
dynamic-decay theory, the true age would be less than that because of extra
losses during the reversals and fluctuations. The solid line (labeled
Œdynamic decayı) shows that with a significant loss of energy during the
Genesis flood, the age of the field would be about 6000 years.

Conclusion
At present, the only working theory for the origin, fluctuations, rapid
reversals, and decay of the field is a creationist theory-a theory that fits
all the data. Thus, according to the best theory and data we have, the
earthıs magnetic field certainly is less than 100,000 years old; very likely
less than 10,000 years old, and fits in well with the face-value Biblical
age of 6,000 years.
==
The following is an fundamentalist explanation of radioactive decay:
When God the Son squeezed energy into atoms, he squeezed and held the atom
so tightly that there were no unstable elements and therefore no
radioactivity. At the fall [of Adam and Eve, He relaxed His grip
slightly... which affected every atom and allowed some to become unstable,
i.e., radioactivity!
Creation Research Society Quarterly, March 1982
==
To anyone who  is willing to believe philosophical statements supposedly
based upon science without first understanding some science (and the
math that goes with it), you are as vulnerable to liars and charlatans
who wish only to further their own dogma as sheep are to a pack of wolves.
Make the investment.  Learn the science.  Learn it well.  Knowledge,
besides being power, is its own reward.
==
The argument from design goes back at least as far as Thomas Aquinas,
his "fifth way." Paley's watchmaker goes back to 1802. 
==
³The long fascination of men of nations with pagan astrology can only
be understood if it is recognized that there is some substratum of
truth in the otherwise strange notion that objects billions of miles
away could have any influence on earthly events. Certainly the physical
stars as such can have no effect on the earth, but the evil spirits
connected with them are not so limited.²

He later claims the craters of the moon were caused during the war between
the good and bad angels.

Morris, H. M. 1978. The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth, Bethany
Fellowship, Inc., Minneapolis, MN.
==
"moon-dust"
 That is one of the YEC arguments that is frequently referred
to as "proof" of a young creation, even though it has been long refuted and
corrected. The argument goes: "Dust accumulates too quickly on the moon's
surface" - In the 1950's before satellites were available to take direct
measurements, geophysicist Hans Pettersson estimated the influx to Earth of
material from meteors by measuring the quantity of nickel in the material
passing through dust filters on top of Hawaii's Mount Mauna Loa. Since
nickel is less abundant in terrestrial dust than in meteorites, he assumed
that all nickel came from space. Knowing that meteoric material is composed
of 2.5 percent nickel, he used the amount of nickel collected to calculate
that some 14 million tons of space dust settles on the earth every year.
Applied to a 4 billion year old moon, this would add up to 145 feet of space
dust on the moon. Since we know now of only about 2 ? inches of surface dust
on the moon, this would imply and age for the moon of 6,000,000 years.
Pettersson warned of possible large errors and questionable assumptions.
These were used by young-earthers to whittle the age down to about 10,000
years.
This argument draws on flawed data, and ignores subsequent precise, pure
measurement. As Pettersson himself was aware, his ground-based measurements
also included dust from wind erosion and volcanic eruptions - after all, he
was on Mount Mauna Loa in Hawaii - a volcano. Fortunately, about a decade
after Pettersson's estimates were published, direct measurements by
satellites of cosmic dust inflow were available. Instead of a 14-million ton
annual accumulation on the earth, only 23 thousand tons were indicated (11
thousand for the moon). This quantity would translate to 1.2 inches of dust
for a moon 4.5 billion years old. When other sources of inflow and outflow
are accounted for (decomposition from ultraviolet radiation, other sources
of erosion, inflow from larger meteorites and comets, and outflow from
debris ejected from meteors impacts, the 2.5 inches of lunar dust adds up to
an age for the lunar surface of 4.25 billion years (a value in agreements
with several other measurements of the moon's age).

"1976" NASA document Meteor Orbits and Dust (NASA SP-135, Smithsonian
Contributions to Astrophysics Vol. 2). 
==
Robert Gange "Origins and Destiny" Fundie science
==
³Night Comes To The Cretaceous²  James Lawrence
==
Creationists are insuring that their children will suffer either
because they wonıt be able to compete within the US economy or because
the US economy wonıt be able to compete with the rest of the world.
==
The ³theory of evolution² popularly so called, _is_ the ³theory of evolution
by natural selection².  Evolution isnıt a theory but a natural phenomenon,
or rather a name applied to a number of related phenomena, which have been
observed.  Lamarck proposed a theory of evolution by inheritance of acquired
characteristics which failed to convince the scientists of the day.  Darwin
and Wallace, in their paper of 1858, were the first to propose a mechanism,
natural selection, which adequately explained the observed phenomena.
Genetic drift is one of a number of other mechanisms which function with
natural selection, and which have required a modification of the original
theory, in the process increasing itıs predictive power.  The Modern
Synthesis is one name given to that modified theory.
==
³The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the
simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.²
[Richard Dawkins, ³Viruses of the Mind²]
==
The Truth: God or Evolution?, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1975
Roger Oakland and Caryl Matrisciana, The Evolution Conspiracy,
Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House Publishers, 1991
Dr. Alan Hayward (a British physicist), Creation and  Evolution:
Rethinking the Evidence from Science and the Bible,
Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany House Publishers, Bethany House Edition,
1995

Hayward, Alan.  _Creation and Evolution: Rethinking the Evidence
From Science and the Bible_ (Minneapolis: Bethany House
Publishers), 1985.  Bethany House Publishers edition in 1995.  232 pp.

D.E. Wonderly, _God's Time-Records in Ancient Sediments_ (1977), 65.
Cited in Hayward, _Creation and Evolution_ (1985), 96.]
==
The fossil record is a series of snapshots, and not a continious film reel.
That explains gaps. Fossilization is a rare event. Only a small percent of
all living things are fossilized. Go look for a fossil of any modern species.
While you are looking, note the millions of individuals which will not be
preserved in any fossil record.
==
The chicken lysozyme and frog proteins remark come from claims of Gish
that chicken lysozyme and certain frog proteins were more homologous
to human forms of the proteins than those from Chimps. Again, Gish was
wrong. I donıt believe he has recanted. See A76-Bullfrog-Gish_Lies.txt
==
Australia has around 500 species of eucalyptus ³gum² trees. Koalas eat the
leaves of about 20 species, with the blue gum a favorite.
How did these get ONLY to Australia? According to Ernest Mayr, Americaıs
leading taxonomist, there are over 1 million species of animals in the world.
These trees were originally found only around Australian regions.

Koalas are highly vulnerable to changes in temperature and have a specialized
diet, eating only the freshest tips of eucalyptus buds. The plants are also
their main source of water. Koalas have no body fat and, when they're
off their feed, can lose 10 percent of their body weight overnight. 
Koala care includes a specialized diet of selected eucalyptus, a 65 degree
environment and minimal stress. Without those things, the animals suffer
dramatically and may die of dehydration within days.How did they survive a
year in the Ark and afterward?
==
³While anybody is free to approach a scientific inquiry in any fashion
they choose, they cannot properly describe the methodology used as
scientific, if they start with a conclusion and refuse to change it
regardless of the evidence developed during the course of the
investigation.²   Judge William R. Overton (McLean v. Arkansas)

From the decision in ³McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education²:
³The evidence establishes that the definition of ``creation scienceıŒ
contained in 4(a) has as its unmentioned reference the first 11 chapters
of the Book of Genesis.

Arkansas
Act 590 does have the advancement of religion as a major effect.
Act 590 does not have the advancement of empirical knowledge as a major effect.
Act 590 does not have the advancement of any other aim as a major effect.
Hence, Act 590 has the advancement of religion as its only major effect.
Whence, Act 590 has the advancement of religion as its primary effect.

Philip L. Quinn The Philosopher of Science as Expert Witness Chapter 25 in
But Is It Science? Edited by M Ruse, pp. 367-385
--
Origen, early Church father
  ³Now what man of intelligence will believe that the first and
  the second and the third day, and the evening and the morning
  existed without the sun and moon and stars?  And that the first day,
  if we may so call it, was even without a heaven?  And who is so
  silly as to believe that God, after the manner of a farmer, Œplanted
  a paradise eastward in Edenı, ...²
==
An oil well, the W. H. Hunt Trust Estate Larson #1 will in Section 10
Township 148 N Range 101 W.  It was drilled to 15,064 feet
through a geologic section in which the ALL the period strata was in
the correct order.  15,064 ft is 2.8 miles or 4.6 kilometers.
--
The validity of faunal succession, on which the geologic column is based, was
discovered by devout creationists.  I would guess that more than half the
naturalists who worked out the geologic column were creationists.For example,
Murchison, the person who defined the Silurian and Permian Periods (and
documented fossil successions in for almost the entire Paleozoic), states his
creationist beliefs in the last chapter of his book ³Siluria².
==
From The New Solar System Beatty Chaikin tells about the lunar soil(regolith)
'The regoliths thickness depends on the age of the bedrock that
underlies it and thus how long the surface has exposed to meteoritic
bombardment; regolith in the maria is 2 to 8 meters thick, whereas in
highland regions its thickness may exceed 15 meters.'
This regolith has the proper amount of space dust corresponding
to 4.55 billion years of accumumation.
The original notion that the Moon would be covered in a deep layer of dust
dates back to a paper by Thomas Gold in 1955, who argued both for a
meteoric origin for the craters (correct) and associated deep drifts of
dust on the lunar maria. Far from it being a surprise that Luna 9 (the
first spaceship to actually land on the moon, a Soviet lauch) did not
sink into kilometres of dust, very few people regarded Goldıs hypothesis
as valid in even the early 1960s. I refer you to The Sky at Night, vol. 1,
p. 166 (Eyre and Spottiswoode) by Patrick Moore - a summary of a TV
broadcast made in September, 1963.
A quick consultation of the talk.origins archive will show you that the value
usually cited by Creationist non-scientists is known to be wrong and has been
supplanted by more accurate measurements (including direct measurements made
on the lunar surface). Thereıs even a paper in the Creation Ex Nihilo journal
(vol 7, no. 1, 1993) by Schnelling and Rush which rejects this proposition as
a valid argument for a young Earth.
(see http:www.talkorigins.orgfaqfaq-age-of-earth.html
http:www.talkorigins.orgfaqsmoon-dust.html

Andrew A. Snelling, David E. Rush, ³Moon Dust and the Age of the Solar
System,² _Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal_, vol. 7, no. 1, 1993, pp.
2-42, from the abstract, ³Thus, until new evidence is forthcoming,
creationists should not continue to use the dust on the moon as evidence
against an old age for the moon and the solar system.²

2.H. J. van Till, D.A. Young, and C. Menninga, Footprints on the dusty
moon, In: Science Held Hostage, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove Illinois
ch. 4, pp.67­82.
==
Meteorites in the geological column
Schmitz, B. Peucker-Ehrenbrink, Lindstrom, M.,
and Tassinari, M. (1997) Accretion Rates of Meteorites
and Cosmic Dust in the Early Ordovician. Science
volume 278, number 5335, pp. 88-90.

The abstract begins, ³Abundant fossil meteorites in
marine, condensed Lower Ordovician limestones.²

Other instances of fossil meteorites are discussed in
Hansen and Berstrom (1997).  They note that the first of
the specimens was a 4-inch in diameter meteorite discovered
middle Ordovician Limestone in 1951.  It was not
described until 1981 by Thorslund and Wickman (1981).
In 1988, another Swedish meteorite, called ³Osterplana 1,²
was discovered in Lower Ordovician Limestone about
5 million years older and 300 miles away from the first
(Hansen and Berstrom 1997, pp. 1).

Twelve more meteorites have been found at the Thorsberg
Limestone Quarry.  Hansen and Berstrom (1997, pp. 3) state:

  ³A 10-foot-thick section of the Holen (³Orthoceratite²)
   Limestone, of Early Middle Ordovician age, is extracted
   at the Thorsberg quarry and sawed into thin slabs that
   are used for windowsills and floor tile. Quarry workers
   discarded slabs with impurities, such as the meteorites,
   until Professor Maurits Lindstrom of the University of
   Stockholm alerted them to save such slabs. The 12
   specimens were recovered between 1992 and 1996. Ten of
   the specimens were recovered from a 2-foot-thick bed of
   limestone and may represent a single meteorite fall. The
   other three specimens were recovered from two separate
   levels above this layer. Seven of the specimens, collected
   between 1993 ant 1996, are from a quarried limestone
   volume of no more than about 127,000 cubic feet. Most
   of the specimens are now on display at the Stiftelsen
   Paleo Geology Center in Lidkoping, Sweden.

   The Thorsberg quarry meteorites range in size from about
   0.5 to 3.5 inches in diameter and have been almost
   completely replaced (pseudomorphosed) by calcite and
   barite. The dark, reddish brown meteorite masses look
   like iron nodules surrounded by a zone of lighter colored
   limestone and would be mistaken by many people for
   common sedimentary features. However, they contain
   grains of chromite and have a high iridium content,
   among other confirming characteristics of
   extraterrestrial origin.²

Finally, although large meteorites are rare.  Smaller
micrometeorites has been found wherever conditions for
their preservation was favorable.

Reference Cited

Hasen, M. C., and Bergstrom, S. M. (1997) Ancient
meteorites. Ohio Geology, Spring 1997.

Further Readings from Hansen and Berstrom (1997) about
the Swedish meteorites.

Nystrom, J. O., and Wickman, F. E. (1991) The Ordovician
chondrite from Brunflo, central Sweden; II, Secondary
minerals. Lithos. volume 27, number 3, pp. 167-185.

Nystrom, J. O., Lindstrom, M., and Wickman, F. E.,
(1988) Discovery of a second Ordovician meteorite
using chromite as a tracer. Nature. volume 336,
pp. 572-574.

Schmitz, B., Lindstrom, M., Asaro, F., and Tassinari, M.,
(1996) Geochemistry of meteorite-rich marine limestone
strata and fossil meteorites from the Lower Ordovician
at Kinnekulle, Sweden. Earth and Planetary Science
Letters. volume 145, pp. 31-48.

Thorslund, Per, and Wickman, F. E. (1981) Middle
Ordovician chondrite in fossiliferous limestone from
Brunflo, central Sweden. Nature. volume 289,
pp. 285-286.

Thorslund, Per., Wickman, F. E., and Nystrom, J. O.
(1984) The Ordovician chondrite from Brunflo, central
Sweden, I. General description and primary minerals.
Lithos. volume 17, pp. 87-100.

For many more cases of meteorites, see,
http:www.infidels.orglibrarymoderndave_matson

And go to ³Library: Modern Documents: Dave Matson: Young
Earth: Specific Arguments: Meteor² at:

http:www.infidels.orglibrarymoderndave_matsonyoung-earth
specific_argumentsmeteor.html
==
Supernovas
When stars explode as supernovae, they leave behind an expanding cloud of
debris (and a compact object, but those aren't relevant here).
The creationist argument is that if stars have been exploding regularly since
ancient times, there ought to be a lot of very old such debris clouds observed
in space.  But (they say) there aren't any that are more than 6000 years old,
so God must've created the stars around then.

However:
- The expanding cloud will get thinner and thinner with time, naturally.  Very
old ones will be difficult to see.
- The cloud interacts with whatever interstellar matter it encounters, which
will distort it (note that many supernovae occur in or near those dense clouds
where stars form) and make it more difficult to detect.  The creationist
calculation assumes expansion into empty space.
- The creationist calculation uses a high estimate of the supernova rate, and
neglects the fact that we can see supernova remnants only in a rather modest
fraction of our galaxy.
- Nevertheless, we _do_ know of several remnants that are quite a
bit older than 6000 years.
Supernova 1987A in the Large Magellenic Cloud is about
180,000 light years distant.

Since the distance to supernova SN1987a has been directly measured by
straight-forward observation and simple trigonometry to be about 168,000
light years, how can people still believe that the universe is only about
10,000 to 15,000 years old???
See http://chem.tufts.edu"science"astronomy"SN1987A.html
==
³The men that American people admire most extravagantly are
most daring liars; the men they detest the most violently are
those who try to tell them the truth² -- H. L. Mencken
----
Galloway, W. E., and D. K. Hobday. (1983) Terrigenous
Clastic Depositional Systems: Applications to Petroleum,
Coal, and Uranium Exploration. Springer-Verlag, New York.

Schlee, J. S., ed., Inter-regional Unconformities and
Hydrocarbon Accumulation. AAPG Memoir no. 36. American
Association of Petroleum Geologists, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Van Wagoner, J.C., R. M. Mitchum, K. M. Campion, and V. D. Rahmanian. (1990)
Siliciclastic Sequence Stratigraphy in Well Logs, Cores, and Outcrops.
AAPG Methods in Exploration Series no. 7. American Association of Petroleum
Geologists, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Someone need only examine the ³Journal of
Sedimentary Research² and ³Sedimentary Geology² to see paper after paper
which refute the claim that known geologic processes, many of which can be
observed currently operating, are unable to account for regional sedimentary
deposits and the oil and gas deposits they contain.
Consult a textbook about structural geology, i.e. ³Structural Geology² by
George H. Davis, to find ample evidence that many rocks were lithified rocks
when they were deformed. Cleavage, stretched pebbles, fracturing and
deformation of even sand grains, pressure shadows, foliation at the crystal
level, and many other characters prove that strata in the geological column
were deformed after they had hardened into rock.
--
Read ³INTRODUCTION TO ICHNOLOGY The Study of Plant and Animal Traces² at:
http:www.emory.eduGEOSCIENCEHTMLTFW3.HTML

and ³Dinosaur Trace Fossils² at:
http:www.emory.eduGEOSCIENCEHTMLDinotraces.htm
---
Benton, M., and D. Harper (1997) Basic Palaeontology
(Chapter 12 - Trace Fossils). Longman, New York.

Bromley, R.G. (1996) Trace Fossils. Biology, Taphonomy
and Applications - Second edition. Chapman & Hall, New
York.
For some on-line examples, you can go to:
1.
http:www.eurekalert.orgElertcurrentpublic_releasesdepositinsects.html

³Two Recent Fossil Discoveries Show Insectsı Recycling Traits²
by  Stephen Hasiotis.

Additional versions of this are at:

2.  http:www.desertusa.comnewsdu_news-ants.html ,

3.  http:www.sltrib.com97mar033097utah8216.htm , and

4.  http:207.179.44.696OCT29tci00065115.htm.

At URL #1 above, the press release states:

   ³A second find of 150 million-year-old fossilized ant
   nests in Utah, Arizona and New Mexico by Hasiotis and
   Tim Demko of Colorado State University predates the
   known origin of ants on Earth by some 70 million years.
   Found in 1995 and 1996, the fossil ant nests consist of
   interconnected galleries and chambers, an indication the
   ants were behaving socially, he said.
   The largest of the roughly 50 nests discovered in the
   sandstone formations are up to five meters on a side and
   up to three meters deep, indicating they had been
   expanded upon for decades or centuries.  The nests are
   similar to fossil ant nests from Utah, Wyoming and
   Colorado dating from 65 million years ago to the present.
   The fossil ant nests were found near Arches and
   Canyonlands National Parks and on the Navajo Reservation.
Even if ants could live underwater, which they cannot, the deposition of
sediments by the flood would had to stop for decades for each bed containing
the fossil ant nests for the nests to have formed.  This and other evidence,
i.e. fossil soils in these strata, show that Young Earth creationists are
wrong about these sediments being deposited by their Biblical Flood.

Not only are the trace fossils of ants found in the geologic
column, but other land-dwelling insects as well.  For example:

Thackray, G. D. (1994) Fossil nest of sweat bees
(Halictinae) from a Miocene paleosol, Rusinga Island,
western Kenya. Journal of Paleontology vol. 68, pp. 795-800.

An example of bioturbation by marine organisms can be
found in ³Ichnology of Rhythmically Bedded Demopolis Chalk
(Upper Cretaceous, Alabama): Implications for
Paleoenvironment, Depositional Cycle Origins, and
Tracemaker Behavior by R. E. Locklair and C. E. Savrda at:

http:web.ngdc.noaa.govmggsepmpalaios9810locklair.html
---
Dinosaur footprints are found in the Glen Rose, Texas, formation.In carbonate
muds in tidal flats, i.e. the Cretaceous Glen Rose Formation, sufficient
cementation of the mud will occur as it dries out to allow it to be later
buried.  In case of dune sands, geologists have found in modern dunes that
bio-films composed of fungi and bacteria can form in the upper centimeter or
so of the dune sand.  These bio-films can bind the surface sediment together
sufficiently to prevent erosion of footprints, scorpion tracks, and other
features when they are later buried by more dune sand.
The claim that recognizable soil layers are lacking in the geologic column is
simply false.  Buried soils, called ³paleosols² are abundant in the geologic
column and their presence has been documented by innumerable papers.
Documented examples of recognizable soils being found in the geologic column
are described in:
Reinhardt, J., and W. R. Sigleo (eds.)(1989) Paleosols and weathering through
geologic time: principles and applications. Geological Society of America
Special Paper no. 216, 181pp.

Retallack, G. J. (1983) Late Eocene and Oligocene Paleosols from Badlands
National Park, South Dakota. Geological Society of America Special Paper
no. 193, Geological Society of America, Boulder, Colorado, 82 pp.

Rettalack, G. J. (1990) Soils of the Past: an introduction
to paleopedology. Unwin Hyman, Boston.

Wright, V. P. (ed.)(1986) Paleosols: Their Recognition
and Interpretation, Princeton University Press, New Jersey.

Wright, V. P. (1994) Paleosols in shallow marine sequences. Earth-Science
Reviews. vol. 37 pp. 367-395. (See also pp. 135-137.)

It is interesting to note that the vast majority of coals are underlain by
paleosols, which even included rooted stumps.
Finally, the latest issue of ³Journal of Sedimentary Research,² there are
these articles about paleosols that lie within the geologic column.
Joekel, R. M. (1999) Paleosol in Galesburg Formation (Kansas City Group,upper
Pennsylvanian), northern Midcontinent, U.S.A.:evidence for climate change and
mechanism of marine transgression. Journal of Sedimentary Research. vol. 69,
pp. 711-719.

Gustavson, T. C., and V. T. Holiday (1999) Eolian sedimentation and soil
development on a semi-arid to subhumid grassland, Tertiary Ogallala and
Quaternary Blackwater Draw Formations, Texas and New Mexico High Plains.
Journal of Sedimentary Research. vol. 69, pp. 622-634.

Audemard, F. A., and F. de Santis (1991) Survey of liqueifaction stuctures
induced by recent moderate earthquakes. Bulletin of the Internation
Association of Engineering Geology. vol. 44, pp. 5-16.

Obermier, S. F. (1996) Using liquefaction-induced features for paleoseismic
analysis. In McCalpin, ed., pp. 331-385, Paleoseismology. Academic Press,
New York.

Obermier, S. F., J. R. Martin, A. D. Frankel, T. L. Youd,
P. J. Munson, C. A. Munson, and E. C. Pond. (1993)
Liquefication evdience for one or more strong Holocene
earthquakes in the Wabash River Valley of southern
Indiana and Illinois, with a prelimianry estimate of
magnitude. U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper no.
1536, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Va. 28 pp.

Tuttle, M.P., R. H. Lafferty, III, M. J. Guccione, E. S.
Sweig, III, N. Lopinot, R. F. Cande, K. Dyer-Williams,
and M. Haynes. (1996) Use of archaeology to date
liquefaction events in the New Madrid seismic zone,
Central United States. Geoarcaheology. vol. 11, pp 451-480

Contrary to what Young Earth creationists
claim, a vast number of oil and gas fields exhibit
pressures that are consistent with the hydrostatic
pressure at the depth which it has been found.  In such
fields, the pressure of the oil in the field, and the
formation water surrounding it are the same as the
hydrostatic gradient.  Untapped by oil wells, the pressure
in these oil fields will not bleed off as long as they
remain buried at the same depth. The pressure will
decrease only as the strata above the oil field is eroded
off and, thus, reducing the hydrostatic head.  The pressure
of the oil field will increase if it is buried deeper.  As
long as the burial depth remains the same, the pressure of
a normally pressured oil reservoir will remain the same.
To say that the pressure of these oil fields will bleed
over any period of time is simply nonsense.

The pressure of the oil and gas in such a field represents
the normal weight of water in the strata overlying the
oil-bearing layer that forms the oil field.  In the Gulf
of Mexico region, for example, a reservoir pressure of
about 5,000 pounds per square inch (PSI) at 11,000 ft.
(2.1 miles) is expected for reservoir pressure.  Since
this pressure results from the static weight of the
overlying water-saturated strata, this part of a
reservoirıs pressure is not contained by the overlying
strata will never bleed off as claimed.  The oil can be
be contained by a relatively impermeable layer of rock
but the pressure is not.

When a oil boring is opened to oil-bearing strata, the
oil flows or bleeds into the hole because the mile or
two of mud in the hole exerts less pressure than the
mile or two of hydrostatic pressure exerted on the fluids
in the reservoir.  As a result, the pressure of the
reservoir rock around the hole is depleted as oil, often
with lots of water, flows into it.  In response to the
loss of pressure, more fluid from higher pressure flows
through the pores to the hole.  If the well is abandoned
and plugged with bentonite and concrete, then the original
pressure of the reservoir strata will eventually be
restored over a very long period of time.  The pressure
can bleed off only as long as the oil well is open.  If
the well wasnıt there the pressure of the reservoir would
remain the same for millions of years.

Overpressured (geopressured) reservoirs, where by
definition, the pressure of the hydrocarbons exceeds the
pressure that would be created by the overlying strata
and water column within them.  What Young Earth
creationists fail to realize is that formation waters
above and below the oil reservoir are also overpressured.

There are various processes which creates overpressure.
In the Gulf of Mexico the overpressure results from the
strata compacting faster than water can be expelled from
it towards the surface.  When this happens, any of the
fluids in strata, whether it be oil or water, are required
to support the overburden pressure.  This pressure will
continue to be generated in areas of rapid sedimentation
This and a number of mechanisms for generating
overpressures are discussed in great detail by Parker
(1991) and Osborne and Swarbrick (1997).

In specific cases, i.e. Gulf of Mexico, once sedimentation
has ceased, overpressures should dissipate as water is
expelled from sedimentary strata as it compacts.  However,
as in case of the Gulf of Mexico the shear volume of water
that has to be moved, the very low permeabilities of clayey
strata, and the vast thickness of strata through which the
water has to pass through, often laterally instead of
vertically, requires millions and even tens of millions
of years for this happen.  Creationist claims that
pressure within the oil bed should have bled off within a
few thousand years is refuted by innumerable geotechical
and geologic research.  Such research can be found in the
references listed below.

I would recommend for for further reading on this topic
the articles which are listed below.

References Cited

Bitzer, K (1999) Discussion and Replies: Mechanisms for
generating overpressures in sedimentary basins. American
Association of Petroleum Geologists. vol. 83, no. 5,
pp. 798-799.

Bradley, J. S. (1975) Abnormal formation pressure.
American Association of Petroleum Geologists. vol. 59,
pp. 957-973.

Osborne, M. J., and R. E. Swarbrick (1997) Mechanisms for
generating overpressures in sedimentary basins. American
Association of Petroleum Geologists. vol. 81, no. 6,
pp. 1023-1041.

Parker, C. A. (1991) Geopressures and Hydrodynamics in the
Gulf Coast Tertiary. In D. Goldwaithe, ed., An Introduction
to Central Gulf Coast Geology. New Orleans Geological
Society, New Orleans, LA, pp. 151-162.

There are large numbers of ripple marks, rain drops, and
animal tracks (and sun cracks) in the geologic record.
Over 500 animal trackways have been found in the Western US alone.
These trackways are in sediments ranging  from late Paleozoic
to Recent with most of them being in sediments creationists
attribute to Noahıs flood.  It does not take much intelligence
to understand that if these sediments truly were laid down by
the flood, it would have washed away any footprints that were
laid down.  But there should have been few, if any footprints
laid down anyway since the sediments should have been laid down
mostly under water after the animals were drowned.  Moreover,
there are dinosaur nesting sites near the top of the Mesozoic
sediments.  Most of what creationists claim is flood sediment lies
below them. And above the nesting sites is the world-wide
iridium layer that marks the end of the Mesozoic. And above that
is far too much sediment to have been laid down by natural
processes in a mere 10,000 years.

Thus in reality, trace fossils disprove the claim of a world-wide flood and
verify the reality of an old earth.  That the creationists should use them to
³prove² a young earth only proves their willingness to make selective use of
facts to create to create a false impression

The Great Lakes are a Late Wisconsin-Holocene phenomenon, which did not exist
prior to the Pleistocene glaciations (and there dosenıt seem to be any
evidence for their existence during interglacials.  Prior to about (very
roughly) 8,500 years before present the present areas of Lake Erie and Lake
Ontario were a single lake basin and the area of the present Niagara River
was under water. As the postglacial lake level fell, the divide between the
Erie and Ontario basins was exposed, the Niagara river developed, and cutting
of the gorge began. Incidentally, this antedates the supposed creation date
for a young earth by 2500 years. Before the glaciation, many rivers ran north
in that area. They then cut a new channel to the south, where they remain.

==
As Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond in ³Inherit The Wind² said:

         ³Fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy and needs feeding,
         and soon your honour, with banners flying and with drums
         beating weıll be marching backward, backward through the
         glorious ages of that 16th century, when bigots burned a man
         who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind².
==
Near Bartleville, OK, north of Tulsa, is a hill completely covered
by horn corals. of varying sizes, mainly about 4 inches long.
They are Pennsylvanian Period in age.
They are intertwined as they grew as a group over time.
They were not washed in and deposited, as the creationists claim.
Southeast of Tulsa, OK is a place called Greenleaf Lake. Near there is a four
foot ledge of limestone made totally of crinoid stems cemented together. Under
it is a sharp boundary and then a layer of black shale, with a few snails. Let
the creationists explain that. Observed and described  by glk.
==
³The Face That Demonstrates the Farce of Evolution²
by Hank Hanegraaff (Word Publishing, 1998).

³The Rise of Life on Earth², in the March 1998 issue of National Geographic
==
References and Suggested Reading

Clough, M. (1994). Diminish studentsı  resistance to biological evolution.
The American Biology Teacher, 56, pp. 409-415.

Futuyma, D. (1986). Evolutionary biology, 2nd ed. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer
Associates, Inc.

Gillis, A. (1994). Keeping creationism out of the classroom. Bioscience, 44,
pp. 650-656.

Gould, S. (1977). Ever since Darwin: Reflections in natural history. NY:
W.W. Norton & Co.

Gould, S. (1994, October). The evolution of life on earth.
Scientific American, 271, pp. 85-91.

Mayr, E. (1991). One long argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of
Modern Evolutionary Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

McComas, W. (Ed.). (1994). Investigating evolutionary biology in the
laboratory. Reston, VA: NABT.

Moore, J. (1993). Science as a way of knowing-The foundations of modern
biology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

National Center for Science Education. P.O. Box 9477, Berkeley,
CA 94709.

Numerous publications such as Facts, faith and fairness-Scientific
creationism clouds scientific literacy by S. Walsh and T. Demere.

Weiner, J. (1994). Beak of the Finch-A story of evolution in our
time. NY: Alfred A. Knopf.

Adopted by the Board of Directors March 15, 1995.Revised October
1997.Endorsed by: The Society for the Study of
Evolution, June 1998. The American Association of Physical
Anthropologists,July 1998.
==
Ancient civilizations.
The Catal Huyuk site in south central Turkey has its origins about 7000
BC - Copper smelting at Catal Huyuk, 6200 BC - Farming established in
Mesopotamia, 6000 BC - Ubaid culture established in Mesopotamia,
irrigation agriculture, 5000 BC - First use of the sail in Egypt, 4000
BC - Urban civilizations appear in Sumer, 3500 BC - Development of
cuneiform script in Mesopotamia, 3100 BC - Urban civilizations appear
in the Indus plain, 2500 BC - Emergence of Shang civilization in north
east China, 1800 BC - Rock cut tombs in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt,
1570 BC.
==
http:www.geocities.comCapeCanaveralHangar2437kinds.htm
Gish classifies ³dinosaurs², a huge group of reptiles which
differed profoundly from each other (they ranged from the chicken-sized
predator Compsognathus to the fifty-ton plant eater Seismosaurus; some
dinosaurs walked on two legs, some on four; some, such as Stegosaurus,
had absurdly small brains, while some, like Troodon, had relatively
large brains for their body size), as one ³kind², but separates chimps
and gorillas (who look almost identical and who share over 95% of their
genetic codes) as being ³different kinds².
-
The Creation Research Society Quarterly volume 34, December 1997, number 3
has many interesting photos of human-like tracks found with the tracks of
dinosaurs.
==
http:www.chick.comreadingtracts00550055_1.htm   Big Daddy Chick
tract(a classic) This refutes almost all of science.(NOT)

Michael Denton
NATURE'S DESTINY: HOW THE LAWS OF BIOLOGY REVEAL PURPOSE IN THE UNIVERSE.
The question of his credentials is another problem.
Denton appears to have a record as a medical microbiologist, 
not as a molecular biologist, as creationist sources often claim
==
(1) Do you know that the odds are for a land creatureıs remains to turn
into a fossil?  Something like a billion to one.  Unless some extremely
rare condition happens (e.g. remains are buried under tons of volcanic ash,
falling into a tar pit, etc.),  the remains (including bones) of the land
creature will decompose as a result of insects, bacteria, other animals,
etc.  In warmer climates like the rain forests, tropics, etc., the
conditions for decomposition are ever greater than in colder or more
temperate climates.

(2) The population of the ³intermediates were small so there were fewer
³remains² available that ³might² end up as fossils.  Also, the evolutionary
changes may have only appeared in the soft tissue portion of the creature
and would not be evident in the fossilized remains.

(3) There are large portions of the world where little, if no, effort has
been made to look for fossils -- the Sahara and Gobi deserts, much of
Siberia and Antarctic areas, tall mountain ranges like the Himalayas
or Andes, etc.  The world is large and the number of paleontologists is few.

(4) The majority of people in the world arenıt trained to identify a fossil
if they should happen across one.  Not all fossils ³look² like the fossils
you see in museums or books.  Whose knows how many fossils have been
³found² but werenıt identified as fossils and were burned (the fossils
happened to formed in within a layer of coal), were destroyed as a part of
a quarry operation and ended up as part of a stone walkway, gravel, etc.
==
 ==
A scientific theory is an explanation of a set of phenomena andor the
scientific laws describing them. It invariably postulates a mechanism,
all or part of which cannot be directly observed, such as the
submicroscopic particles and fields of physics and chemistry, and can
only be tested indirectly.
==
Consider that fossilized coral is found on mountain tops, coral
far too big to have grown in the relatively short time the earth
was covered by water as suggested by the Bible.These can be seen in the Alps.

Hayward, _Creation and Evolution_, 84-5:
       There are many living coral reefs in the world's warmer seas, and
       some of them are immensely thick.  Holes drilled in the Eniwetok
       reef in the Pacific have revealed a depth of 4,600 feet.  Now if
       the world is only 10,000 years old, and that reef began growing on
       Creation Day 5, it would have had to develop at an average rate of
       five and a half inches a year.

       But a great deal of research has been done on the growth rates of
       coral reefs, and such rates have been shown to be quite impossible. 
       Under _ideal_ conditions a growth rate of about half an inch a year
       would be good going.  And because of earthquakes, tidal waves,
       giant hurricanes and so forth, ideal conditions never continue for
       any length of time.  Moreover, the test borings at Eniwetok showed
       a number of discontinuities in the reef, when growth evidently
       stopped altogether.  Great quantities of fossil pollen at various
       depths in the reef show that on several occasions the sea must have
       receded, so that land plants and trees could colonize the reef
       surface for a while.

==
One article in Sky & Telescope told  that distance of supernova 1987A
was measured by trigonometrically to be 168,000 ly. (We saw halo=echo
of the light beside it and by measuring angle we got distance.
And this is *independent* of speed of light.)
But pulsars, cepheids and eclipsing binary stars, that have been
observed in even in LMC (cepheids also  in Andromeda M31, too),
tell us by constancy of periods that ancient speed of light has been
constant.
Also uranium fission that happended in Gabonıs uranium ore 2.3
billion years ago has shown to scientists that at least some fundamental
physical constants have been same then and now.
With all this and spectra of SN1987 we can say that
physics suggest that SN1987 happened about 170,000 years ago
--
For natural uranium (0.007 % U-235) to become critical requires graphite or
heavy water (deuterium). It cannot become critical with normal water. For
a system to become critical with normal water as a moderator, the U-235 must
be about 3 %. This situation occurred about 3 billion years ago in a
Precambrian Gabon ore bed.

About 2.3 Gyrs about a natural fission reactor burned in Oklo, Gabon (there
was more U-235 then, so fission was easier). The decay products have been
found; their composition depends on details of the nuclear force. Again
the observation coincides with the calculations done on the basis of
todayıs physics.
===
Looking back in time 
In fact, quite strong constraints are already known to exist for the possible
variation of the fine structure constant alpha. One such constraint is of
geological nature. It is based on measures taken in the ancient natural fission
reactor located near Oklo (Gabon, West Africa) and which was active roughly
2,000 million years ago. By studying the distribution of a given set of
elements - isotopes of the rare earths, for example of samarium - which were
produced by the fission of uranium, one can estimate whether the physical
process happened at a faster or slower pace than we would expect it nowadays.
Thus we can measure a possible change of the value of the fundamental constant
at play here, alpha. However, the observed distribution of the elements is
consistent with calculations assuming that the value of alpha at that time was
precisely the same as the value today. Over the 2 billion years, the change of
alpha has therefore to be smaller than about 2 parts per 100 millions. If
present at all, this is a rather small change indeed. 
No evidence that it was anything but self-regulated, and not
very fine-tuned at that, probably working only intermittently.
There are more possibilities.  Chernobyl used graphite instead
of water.  But Oklo was water-moderated, yeah.
Not _any_ contaminant.  _Some_ contaminants, that absorb neutrons,
will poison the reaction even at low concentrations.  Others
don't matter much.  There is no reason to believe that Oklo
used anything but ordinary ground water.
Oklo appears perfectly natural, and perfectly consistent with
our understanding of nuclear reactions.  That is, it is
perfectly consistent IF the reaction took place about
2,000,000,000 years ago rather than 3800.  3800 years ago,
the isotope ratios would have been wrong for a reactor, as
they are today.  And if you start fiddling with nuclear decay
constants to make isotope ratios change, you also fiddle with
the nuclear physics of the reactor itself.  And there is good
evidence in the isotope patterns of the spent fuel that
nuclear physics when Oklo was running was the same as today.
Oklo is certainly pertinent to the creationevolution debate.
Oklo contains very strong evidence that nuclear physics has
been unchanged for billions of years, refuting the common
creationist cop-out of changing decay constants.

As to the experimental determination of the invariance of decay
constants:
From [Dickin, 1995, p 13]:
  ...Shlyakhter (1976) argued that the neutron capture cross-section
  of a nuclide is very sensitively dependent on nuclear constants.
  Because neutron aborbers (such as 143 Nd and 145 Nd) in the
  1.8 Byr-old Oklo natural nuclear reactor give rise to the expected
  abundance increases in the product isotopes then this
  constrains the nuclear constants to have remained more or less
  invariant over the past 2 billion years...

(See also [le Oklo Phenomene, 1975].)
  
Dickin goes on to discuss the possibility of electron capture decay
being affected by conditions of temperature and pressure. 
   ...Hensly et al (1973) have demonstrated that the electron capture
   decay of 7 Be and 7 Li is increased by 0.59% when BeO is subjected
   to 270+-10 kbars pressure in a diamond anvil. This raises the question
   whether the electron capture decay of 40 K to 40 Ar could be
   pressure-dependent, affecting K-Ar dates. In fact this is unlikely,
   because at high pressure-temperature conditions at depth in the earth,
   K-Ar systems will be chemically open and unable to yield dates
   at all, while at crustal depths the pressure-dependence of lambda
   [the half-life] will be negligible compared with experimental errors.

        The achievement of concordant K-Ar, Rb-Sr, and U-Pb ages
   on rocks (where chemical systems have remained closed) supports
   the invariance of decay constants with time, since the different
   radionuclides would be expected to respond differently if decay
   constants had changed..

 I would refer you to [Dickin, 1995] for further information
on isochron and discordia plotting methods, which will reveal contamination,
or loss of daughter products. It is a real issue as to whether or not
systems are chemically isolated.However, such minerals as zircon are extremely
stable, and any contamination or loss of daughter products is minimized,
if the rock unit has not been subjected to extreme conditions of temperature.
However, if rock units are subjected to reheating, this is also apparent
from the chemical characteristics of the rock, itself. Conversely, if
there is chemical degradation of the specimen, that could result
in loss of daughter products, the degradation of the specimen due to
weathering, will also be apparent.

References:
Dickin, A. P.,(1995) Radiogenic Isotope Geology, Cambridge University Press.
Hensly, W. K., Basset, W. A., and Huizenga, J. R. (1973) Pressure dependence
   of the radioactive decay constant of beryllium 7, Science 181, 1164-5.
Shlyakhter, I. A., (1976) Direct test of the constancy of fundamental nuclear
   constants, Nature 264, 340.
Le Oklo Phenomene, (1975) Proceedings of a symposium on the Oklo
phenomenon, Vienna, IAEA.

Science data support recent theories that Earth began a pattern of crust
formation, erosion and sediment recycling as early in its evolution
as 4.35 billion years ago. The origin was 4.55 billion years ago.
========
The speed of light, among other things, describes the relative difference
between the strength of electric and magnetic fields. Thus, it would appear in
fine-splitting and hyperfine splitting of atomic energy levels, which in turn
show up in spectral lines of distant stars and galaxies. A change in the speed
of light would effect a change in the splitting of certain lines, and the
wavelengths at which they would appear.
No such relationship is observed. 
==
Much of Genesis was written during the Persian period shortly after the
Babylonian exile, after 539 BCE.  The flood story was adapted from the
Babylonian Epic of Atrahasis which was adapted from a much earlier Sumerian
story that was first written down about 2600 BCE.  About 1200 BC a
Babylonian editor named Sin-liqi-unninni copied the flood story from the
Epic of Atrahasis (about a river flood) into his new edition of the Epic of
Gilgamesh.  But he made several changes including a change of the word
"river" to "sea" thereby changing the local river flood into an ocean
deluge.  This change was repeated by story tellers and by the time of the
Babylonian exile, they believed that the flood covered mountains and the ark
grounded on the top of one specific 7000 foot mountain called Cudi Dagh
located at 37deg22'N, 42deg37'E in southern Turkey northeast of the Tigris
River.  But this was a storyteller's error.
==
The threat of creationism comes from the fact that ANY form of science,
if applied to their cherished beliefs, will overturn them.
Thus ALL science must be opposed.
==
The local flood of the Euphrates River on which the original ANE flood myth
was based occurred at the beginning of the Early Dynastic I Period which has
been radiocarbon dated to about 2900 BCE.  Noah = Ziusudra was therefore the
last king of the Jemdet Nasr Period which ended about 2900 BCE.
==
³We donıt know all the details yet in regard to a scientific explanation is
interpreted by creationists as Therefore, it is incorrect and by default
the earth was created as explained in Genesis under the supervision of an
unimaginably complex supernatural entity who knows everything but somehow
allows human free will, metes out eternal reward or punishment based on 80
year trial periods, and refuses to confirm hisheritıs existence except in
ways accepted by those who already believe.²
==
 ==
New Scientist article (October 4,1997) entitled ³God of the Quantum Vacuumm²
Mark Noll _The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind_
Lammerts, W.E. ³Why Not Creation?²  Baker Book House, Grand Rapids MI: 1973.
Lee Spetners ³Not by chance²,  creationist

 
http:www.teachermag.orgewvol-1525tenn.h15 ng?
http:www.englib.cornell.eduscitechw96evol.html  ng
http://www.law.umkc.edu"faculty"projects"ftrials"scopes"scopes.htm

Tim Berraıs book ³Evolution and the Myth of Creationism,²
C Leon Harris (In ³Evolution: Genesis and Revelations²
³Science, Scripture, and a Young Earth² by John and Henry Morris
 
http://www.pbs.org"wgbh"amex"monkeytrial"
http://www.msu.edu"course"mc"112"1920s"Scopes"
http://xroads.virginia.edu"~UG97"inherit"intro.html
http://www.einet.net"galaxy"Government"Law"Cases"Scopes-Monkey-Trial"
http://www.courttv.com"greatesttrials"scopes"making.html
http://www.law.umkc.edu"faculty"projects"ftrials"scopes"tennstat.htm

Tennessee Butler act made it a crime 
to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as
taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower
order of animals".
Section 2. Be it further enacted, That any teacher found guilty of the 
violation of this Act, Shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction,
 shall be fined not less than One Hundred $ (100.00) Dollars nor more than
 Five Hundred ($ 500.00) Dollars for each offense. 
 The Butler Act was repealed in 1967.

Other creation cases
Epperson v Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 (1968)
Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987)

The Tennessee Anti-Evolution Act (1925): this Act made it unlawful to teach in
public school "any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man
as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a
lower order of animals" (Zetterberg, 1983, 386). It was repealed in 1967.
*	The Tennessee Creationism Act (1973): this Act prohibited biology
textbooks from representing evolution as "scientific fact" as opposed to
"theory," and demanded that all textbooks that do discuss evolution give equal
emphasis to other "theories" including the Genesis account. It was declared
unconstitutional in 1975. (Zetterberg, 1983, 387)

In the last century, the forum shifted from Biblical debate to
litigation, beginning with the famous Scopes "monkey" trial.  The U.S.
Supreme Court took up the matter in WEST VIRGINIA BOARD OF EDUCATION
v.  BARNETTE (1943), which examined the bounds of state
experimentation in education.  In 1968, the high court ruled in
EPERSON v.  ARKANSAS than a state statute banning the teaching of
evolution in public schools violated the First Amendment establishment
clause.  That sentiment was affirmed in EDWARDS v.  AGUILLARD (1987)
which struck down a Louisiana law requiring that evolution be
presented along with creationist accounts.  The court ruled that the
statute served no secular purpose, although in dissent, Justice
Antonin Scalia defended the law as a protection for free speech.
While requiring that curriculum guides be developed for creation
science, the Act says nothing of comparable guides for evolution.
That's what got the act stricken as unconstitutional.  
In 1999, an ABC News poll showed wide support for creationism, and its
teaching in schools.  Fully 39% of respondents in one survey believed
in a form of "theistic evolution" guided by a deity, and another third
accepting the proposition that "The Bible is the actual word of God
and is to be taken literally, word for word."  Another poll
conducted for the Kansas City Star during the midst of that state's
divisive debate showed that 45% of those asked stated that they
believe that God created humans as they are within the past 10,000
years.  These beliefs are not always consistent, though, with other
scientific findings.  81% said that dinosaurs lived
"millions of years ago," while 65% considered fossils to be evidence
that some sea creature had evolved into land animals.
------
http:www.texoma.com~alphom1hamrpc.jpg   fundie hammer concretion
---
³Darwinıs Leap of Faith : Exposing the False Religion of Evolution²
by John Ankerberg, John Weldon Paperback - 392 pages (February 1998)
Harvest House Publishers, Inc.; ISBN: 1565076575

A poorly reasoned diatribe.
The authors  continuously missquote or take quotes out of context. Most of
their sources are secondary and while there are notes referencing the sources
there is no bibliography or index. The book is void of evidence, even in the
sections titled ³Creation Evidence². It is apparent that the authors either
did not read Darwin or misunderstood what they did read. They consistently
mis-characterize his studies and writings, and they assign him intentions and
thoughts which he explicitly denies in his writings. All in all, the book is
a disappointment.
==
Message from a newsgroup
I remember one discussion I had with a soon to be pastor about creation.  I
was explaining to my 9 year old cousin that the starlight we see is actually
millions of years old.  She was interested and asked me the question. He
comes up (her step-dad) and explains to me that they don't believe in
evolution, they believe the Bible.  I explained to him I wasn't talking
about evolution, but astronomy, a known science accepted by many religious
groups, that nothing I was saying contradicted the Bible.  He would have
none of it.  He claimed that all of it was lies.
So -- why waste my time?
For the little girl's sake!
==
The Long War Against God: The history and impact of the
creationevolution conflict. (1989) Henry M. Morris. Baker Book House:
Grand Rapids, MI. ISBN: 0-8010-6257-8

The Collapse of Evolution. 3rd. Ed. (1997) Scott M. Huse. BakerBooks:
Grand Rapids, MI. ISBN: 0-8010-5774-4

The Philosophical Scientists. (1985) David Foster. Barnes and Noble, NY.
ISBN 0-88029-624-0

The Genesis Flood: the biblical record and its scientific implications.
(1961) By John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris. Baker Book House: Grand
Rapids, Michigan. ISBN: 0-8010-9501-8.
==
http://www.talkorigins.org"faqs"molgen" Great long discussion of genes.
==
Rabbit-sized Diacodexis of 55 Myrs ago is the ancient forerunner of the
even-toed ruminants and the ancestral camel line.  Grass reached worldwide
only 20 million years ago.  Grazing mammals were making real progress only
11 Myr ago.  Primitive cattle forebears evolved from antelope only about
this time, and they presumably had similiar brains.  Whales were
superpredators 55 Myrs ago (and before that carnivorous on the land) and
they were so successful that 40 Myrs ago some of them drifted into a lazy
toothless lifestyle
==
There are more than five methods which yield an old age for the earth.  For
example, thereıs potassium-argon, rubidum-strontium, uranium-lead
concordia, uraniumthorium disequilibrium, fission track
dating, electron spin resonance,  and thermoluminscence, to name some of
the numerical varieties. Other indications that the earth is old include
sedimentation rates associated with observed geologic structures, the time
needed to generate the diversity creationists associate with microevolution,
and measurements of the decrease in the length of the day (which match the
predictions of an old-earth theory). Helium deposits took millions of years
to collect from alpha particle emission from radioactive elements in a
granite gravel layer, associated with natural gas. These deposits are found in
western Texas and Kansas.
==
The St. Peters Sandstone is not characteristic of a flood deposit as it is
very pure sandstone.  If it was from a flood, it would be mixed with silts
and other sediments.  Also, the individual grains show striations that
suggest that the grains originated in a terrestrial wind blown environment
that was subsequently deposited in a shallow sea. (Common Rocks and
Minerals of Missouri, ISBN 0-8262-0585-2)  The very purity of the sandstone
refutes the Flood origin of this formation. Sand is derived from weathered
ignious rocks containing quartz.
==
If the ³global flood² was supposed to be a time of very rapid
(e.g., a year) deposition of huge amounts of sediment (kilometres in some
places), yes, it can not account for many types of sessile (i.e. attached)
organisms that are found in life position at various levels in the Earthıs
stratigraphy, because if deposition was rapid the organisms would have
been smothered long before they could have grown (unless growth rates were
somehow thousands of times faster during the flood).  The real problem is
*not* quickly generating the hard (or firm, or soft) surfaces for the
organisms to grow on, because there are many situations where hard
sediment surfaces can develop relatively quickly, and it can perhaps be
speculated that some analogous processes were operating in the midst of a
global flood.  The real problem is for the organisms to become established
on those surfaces, grow to maturity, and get buried numerous times in the
midst of a global flood that was supposed to be dumping kilometres of
sediments on top in a year or so.  Any pause in deposition for organisms
to become established and grow -- and there would have to be a great many
of them to account for the evidence -- would add time to the duration of
the flood, or imply that the deposition in the intervening times was that
much more rapid.
==
³Why Christianity Must Change or Die : A Bishop Speaks to Believers in
Exile² by John Shelby Spong

³Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism : A Bishop Rethinks the
Meaning of Scripture² by John Shelby Spong
==
If creation were relatively recent, say 6-10,000 years ago, then
Carbon-14 dating would be an adequate method of dating all fossils and
rocks that contain carbon (This method is used by geologists to reliably
date fossils, artifacts, or rocks with ages up to 50,000 years).
The half life of C-14 is 5730 years.
==
http:www.talkorigins.orgfaqsknee-jointjohanson1.html
³Letter from Donald Johanson²
³In 1974, ³Lucy² was found in locality A.L. 288, situated some 2-12
km northeast of the knee joint locality. ³Lucy² preserves a proximal
tibia, as well as enough of distal femur, to indicate that the
anatomy of this skeleton in the knee joint region was identical to
that of the 1973 discovery. Hence, ³Lucy² was also capable of fully
upright bipedal posture and gait, as her hip and ankle joints also
indicate. Stratigraphically, these two discoveries are separated by
nearly 70 meters. ³It is thoroughly incorrect to claim that ³Lucy²Œs
femur was found 2-3 km away from the rest of the skeleton. These
fossils are two very different discoveries; the 1973 knee joint in
the lower part of the stratigraphic section, and LucyŒs skeleton some
70 m above it. ³
==
Panel backs teaching of evolution
WASHINGTON - Evolution should be taught in public schools as Œıthe most
important concept to modern biology,ıŒ a panel of scientists said Thursday
in response to efforts to keep the subject out of the classroom. ŒıThere
is no debate within the  scientific community over whether evolution has
occurred, and there is no evidence that evolution has not occurred,ıŒ
the National Academy of Sciences said in a guidebook intended  for teachers,
parents, school administrators and policy makers. It says that understanding
evolutionary change is essential to understanding vital processes,  such as
how bacteria become resistant to antibiotics. Evolution still causes trouble
for teachers and school officials more than 70 years after John Scopes was
convicted of violating a Tennessee law against teaching it and more than a
decade after the Supreme Court ruled that public schools cannot teach that
God created the universe. ŒıMany students receive little or no exposure to
the most important concept in modern biology,ıŒ said the guidebook. An
indication the subjectıs sensitivity: The Arizona Board of Education kept
the word ŒıevolutionıŒ out of its 1996 science standards, although they
specify that students learn Œıhow organisms change over time in terms of
biological adaptation and genetics.ıŒ Scientists protested the omission,
and a committee will study the question this year. The North Carolina House
passed a bill last year requiring that evolution be presented as theory,
not fact. And a Christian publisher in Richardson, Texas, Jon Buell, says
heıs been getting plenty of orders for a biology textbook, Of Pandas and
People, presenting the view that the world is the way it is by design - a
term that critics say code for creationism. Moreover, a number of university
scholars, including law professor Phillip E. Johnson of the University of
California at Berkeley and biochemist Michael Behe of Lehigh University,
have published books and articles challenging evolution.
page 165...by  Johnson
My primary goal in writing Darwin On Trial was to legitimate
the assertion of a theistic worldview in the secular universities.
They suggest that
life, from cells on up, is too complex to have evolved. ŒıOur contention is
that there is reasonable evidence of intelligent design,ıŒ said Raymond G.
Bohlin, who holds a doctorate in molecular biology and heads the Probe
Ministries, based in Richardson, Texas. Without naming names, the panel says
opponents of teaching evolution have quoted prominent scientists out of
context to claim a consensus is lacking. Among points raised in the
guidebook: People can still believe in God and accept evolution, because
³religion and science answer different questions about the world.² Less
than one-half of American adults believe humans evolved from earlier
species, and more than half want creationism taught, according to surveys.
³But there are thousands of different ideas about creation among the worldıs
people,²the book says.* Children should be graded on their understanding
of evolution but not penalized for refusing to believe in it. ŒıIt is quite
possible to comprehend things that are not believed,² the guidebook says.
*And, to set the record straight, ŒıHumans did not evolve from modern apes
but humans and modern apes shared a common ancestor, a species that no
longer exists.ıŒ The guidebook also explains that ³theory² in the scientific
sense - an explanation that has been well-substantiated - is different from
the everyday explanation - a guess or hunch. That helps get teachers and
lawmakers off the hook.ıŒJust this year a parent asked
me if I was teaching evolution as a theory or as a fact,ıŒ said Elizabeth
Carvellas, a biology teacher in Essex Junction, Vt.ıŒI explained that I
taught it as theory. That seemed to settle that problem.ıŒBarry Raugust,
a high school biology teacher in Wichita, Kan., said he focuses on genetics
and change when talking about evolution. ŒıRegardless of other explanations
of how life began, you have to understand it to understand biology and make
sense out of it,ıŒ he said.He avoids talking about human descent from earlier
primate species. ŒıThatıs Œway over their head,ıŒ he said. ŒıThatıs just
setting yourself up for arguments, and thatıs counterproductive in my
opinion. That might be a good thing for college or whatever, but at the
high school level itıs overkill.ıŒ
PHILLIP JOHNSON: Yes, life requires an intelligent cause. You canıt turn
non-living chemicals into a living organism by chemical laws and chance, and
natural selection, the claimed Darwinian mechanism of creationism, doesnıt
have any creative power.
The evidence of science canıt tell us very much about the nature of the
intelligent designer. Of course, I think itıs God, if thatıs what youıre
asking, but you need information from more than science to know anything
thatıs really worth knowing about God. What you learn from science is that
unintelligent, purposeless, material forces, like mutation and selection,
canıt do the job that theyıre claimed to be doing..
-
At the Scopes trial,
"Judge Raulston was presented with some testimony and evidence (without the
jury present) but ruled it inadmissable to the central issue - whether or
not Scopes broke the law.  Therefore, none of this evidence was presented
during the trial...there were statements read into the record but no evidence
was presented."
 
In 1997 University of Georgia professor of history of law Edward Larson
published a critical reassessment of the Scopes Trial and its portrayal in
Inherit the Wind. In Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and Americaıs
Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion (Basic Books), Larson thoroughly
deconstructed Inherit the Wind, showing just how egregiously the ³Scopes Trial²
stereotype misrepresents the actual Scopes Trial. Instead, the book shows that
the debate over biological origins was--and is--far more complex than most
Americans have been told. For his book Larson was awarded the 1998 Pulitzer
Prize in history.
==
³When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself, and
when it does not support itself, and God does not care to support
it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power,
it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.² Ben Franklin
==
Sometimes I wonder what form of denial a Creationist would use
if a doctor told himher that they are infected with a new species
of bacteria that is resistant to antibiotics.  Would it be ³That
cannot be the case, since all mutations are for the worse.²
==
The Genesis story was completely discredited for geological reasons by 1830.
By that time it had been established that (a) the Earth was ancient,
(b) that there was no Noachian flood, and (c) that the biota of Earth had
changed drastically over time. Darwin and Wallace did not ³invent² the
theory of evolution - if any one person should be given credit for
proposing the first serious theory of evolution  it is Lamarck, a
Christian, in the 1800s. Darwin and Wallace developed the first fully
articulated theory of evolution, including common descent, evolution by
variation and natural selection, diversification by geographic isolation,
and extensive supporting evidence.
==
1.Legislation or regulations that single out evolution for restriction,
ignoring other scientific topics, are unconstitutional(Epperson v. Arkansas)
2.Legislation that requires teaching evolution as ³theory² or ³belief²
only, or that it not be taught as ³fact², without defining these terms,
is too vague to give real guidance to school districts and teachers about
what may be taught.
3.Such legislation intimidates teachers, who are likely to avoid teaching
a subject for fear of violating the law. Legislation that explicitly bans
teaching evolution has been found unconstitutional; vague legislation that
has a ³chilling effect² is also likely
to be found unconstitutional. In First Amendment law, laws which have a
³chilling²effect on behavior are often found to be as unconsitutional as
laws which explicitly forbid that behavior.
4.²Theory, not fact² legislation implies that ³theory² should be understood
in the ordinary sense of ³guess² or ³hunch.² Science teachers, however, use
scientific terminology, in which ³theory² means a logical, tested,
well-supported explanation for a great variety of facts. In a physics
class, students will learn that the theory of gravity explains such facts
as the rate of acceleration of falling objects; in chemistry class, they
learn that atomic theory explains the structure and behavior
of elements and compounds; in biology they learn that the theory of
evolution explains facts about genetics and other subjects. If the purpose
of the legislation is to require that teachers and texts offer evolution
as a theory in the scientific sense, it is unnecessary -- they already do so.
5.²Theory, not fact² legislation, if passed, is likely to cost the taxpayers
money for useless litigation. In 1968, in its Epperson v. Arkansas decision,
the Supreme Court outlawed bans on teaching evolution. In 1994, the Ninth
Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Peloza v. Capistrano that evolution is
not a religious belief but a scientific principle; the Supreme Court refused
to hear an appeal of this ruling, allowing the decision to stand.
And in 1997, in Freiler v Tangipahoa Parish Board of Education, the District
Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana ruled unconstitutional a policy
adopted partly because Board members objected to teaching evolution ³as
fact,² and requiring that a disclaimer be read aloud by teachers whenever
they taught about evolution.
http:www.natcenscied.orgtheofac.htm
==
Henry Morris, in the  _Impact_ (Feb. 1998, p. iii) wrote:
³Even though we intentionally limit our debates (and some of our books) to
the *scientific* evidence, everyone in the audience and among our readers
is well aware that we are really undergirding *Biblical* creationism
(including recent Creation and the global Flood), because that is our
clearly stated position.²

The Troubled Waters of Evolution by Morris; 1975
==
Fundamentalism was destroyed by early honest Christian scientists who chose
to follow the evidence instead of their theology in the 1700s and 1800s.
==
1. They DEFINE evidence as Œthat which supports biblical literalismı.Thus,
they deny evolution is fact (even though it is).This approach excludes not
only biology, but physics, astronomy, geology, etc.

2. They MAKE UP stuff to support their religious beliefs. they say that
thermodynamics prohibits evolution. Wrong. they say that star light was
formed on the way to earth before the stars were formed!!! Thus, we see the
levels of deceit they go to.

3. All creationists are religious fundamentalists. if creationism is science
why are there no Japanese creationists? Why are there no Japanese creationists
if creationism is science? Why is creationism generally confined to
conservative American xtians? How is it that this little band of religious
ideologs has discovered this idea that the worldıs scientists reject?
==
How do creationists explain the correlation of redshift to oberved magnitude
for all types of galaxies?
==
Edwards v Aguillard (1987) U.S. Supreme Court; Citation:
482 U.S.578(1987) Docket # 85-1513

http:caselaw.findlaw.comscriptsgetcase.pl?court=US&navby=case&vol=48
2&invol=578

Flank, Lenny, Creation "Science": A Legal History

http:www.geocities.comCapeCanaveralHangar2437legal.htm

Moore, James, article, The Creationist Cosmos of Protestant Fundamentalism
The Fundamentalism Project - Vol. 2 - Fundamentalisms and Society
 
Marty, Martin E. and Appleby, R. Scott, Editors (1993) The
University of Chicago Press ISBN 0-226-50880-3

Fuller, Robert, Naming The Antichrist - The History of an American Obsession
(1995) Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-508244-3

Isaacs, Alan, editor, A Dictionary of Physics( (1996) Oxford University Press
ISBN  0-19-280030-2

Lahav, Noam, Biogenesis - Theories of Life's Origin
(1999) Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-511755-7

Morris, Henry M., quoted by Lenny Flank, (1995) What Are The Real Aims Of
The Creation Scientists?

http:www.geocities.comCapeCanaveralHangar2437aims.htm

Morris, Henry M., The Troubled Waters Of Evolution
(1982 - Second Edition) Creation-Life Publishers ISBN 0-89051-087-3

Heylighen, Francis, Web Dictionary of Cybernetics and Systems
http:pespmc1.vub.ac.beASCindexASC.html

Turner, D.H., and Bevilacqua, P.C., (1993)  Thermodynamic considerations for
evolution by RNA The RNA World

Gesteland, R.F., and Atkins, J.F., editors New York: Spring Harbor Laboratory
Press

Jou, D, and Llebot, J.E., Introduction to the Thermodynamics of
Biological Processes (1990 - Translation)
Prentice Hall Advanced Reference Series ISBN 0-13-502881-7

Blumenfeld, Lev A., and Tikhonov, Alexander N., Biophysical
Thermodynamics of Intracellular Processes
(1994) Springer-Verlag New York ISBN 0-387-94179-7
==
Articles from the Creation Research Society Quarterly

Problems in the Glacial Theory
http:www.sentex.net~tccgtprob.html

Drumlins and Diluvial Currents
http:www.sentex.net~tccdrumlin1.html

Some experiments are described in a web page on ³Cross Strata
Anomalies², at:   http:www.sentex.net~tccxstrata.html
==
³Creation is, of course, unproven and unprovable by the methods
of experimental science.²
Duane Gish, ³Evolution; the fossils say NO!² p.21
==
In front of a school board meeting, one angry voter has more influence
than ten scientists.
==
Fundie Claim  ³Darwin recanted evolution on his deathbed.²
A few more details on the spread of the Darwin recantation and its
subsequent rebuttal, taken from the book ³The Survival of Charles Darwin: a
Biography of a Man and an Idea² by Ronald W. Clark, published by
Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1985 (p. 199) Clarkıs source for Lady Hopeıs
supposed quotations of Darwin is given as ³Down, the Home of the Darwins:
The Story of a House and the People Who Lived There² by Sir Hedley Atkins
KBE, published by Phillimore for the Royal College of Surgeons of England,
1974. Henriettaıs rebuttal is referenced more fully as: Mrs R B Litchfield,
³Charles Darwinıs Death-Bed: Story of Conversion Denied,² _The
Christian_, February 23, 1922, p. 12.
 
³In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense
of denying the existence of God.² Charles Darwin

http:www.talkorigins.orgfaqshope.html  The Lady Hope Story
http:www.ediacara.orghope.html  The Lady Hope Story
http:www.cincinnatiskeptics.orgblurbsdarwin-deathbed.html
http:www.csuchico.edu~curbanDarwin_Folklore.html
==
Creationists certainly need to have the psychologically comforting idea that
God was directly involved in our creation in ways that are specifically
inconsistent with an evolution that does not put man at its center willing to
distort and ignore all evidence to the contrary in order to affirm human
specialness with our origin.
The same psychological need to be the center of God's universe was
involved in the conflicts between the Ptolomeic and Copernican systems.
==
Fundie Claim
   "_A woolly mammoth was frozen so quickly that its last meal
   of buttercups remained fresh in its stomach for thousands of years."
The claim that woolly mammoths were frozen so quickly that its last meal of
buttercups remained fresh in its stomach is nothing more than folklore lacking
any basis in fact.The presence of well preserved plant remains associated with
mammoths and mastodons has little to do with quick freezing.  Very well
preserved gut contents have been found even with skeletal remains without any
freezing For example, vertebrate paleontologists found plants remains that
were once in the guts of a mastodon associated with the skeleton of a
mastodon that they excavated from a bog within Ohio (Lepper, et al. 1991,
pp. 122-123).

Also, paleontologists have recovered other complete mastodon skeletons
containing well preserved plant remains that were once gut and stomach
contents in bogs of New York, New Jersey, and other states (Dreimanis 1968,
Pp. 264.).
Plant remains are so durable that flash-freezing is unnecessary for their
preservation.In the example of the Ohio mastodon, the plant remains that once
occupied the gut survived long after the remainder of the mastodon had
decayed because of the waterlogged, anaerobic environment in which they were
buried. If
freezing temperatures are essential for the preservation of plant material
in the gut contents, why did the plant remains associated with this mastodon
survived when the mastodon was never frozen and the rest of the mastodon
had decayed away?  In this case and other cases it is clearly evident that
quick freezing is unnecessary for the preservation of plant material.
Radiocarbon dates show that the frozen mammoths date from ~40,000 to 18,000
years before present.  There would have been a series of ³flash freezes² to
produce such a time span. See also the book _Blue Babe, the Frozen Fauna of
the Mammoth Steepe_ by University of Chicago Press ~1988.

Contents of a mammoth stomach:
grass, sedge, wild thyme, alpine poppy, upright crowfoot

The team of fifty men and their horses pulled the mammoth onto dry land,
twelve feet from the shore. The 13-foot tall, 15-foot long beast was fat
and perfectly preserved. Its "widely opened eyes gave the animal an appearance
of life, as though it might move in a moment and destroy [them] with a roar."
They removed the tusks and opened its full stomach containing "young shoots of
the fir and pine; and a quantity of young fir cones, also  
  fir and pine are arctic or cold region plants
Machindo: This page may shed light on the discussion, but I don't know how
trustworthy the info is - 
Twenty-four pounds of undigested vegetation were removed from the Berezovka
mammoth and analyzed by the Russian scientist, V. N. Sukachev. He identified
more than forty different species of plants: herbs, grasses, mosses, shrubs,
and tree leaves. Many no longer grow that far north; others grow both in
Siberia and Mexico. Dillow draws several conclusions from these remains: 
IguanaTwin: The presence of so many varieties [of plants] that generally grow
much to the south indicates that the climate of the region was milder than
that of today.
  The discovery of the ripe fruits of sedges, grasses, and other
plants suggests that the mammoth died during the second half of July or the
beginning of August. 
  The mammoth must have been overwhelmed suddenly with a rapid deep
freeze and instant death. The sudden death is proved by the unchewed bean pods
still containing the beans that were found between its teeth, and the deep
freeze is suggested by the well-preserved state of the stomach contents and
the presence of edible meat [for wolves and dogs].

R. Dale Guthrie's Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe

"Mammoth: The Resurrection of an Ice Age Giant," Richard Stone,

Anderson's "Who's who in the Pleistocene? a mammalian bestiary." 

 Martin and Klein's (1984) _Quaternary Extinctions_

Malcolm & McKenny's "A Tundra Who's Who"

 
One in Siberia was found with buttercups in its 
mouth (along with a broken hip).  From the way the 
body was positioned, it seems to have been walking 
along happily muching away, fell into a crevasse, 
Buttercups, by the way, are typical tundra"taiga 
plants.  They are not "tropical".
It's the Beresovka mammoth.
==
Fundie claim
One part of the Vollosovitch mammoth carbon dated at 29,500 years and
another part at 44,000.

"The lower leg of the Fairbanks Creek mammoth had a radiocarbon age of
15,380 RCY, while its skin and flesh were 21,300 RCY.

For example the "Fairbanks Creek mammoth" comes from a list of
radiocarbon dates from page 30 of Pewe.  They are two distinct
mammoths.  The Vollosovitch mammoth mentioned in the first
is not even mentioned by Pewe nor is the Dima mammoth.  
Basically the creationists made up this "facts" out of thin air.
--Troy L. Pewe, Quaternary Stratigraphic Nomenclature in Unglaciated
Central Alaska, Geological Survey Professional Paper 862 (U.S. Gov. 
printing
office, 1975) p. 30.
===
Boyer [Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More,
Harvard, 1992] discusses how an equally unsound hermeneutic had been used
with wanton abandon to dominate twentieth-century evangelical thinking about
world affairs.ı
`As the authors describe them, evangelicals -- bereft of self-criticism,
intellectual subtlety, or an awareness of complexity -- are blown about
by every wind of apocalyptic speculation and enslaved to the cruder
spirit of populist science.  In reality, Numbers and Boyer show even
more -- they show millions of evangelicals thinking they are honoring
the Scriptures, yet interpreting the Scriptures on questions of science
and world affairs in ways that fundamentally contradict the deeper,
broader, and historically well-established meaning of the Bible itself.ı

Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Eerdmans, 1994, page 14
==
Robert Russell, executive director and founder of the Center for
Theology and Natural Science,
==
Walter E. Lammerts has published eight lists documenting 198 wrong-order
formations in the United States alone.  For more info see, Recorded
Instances of Wrong Order Formations or Presumed Overthrust in the United
States:2Parts I-VII

This would be the same Walter Lammerts who is not a geologist?  This
would be the same Walter Lammerts who provided a picture of the Lewis
Overthrust to Morris and Whitcomb that was given to him by a friend
and who wrote that there was no evidence of overthrusting even though
he (at that time) had never been to see the Lewis Overthrust.  That
would be the same Walter Lammerts who was taken up to the Overthrust
and shown the thrust line and shown the evidence for overthrust by two
(creationists) Seventh Day Adventists geology students.  That would be
the same Lammerts who realized that he had given Morris and Whitcomb a
picture that was NOT of the Lewis Overthrust.  That would be the same
Lammerts who did not withdraw his comments or picture from _The
Genesis Flood_ or withdraw the article he had submitted to a Christian
magazine about the Lewis Overthrust.  That would be the same Lammerts
who came down from the mountain appearing ³shaken² according to the
students who went with him, yet continued to say and write things in
contradiction to what he had seen with his very eyes.
==
Akridgeıs argument is rebutted in Arthur N. Strahlerıs _Science and
Earth History: The EvolutionCreation Controversy_ (Prometheus Books, 1987),
pages 141-142.  Strahlerıs book is also available at the NCSE address
above.  Itıs a little bit pricey (somewhere in the US $50-60 range) but
there is a discount to NCSE members.  In my opinion Strahlerıs book is
the best overall compendium of rebuttals to these traditional creationist
arguments and indispensible to the library of anyone who has to deal
with these arguments. In _Science News_, 115:420, 30 June 1979, John Eddy
points out that the shrinkage they reported is not for the entire solar
disc but only for the outer layers, and that he believed it to be an
oscillatory phenomenon, not a continual process of contraction.

http://www.asa3.org"ASA"topics"Astronomy-Cosmology"PSCF9-86VanTill.html

Strahler reviews several other studies of solar diameter.  For example
Shapiro (1980) studied records of the times of 28 transits of Mercury
across the solar disc recorded from 1736 to 1973 and found an insignificant
difference of 0.3 seccentury. From 1975 to 1981 the Wilson Observatory
found regular annual variations in solar diameter but ³no observable
trend.²  A study at The Royal Greenwich Observatory of Mercuryıs transits
for three centuries found only a negligible difference of 0.008% but found
evidence of an 80-year cycle of oscillation in solar diameter.  A study by
John Parkinson of University College (London) during a 1983

Even before 1980 when Akridge published the ICR tract, Eddy and Boornazia
had published their opinion that the effect was temporary and not a
long-term trend.  Akridge, typical of creationists, either did not research
his subject carefully or chose to ignore the contradictory statements
and evidence.

More evidence that ³no error favorable to creationism ever dies.²  And
this one is an error.  The Greenwich Observatory scientsts calculated a
decrease in solar diameter of 0.008 percent over the last 300 years,
with a standard error of 0.007 percent.  This amount is negligible, and
the data further indicates that the diameter oscillates with a period
of about 80 years and an amplitude of 0.025 percent.

  In a counter-paper published in Nature (Parkinson, et al.
1980), evidence is presented that the sun has kept a constant radius
(within errors) for the past 250 years.  The data that was used was
the same as in the Eddy and Boornazian paper, but a different subset
of the data was used.  This is an important point, as it turns out
that everybody that has studied this issue has thrown out many of the
measurements performed prior to the 1940ıs as being unreliable.
Parkinson et al argue that there were significant changes in
instrumentation, personnel, and techniques during the time that the
measurements occured to argue that certain data should be used and
others should not.  They point to sudden changes in the values
measured when these variables changed.

        Parkinson et al also consider solar radius measurements based
on the transit times of Mercury and the data from solar eclipses.
These data are quite noisy but they seem to support the claim that the
solar radius has decreased by 0.14 arc seconds per century (Mercury
transit data) or 0.08 arc seconds per century (eclipse data).
However, Shapiro (1980) also uses Mercury transit data and determines
an _increase_ in radius of 0.05 arc seconds per century.  Again, the
researchers were using subsets of the entire data.These variations are within
the expected range of error.
        Dunham et al (1980) use eclipse data to show support for the
claim that the solar radius has decreased .34 arc seconds since 1715
(or 0.129 arc seconds per century).  However, this data only consists
of three data points and conflicts with Parkinson et al.

In yet another paper, Gilliland (1981) discusses and combines
all of the above data and derives the following conclusion: the
_average_ solar radius may have decreased by 0.1 arc seconds per
century since the 1700ıs.  However, he also concludes that there is a
cyclical variation in the solar radius that is negatively correlated
with sun spots and their 11 year cycle.  In particular, there is a
variation of with an half-amplitude of 0.1 arc seconds every 11 years
with the peak occuring when sun spots are at their minimum.  He also
finds evidence for a 76 year cycle with an half-amplitude of 0.23 arc
seconds.  This cycle is in phase with the ³Gleissberg cycle² of
approximately 80 years that modulates the 11 year sunspot cycle.  The
idea of negatively correlated sun spot activity and radius goes all
the way back to 1872 and was proposed by Secchi.  Gilliland also
determines the standard deviation for these data and comes up with an
average s.d. of .2 arc seconds.  Compared to the size of the change in
the radius, the data are quite noisy.

        Much of the discussion about the historical data has been over
what types and what size the errors were.  Brooks (1988) discusses,
for example, how changes in the micrometers that were used (where they
were with regard to focal plane, screw errors in pitch, etc.) changed
over time and how they could cause systematic errors, and how they
would cause an overestimation.  He in particular discusses the
measurements of Picard in the second half of the 17th century were
wrong and, hence, why the claim by Ribes (1987) is incorrect that
Picard measured the sun to be 3 arc seconds larger than now.

        The issue of a secular decrease in the solar radius is
presently unsettled.  For more information, see Strahler (1987).  The
data are contradictory and filled with noise and errors.  If the sun
is in fact decreasing in radius, it is important to understand why and
what the effects would be.  However, the size of the decrease in
radius proposed by several researchers is far too _large_ to account
for in terms of gravitational contraction in the Kelvin model.
According to Gilliland, Kelvinıs model predicts 0.004 arc second per
century decrease, which is too small to be measurable within the noise.
The physics of how much energy is released by the gravitational shrinkage
of an object is well known.  If the sun were shrinking at the rate proposed,
1% every 1000 years, it would have to be putting out nearly 200 times as much
energy as it is. We would all fry.
By whose measurement is the sun shrinking at the rate you say it is?
In addition, 1000 years ago humans were not able to measure the diameter
of the sun to 1% accuracy.  A century ago humans were not able to
measure it to 0.1% accuracy.  How is this data arrived at?

Here we get a bound on how much energy the sun must give up to shrink by
one meter:

   dEdr = -(35) * G * m^2  r^2

   dEdr = -3.4e32 Joules per meter

So, for each meter the sun shrinks, it must give up 3.4e32 Joules to
its surroundings.  It is proposed that the sun shrank 1% in 1000
years.  1% of the suns radius is

   delta_r = 6.9e6 meters

So the energy released is:

   delta_E = -delta_r * dEdr  =  2.3e39 Joules

1000 years is 3.1e10 seconds, so this amounts to a power output of

   P = delta_E  t  =  7.4e28 Joules per second   (i.e. watts)

where t is the time elapsed in seconds.

The measured output of the sun is 3.9e26 watts.  So the lower bound of
the sunıs power output as predicted by this claim is about 190
times the observed power output of the sun.

Brooks, R. C. (1988).  Errors in measurement of the solar diameter in
the seventeenth and eighteen centuries.  Journal for the History of
Astronomy, Vol 19, #4, p.239-255.

DeYoung, Don B. and Rush, David E. (1989) ³Is the Sun an Age
Indicator?²  _Creation Research Society Quarterly_
26(September):49-53.

Dunham, D. W., Sofia, S., Fiala, A. D., Herald, D., Muller, P.M.
(1980), Science, 210, p. 1244.

Eddy, J. A. and Boornazian, A. A. ³Secular decrease in the solar
diameter, 1863-1953².  Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society,
Volume 11, p 473.

Gilliland, R. L. (1981).  Solar Radius Variations over the past 265
years.  The Astrophysical Journal, vol 248, 1144-1155.

Parkinson, J.H., Morrison, L.V., and Stephenson, F.R. ³The constancy
of the solar diameter over the past 250 years,² Nature, 288, 1980,
p.548-551.

Strahler, Arthur N., Science and Earth History; New York: Prometheus
Books, 1987

Taylor, R. J. The Stars: Their Structure and Evolution.  Springer -
Verlag, New York, 1970.

Zirin, Harold.  Astrophysics of the sun  Harold Zirin.  Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Oct. 1984 Scientific American "Ancient Eclipses of the Sun"
-
Creationist admission the sun is not shrinking ³Is the Sun an Age
Indicator?² by Don B. DeYoung and David E. Rush, _Creation Research Society
Quarterly_, vol. 26, September 1989, pp.49-53).

SHRINKING SUN
There was an inquiry about the old creationist chestnut, ³the sun is
shrinking,²  The ³shrinking sun² argument was put forth by Dr. Russell
Akridge, a physicist at Oral Roberts University, in a 1980 issue of
_Impact_, a series of antievolutionary tracts from the Institute for
Creation Research.

John Eddy and Aram Boornazian studied solar observations from 1863 to 1953
and concluded that there was evidence that the horizontal diameter of the
solar disc had decreased over that time at a rate of 2.25 sec of arc (5
fthr).  Akridge extrapolated from this to conclude that 20 million years
ago the earth would have touched the sun, making the evolutionistsı age of
the earth untenable.

In summary, a 1979 paper by John Eddy and Aram Boomazian suggested that
the sun's angular diameter has been shrinking between 1836 and 1953, an
interesting finding because it was inconsistent with extant solar models
and geological evidence.  However, this paper was later shown to be in
error; instead the sun was found to exhibit a cyclic variation with a 76
year period.

(1) George Abell, Exploration of the Universe, Chicago: Holt Rinehart and
Winston, 1969
(2) Don L. Eicher, Geologic Time, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1976,
(4) Hilton Hinderliter, The Shrinking Sun: A Creationistıs Prediction, Its
Verification and the Resulting Implications for Theories of Origins.
(5) J. A. Eddy and A. A. Boornazian, ³Secular Decrease in the Solar
Diameter, 1836-1953,² Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 1979,
p. 437.
(6) David W. Dunham, et al., ³Observations of a Probable Change in the Solar
Radius Between 1715 and 1979,²Science, V 210 (December 12, 1980),p. 1243.
This was revoked by the authors when they realized that their own data were
flawed.

One of the occasionally recurring arguments on talk.origins, regarding
³young Earth² creationism, is that the Sun is observed to be shrinking,
and if that shrinking is run backwards in ³uniformitarian² style, the Sun
gets prohibitively large fairly quickly.

The major flaw of course is that the Sun is not shrinking. Along that line
I noticed this paper, abstract attached below, in a recent issue of Solar
therein, will provide a more up-to-date reference for anyone who wishes
to confront the ³shrinking Sun² notion with the current state of knowledge.

The Sun was larger early in its lifetime and shrank to its current
more-or-less equilibrium condition. However, the argument has been
expressed by young-Earth creationists that the Sun is observed to be
shrinking in the historical record, and that the observed shrinkage makes
an Earth age greater than circa 10,000 years unreasonable. The paper I have
cited, and references therein, show that the Sun clearly is not now
shrinking.
Furthermore, this study also includes the historical record, which is
found not to be consistent with claims made by the young-Earth
that fast, is the target of my post, not the concept that the Sunıs
size may change over much longer time periods. Once the Sun enters
its active giant phase, in 5,000,000,000 years or so, it will likely
expand to a size that reaches, or nearly reaches the Earth.
---
The Shrinking Sun

A Creationist sent me this quote: 

'There is no evidence based solely on solar observation,' Eddy stated, 'that
the sun is 4.5-5 x 109 years old. I suspect,' he said, 'that the sun is
4.5 billion years old. However, given some new and unexpected results to the
contrary, and some time for frantic recalculation and theoretical readjustment,
I suspect that we could live with Bishop Ussher's value for the age of the
earth and sun. I don't think we have much in the way of observational evidence
in astronomy to conflict with that.' 

John A. Eddy, Ph.D. (Astrogeophysics) (Solar Astronomer at the High Altitude
Observatory at Boulder, Colorado). Quote in 
Institute for Creation Research, BTG No. 6a, 1989 

This quote was used as part of an ICR argument that the Sun's diameter is
shrinking by about 10 miles per year, and has been for at least a century. The
argument concludes that the Earth cannot be billions of years old, or even
millions. 

These web pages do not contain disclaimers, and searches of their web site for
words such as "Eddy" or "shrinking" did not turn up any disclaimers. However,
the quote is seriously out of date. 

First, Eddy's paper was in fact never published.He and his co-author published
an abstract [1] in 1979, but it quickly became clear that their data was wrong.
A 1980 paper pointed out that the data had been gathered across 90 years by
7 different astronomers, and they used several slightly different methods.When
you correct for these differences, there is no shrinkage.

Second, all of the data available in 1979 is now obsolete. Ultra-precise
astronomical measurements were made in the 1980's and 1990's with new
high-tech equipment. For example, the Solar Disk Sextant project used balloons
to carry special telescopes to 120,000 feet, above most of the Earth's
atmosphere. The shrinkage implied by Eddy's data is totally ruled out by the
new data.

References: 
During the tenure of life on earth, close to 4 billion years, the sun's output
has increased by something like 25% (Sagan & Chyba 1998)Despite this increase
in solar heating, the climate here has been stable enough to permit life to go
on. 

[1] Secular decrease in the solar diameter, 1863-1953, Eddy and Boornazian,
Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society 11:437 (1979) 

[2] The constancy of the solar diameter over the past 250 years, Parkinson,
Morrison and Stephenson, Nature 288,548 (1980) 

The Solar FAQ 

Stellar Interiors: Physical Principles, Structure, and Evolution, Hanswen and
Kawaler, Springer-Verlag, 1994 

--
³The sun is shrinking at 1% every 1000 years, and if you went back
far enough in time, it would literally be touching the earth, therefore,
the sun must have been made at the same time as the earth, and couldnıt
be created too long ago.²

The physics of how much energy is released by the gravitational shrinkage
of an object is well known.  If the sun were shrinking at the rate you
say it is, it would have to be putting out nearly 200 times as much
energy as it is (calculations included as an appendix to this post).
We would all fry.

By whose measurement is the sun shrinking at the rate you say it is?
In addition, 1000 years ago humans were not able to measure the diameter
of the sun to 1% accuracy.  A century ago humans were not able to
measure it to 0.1% accuracy.  How is this data arrived at?

The sun has lost ony 4% of its mass by nuclear processes since its formation.
==
Varved lake sediments are quite routine to 22,000 years, with it recently
reported that theyıve been counted to 45,000 years in a Japanese lake.

Akridge also exemplies a common creationist fallacy seen in many of their
³young earth² arguments -- taking a value that apparently oscillates in some
way and assuming from a short-term measurement that it has risen or fallen
continually throughout all of earthıs history.  The periodic reversal of the
planetıs magnetic polarity is another case in point, which Thomas Barnes has
used to try to make a creationist young earth argument.

The Earthıs magnetic field does not have a half-life, no such half-life has
ever been measured, and no such half-life has ever been reported in any
scientific journal [note that I reject the Quarterly Journal of the
Creation Research Society as a scientific journal].
   The strength of the Earthıs magnetic field (actually the dipole
component thereof) has been measured, beginning in 1835 when the ubiquitous
mathematician, scientist and philosopher Carl Gauss started doing it. In
fact, Gauss invented spherical harmonics in order to analyze his magnetic
field data. There are fewer old measurements, and a lot more newer
measurements, and of course, the error bars on the older measurements are
considerably larger than for the more modern observations. Today the Earthıs
magnetic field is mapped and measured in excruciating detail. There is a
sensible downward trend in the strength of the dipole component of the
field over that time, however the data are of insufficient quantity to
determine that the decay has any other shape than linear. Thomas Barnes
decided it was exponential, and claimed therefore to have deterimined a
half life. However, his method was frighteningly shoddy for a university
professor, and would easily have earned an ŒFı in any undergraduate physics
course. As far as the data themselves are concerned (the measured values of
the dipole component of the Earthıs magnetic field), there is no reason to
believe that the Œdecayı observed is anything other than strictly linear.
However, at the same time as the dipole component is Œdecayingı in strength,
the higher-order components of the field are increasing, such that the total
energy of the field is conserved. Barnes addressed this by summarily
dismissing all higher order components as noise caused by extraterrestrial
sources, in an inexplicable contravention to the obvious, and in equally
inexplicable ignorance of the fact that Gauss had already proven that this
was not the case over 100 years prior.

³Reversals of the Earthıs Magnetic Field² by John A. Jacobs,
Cambridge University Press, 1994 (2nd edition)
ISBN 0-521-45072-1
[Amazon.com has it for $69.95]

³The Earthıs Magnetic Field² by R.T. Merrill & M.W. McElhinny
Academic Press, 1983

Visit the geomagnetic field homepage at
http:www.ngdc.noaa.govstpGEOMAGgeomag.html

Visit the USGS Magnetic Field Monitoring and Charting Program at ...
http:wwwneic.cr.usgs.govgeomagindex.html
------
In addition, 14C dating has also been calibrated back to more
than 50,000 years before the present using uranium-thorium (isochron)
dating of corals [Bard, et al, 1990] and [Edwards, et al, 1993].
While it is unlikely that 14C will be useful for objects older
than 50,000 years, owing to the problems of background contamination
[Dickin, 1995] and [Lowe, 1991], there is a recent paper by
[Kitagawa, H., and van der Plicht, J., 1998] discusses calibration
back to 45,000 b.p.

References:
American Scientist Jan 2000

Bard, E., Hamelin, B., Fairbanks, R.G., and Zinder, A., (1990),
Calibration of the 14C timescale over the past 30,000 years
using mass spectrometric U-Th ages from Barbados corals,
Nature, 345, 405-410.

Becker, B., Kromer, B., and Trimborn P., 1991, A stable-isotope
tree-ring timescale of the Late GlacialHolocene boundary:
Nature, vol. 353 (17 Oct 1991), 647-649.
==
Creationist claim this.
³The real agents of change are chance genetic mistakes, which, as far as
I can tell, are always harmful, always deleterious.²
Reply
Then why does the Ames test for clinical mutagenicity work?
This test requires a favorable mutation in order to function.
==
Houghton-Mifflin deleted stories about dinosaurs from Texas science text
books.
--
You can disprove a theory of evolution. You canıt disprove creationism
because its DEFINED as being TRUE, by faith.
----
The Scientific Creationist position is that they have the answer,
all that is needed to to find a way to make the evidence fit.
-----
Teleology and metaphysics are the cornerstone of creationism, but they have
been tested and refuted. They are unscientific. The continuation of belief
in these failed metaphysical systems is, prima facie, evidence of a bias
against science.
==
Broad, W. J., 1981, Creationists limit scope of evolution case:
 Science, v. 211, p. 1331-1332.
Keith, B., 1982, Scopes II: The Great Debate: Schreveport,
Louisiana, Huntington House.
La Follette, M. C., 1983, Creationism, Science and the Law:
The Arkansas Case: Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 236 p.
Amici Curiae, 1986, Amicus Curiae Brief of 72 Nobel Laureates,
17 State Academies of Science and 7 Other Scientific
Organizations, in Support of Appellees; Edwin W. Edwards,
et al. v. Don Aguillard et al., No. 85-1513, United States Supreme Court.
Bennetta, W. J., 1987, The Meaning of ŒBalanced Treatmentı:
CreationEvolution Newsletter, v. 7, p. 6-7.
--, 1988, The Rise and Fall of the Louisiana Creationism Law
, Part 1: ŒA Bold Trickı: Terra, v. 26, p. 20-27.
--, 1988, The Rise and Fall of the Louisiana Creationism Law,
Part 2: ŒNonsense on Stiltsı: Terra, v. 27, p. 16-23.
Bird, W., 1987, Evaluation, in Impact: El Cajon, California,
Institute for Creation Research, v. 170, p. i-iii.
Bliss, R. B., 1988, Good Science: A K-6 plan for Excellence:
ICR Impact Series, v. 182.
Boles, D. E., 1983, Religion in the Schools: A Historical and
Legal Perspective, in Wilson, D. B., ed.,
 Did the Devil Make
Darwin Do It? Modern Perspectives on the CreationEvolution
Controversy: Ames, Iowa, Iowa State University Press,  p. 170-188.
Broad, W. J., 1981, Creationists limit scope of evolution case:
Science, v. 211, p. 1331-1332.
Cloud, P., 1977, Evolutionary Theory and Creation Mythology,
in Edwords, F., ed., New York, American Humanist
Association, p. 27-29; 1986.
Edwords, F., 1980, Why Creationism Should Not Be Taught as
Science. Part 1: The Legal Issues: CreationEvolution, v. 1, p. 2-23.
--, 1981, Why Creationism Should Not Be Taught as Science.
Part 2: The Educational Issues: CreationEvolution, v. 3, p. 6-36.
Epstein, A., 1987, Court Strikes Down Law on Creationism: Miami Herald.

Futuyma, D. J., 1982, 
Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution:
New York, Pantheon Books.

--, 1983, Science On Trial: The Case For Evolution: New York, Pantheon Press.
Gilkey, L., 1985, 

Creationism on Trial: Evolution and God at
Little Rock: Minneapolis, Minnesota, Winston Press, 301 p.

Grabiner, J. V., and Miller, P. D., 1974, Effects of the
Scopes trial: Science, v. 185, p. 832-837.

Gribben, J., and Sattaur, O., 1984, The school-childrenıs eclipse:
Science 84, v. 5, no. 4, p. 51-56.

Hastey, S., 1987, High Court Strikes Down Creation Science Law:
Florida Baptist Witness, v. 73, no. 173, p. 31.

Hechinger, F. M., 1986, Fundamentalists Turn to Courts, Ballot Box
for Control of Schools: Gainesville (Fla) Sun.

Institute for Creation Research, 1987, Creationism and the
Supreme Court: Acts and Facts, v. 16, no. 8, p. 1,3.
--, 1987, The Supreme Court Decision and its Meaning:I
CR Impact Series, v. 170.

Keith, B., 1982, Scopes II: The Great Debate: Schreveport, Louisiana,
Huntington House.

La Follette, M. C., 1983, Creationism, Science and the Law:
The Arkansas Case: Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 236 p.

Creation and Evolution: New York, Oxford University Press, 222 p.

Lewin, R., 1987, Creationism Case Argued Before Supreme
Court: Science, v. 235, p. 22-23.

Martz, L., and McDaniel, A., 1987, Keeping God out of the Classroom:Newsweek,
p. 23-24.
McKinney, J., 1987, Court Hears Creationism Arguments:
CreationEvolution Newsletter, v. 6, p. 11-12.
Nelkin, D., 1982, The Creation Controversy: Science or
 Scripture in the Schools: New York, Norton, 242 p.

Overton, J. W. R., 1982, United States Supreme Court
Opinion: McLean vs. Arkansas, in Ruse, M., ed., 

But Is It Science?
The Philosophical Question in the CreationEvolution
Controversy: Buffalo, New York, Prometheus Books, p. 307-311.
--, 1982, Memorandum on Rev. Bill McLean et al. LR C 81 322.
Overton, J., W.R., 1982, Creationism in the schools;
The decision in McLean versus the Arkansas Board of Education: Science,
v. 215, p. 934-943.
Raloff, J., 1987, High Court Rejects Creationism Law: Science News, v. 131, 
p. 404.
Saladin, K., 1980, Creationist Bill Dies in Georgia Legislature:
The Humanist, no. MayJune, 1980, p. 59-60.
Scott, E. C., 1987, Louisiana Decision Announced:
CreationEvolution Newsletter, v. 7, p. 5-8.
Zimmerman, M., 1987, That Court Ruling Wonıt Stop
the Creationists: Creation Evolution Newsletter, v. 7, p. 4-5.
http:www.leaderu.comrealri9403johnson.html
http:www.leaderu.comrealri9404johnson2.html
http:www.leaderu.comorgsftedarwinismchapter13.html
http:www.creationscience.com    fundie

The Bible may be constitutionally used in an
appropriate study of history, civilization, ethics,
comparative religion, or the like. - Stone v. Graham,
449 U.S. 39, 42 (1980)
==
From a recent Federal court case decision involving 
creation "scientists":  "Adding Œismı does not change 
the meaning nor magically metamorphose Œevolutionı 
into a religion. ŒEvolutionı and Œevolutionismı define a 
biological concept: higher life forms evolve from 
lower ones. The concept has nothing to do with how 
the universe was created; it has nothing to do with 
whether or not there is a divine Creator (who did or 
did not create the universe or did or did not plan 
evolution as part of a divine scheme). " (US Circuit 
Court, Peloza v New Capistrano School District, 
1994) 
==
Humans differ from our nearest relatives, chimpanzees, by 1.6%, which is less
than the difference between different species of frog.  So if all frogs are
the same `kindı, then logically chimps and humans are the same `kindı.
----
During the 1970s and 1980s, bills to require the teaching of creation science
were introduced in more than 20 states, according to Eugenie C. Scott, the
founder and executive director of the National Center for Science Education,
a watchdog group in El Cerrito, Calif., that supports the teaching of
evolution. After all the action, only Arkansas and Louisiana passed such laws
The Arkansas law was overturned by a federal district court in 1982. And in
1987, in Edwards v. Aguillard, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the
Louisiana law, which prohibited the teaching of evolution unless it was
accompanied by a ³balanced treatment² of creation theory. Most of the
state-level efforts disappeared after the 1987 ruling, all biology textbooks
used in the state to display a disclaimer informing the young reader that
³This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory some scientists
present as a scientific explanation for the origin of living things, such
as plants, animals and humans. No one was present when life first appeared
on earth, therefore, any statement about lifeıs origins should be
considered as theory, not fact. ³

In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated Louisiana's "Creationism
Act," a law that forbade the teaching of evolutionary theory in that
state's schools without concurrently teaching what has become known as
creationism, or "creation science." In that decision, Edwards vs.
Aguillard, the Court ruled that "creation science" was in fact nothing
more than thinly disguised religion, and more importantly, served no
secular purpose.1 Therefore, the teaching of "creation science" was
deemed to be in violation of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.

The governor of Alabama in March of 1996 sent all biology teachers a copy of
an antievolution book, Darwin on Trial, using his discretionary funds.Shortly
thereafter, another ³evolution as theory rather than fact² law was considered
in a nearby state. The Tennessee News arrived to the office of National
Center for Science Education (NCSE) that the Cobb County, Georgia school
district had requested MacMillan-McGraw Hill to delete a chapter on the Big
Bang and earthıs origin in an earth science booklet for fourth graders, after
parents complained. Newspaper accounts reported that MacMillan would comply.
The big-bang theory has been under intense academic scrutiny recently--but
not from eminent scientists.  Kenneth Shadowen, the superintendent of the
5,500-student Marshall County, Ky., schools, decided last month that the
discussion of the theory in the districtıs 5th- and 6th-grade science books
was one-sided and that it shouldnıt be part of lessons.
He ordered district officials to confiscate the books and glue together the
two pages that dealt with the theory that the universe began with the
explosion of a point and has been expanding ever since.²Weıre not going to
teach one theory and not teach another,² such as the biblical account of the
origin of the universe, Mr. Shadowen said in a recent interview with a local
newspaper. Even though the original version of the textbook already had met
local and state curriculum guidelines, the superintendentıs alterations were
permissible, the Kentucky education department said.
In Clayton County, Ga., meanwhile, the school board voted unanimously
last month to insert a disclaimer on the origins of life in 140,000 science
textbooks used in all grades.  Students returning to school this month will
see a three-paragraph message in their textbooks that reads: ³No human
was present when life first appeared on Earth. Therefore, any statement
about lifeıs origins should be considered a theory, not fact.²  The board
borrowed the language from the Alabama state school board, which last
fall approved an insert in high school biology textbooks that states that
evolution is only a theory. ³We have Buddhists, Hindus, and others who
could have different views,² said Linda Barrett, the Clayton County
school board chairwoman, who pushed for the change. The state legislatures
in Georgia, New Hampshire, Tennessee, and Ohio each tried this year to pass
measures to  regulate the teaching of evolution in public schools. None of
the bills succeeded.

5"02
EVOLUTION: OHIO MEMBERS OF CONGRESS JOIN THE CREATIONISTS. 
Reps. John Boehner (R-OH) and Steve Chabot (R-OH) jumped into the
Ohio School Board debate on the side of Intelligent Design.  They
quote the Santorum Amendment, which passed overwhelmingly in the
Senate (WN 15 Jun 01), but failed in the House. So it is in some
sort of purgatory.  The driving force behind the School Board
action is Jonathan Wells, a theologian who went for a second PhD
in biology because, "my prayers convinced me that I should devote
my life to destroying Darwinism."
==
Creationism has also surfaced as an issue in Waynesburg,
Pennsylvania.  Jan 2002, the West Green School Board allowed a
creation science advocate to address students during a school
assembly.  According to the Observer-Reporter newspaper, the board
approved the voluntary gathering "after several students and a local
minister spoke in favor of it ..."
==
ISTOOK SCHOOL PRAYER BILL -- Rep.  Ernest Istook (R-OK) is at it
again, wanting to amend the United States Constitution to permit bogus
"student led," majority-rule prayer in public schools.  H.J.  Res.  81
is now in the House Judiciary Committee.  The measure would overturn
important First Amendment protections against intrusive and
inappropriate public prayer.Feb 2002

==
Definitions:
Micro-evolution: evolution for which the evidence is so
overwhelming that even the ICR canıt deny it.
Macro-evolution: evolution which is only proven beyond
reasonable doubt, not beyond unreasonable doubt.
==

The truly ironic thing is that the individuals who protest the improbability
of
the formation of self-replicating macromolecules, which to some degree have
been re-created in laboratories, unquestioningly accept the belief that a
supernatural entity exists which is far more complex than the sum of all of
the complexities in the entire universe, yet this entity requires no
explanation at all.
==
Imperfect engineering is apparent in far more than the human eye. Useless and
inefficient structures abound in the natural world - flightless birds with
hollow bones, as if adapted for flight; blind animals with useless lenses and
retinas; the clumsy "thumb" of the giant Panda; introns; the vestigial pelvis
of pythons and whales (Futuyma, 1983, 198-200). If these structures did not
arise through evolution, they could only have been the work of a deranged or
clumsy creator.

==
The von Danikens, Bermuda Trianglers, UFO buffs, crop circle theorists and
Creations science peddlers are out there relatively alone, scrambling for a
living.  They know what sells and doesnıt sell to the American public.  Dry,
painfully detailed lists of (relatively) obscure facts that scientists
salivate over is a painful bore to most of the public.  The pseudoscientists
have realized that what sells is simplicity and excitement.²God did it² and
³itıs those evil-vested-interest-conspiracies covering up again² are much
easier and quicker to digest than most science books.

http:www.ucmp.berkeley.edufosrecScott.html  Defense of Evolution.
------
A fact is a confirmed observation.
A theory, in science, is a logical construct of facts and hypotheses that
attempts to explain a natural phenomenon.
==
Since there is no way to demonstrate the existence of a supernatural entity,
one of the major premises of creationism is untestable, but must be taken on
faith. Because science only studies the _natural_ world, and avoids discussing
the supernatural, there is no such thing as scientific creationism.
Creationism is inherently non-scientific.
==

ASSOCIATED PRESS. 1996. Only 25% of American adults get passing
grades in science survey. Los Angeles Times, May 24, 1996, p. A22.
--
The governing boards of over 20 scientific societies in the United States
have released statements or resolutions expressing their opposition to
the teaching of creationism and its identification with science.
==
In Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, the School Board adopted a policy in April
of 1994 that requires teachers to read a disclaimer whenever evolution is
presented in textbooks, workbooks, pamphlets or other written material.
The disclaimer states, in part, that the Parish Board of Education
recognizes that the lesson to be presented ³is known as the Scientific
Theory of Evolution and should be presented to inform students of the
scientific concept and not other concept.²
==
In all of the back and forth arguments about the extinct primitive whale
Basilosaurus as a transitional fossils, it is interesting to note that it,
as the fossils of many vertebrates, offers direct evidence that contradicts
the claim that a single, huge flood, as described in the Bible deposited
sedimentary strata around the world.  If the sedimentary strata found
around the world was deposited by a single catastrophic flood within less
then a year, then sedimentation rates would have been so high that the
fossils in these deposits would have had to been immediately buried.
Within Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, the whale fossils occur
within the Yazoo Clay and Moodys Branch Marl of Upper Eocene
contradict this claim.

Descriptions of the remains of Basilosaurus, where detailed enough,
always provide clear evidence that the bones of this extinct whale
were exposed at the bottom of the sea within they came to rest for
a significant, often very long periods of time.  An excellent example
of this evidence is the specimen of Basilosuarus cetoides< (Owen)
excavated at Montgomery Landing, Louisiana along the Red River and
described by Lancaster (1982, 1986).  In the descriptions of the
excavated bones, he describes clear signs of prefossilization breakage,
including curvilinear and splintered fractures, and scratches on the ribs
indicative of tooth marks from predators or scavengers.  Had the skeleton
there would not have been time for scavengers and predators to have
eaten and gnawed on the fossil whale (Lancaster 1982, 1986).

More importantly, the bones of the Basilosaurus found at Montgomery
Landing were encrusted with various marine organisms.  Fossils
encrusting the Basilosaurus bones consisted of 1. three species of
encrusting bryozoans, 2. oysters larger than five centimeters in
diameter, and the barnacle Arcoscalpellum<.  The fossils occur only
on the upper surfaces of the bones.These fossils clearly show that the
remains of this Basilosaurus lay partially above the surface of the sea
bottom for many months, possibly even a year or so (Lancaster 1982, 1986).

This contradicts the high rates of sedimentation required for these
sediments to be the result of a Noachian Flood.  This skeleton, lying within
a 10,000 to 15,000 foot thick sedimentary sequence, shows that a period of
nondeposition equal to length to the Noachian Flood occured within this
thickness osediment that some people claim was all deposited during it.
Innumerable other definable breaks in sedimentation, e.g. fossil soils,
hardgrounds, condensed intervals, and so forth, occur within this
thickness of strata.  Thus, this skeleton is part of an overwhelming
amount of evidence that falsifies any claim that these and other thick
piles of sedimentary were deposited in a Noachian
Flood of less then a years duration.

Vertebrate fossils such as this Basilosaurus skeleton also falsify the
creationist cliams that without rapid, immediate burial, fossils could
not be preserved. Thus, the fact that fossils are preserved at all fails to
be evidence of rapid sediemntation assaociated with a Noachian 
Biblical Flood.  This skeleton clear shows that fossils can be
preserved without immediate burial just as the fact hundred-year
old seashells can found on modern beaches.

[For some basic information on the pertinent geology of the
Jackson Group and Louisiana, see Spearing (1995)]

References Cited

Lancaster, W. C. (1982) A morphological and paleoecological
analysis of the Eocene Archaeoceti of Montgomery Landing,
Louisiana. Masters thesis, Department of Geology, Louisiana
State University, Baton Rouge, LA

Lancaster, W. C. (1986) The taphonomy of an Archaeocete
skeleton and its associated fauna. In Judith A. Schiebout and
William van den Bold
(editors), pp. 119-131, Montgomery Landing Site, Marine
Eocene (Jackson) of Central Louisiana, Proceedings of a
Synposium. Gulf Coast Association of Geolgoical Societies,
Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Spearing, D. (1995) Roadside Geology of Louisiana.
Mountain Press Publishing
Compnay, Missoula, Montana.
==
There are fossil soils and erosional unconformities present in the rock
record that speak of long periods of time between the deposition of strata,
i.e. Reinhardt and Sigleo (1988) and Retallack (1990),Even before evolution
was proposed, geologists recognized that geologic strata contained
unconformities at wide variety of scales from the size of outcrops to the
size of continents.  For example, Wonderly (1987) points out that Morris and
other creationists blatantly overlook the innumerable unconformities that
falsify their claims. In the Four Corners Region, sedimentary strata
outcropping in high cliffs exhibit regional unconformities that can traced
for miles on the surface and down into subsurface using an abundance of data
from oil and gas wells (Van Wagoner et al. 1991).  In addition, Wonderly
(1987) documents a few of the innumerable unconformities that exist within
sedimentary strata as exposed in Grand Canyon and elsewhere in the world.
Finally Dr. Coffin ignores and give no explanation for the buried incised
valleys associated with these unconformities.  These buried valleys often
contain fossil soils and terrestrial river deposits within them that are
described in Dalrymple et al. (1994) and many other papers.

The Shinarump Conglomerate, in the Four Corners area in Momument valley,
consists of multiple beds that are of the same lithology that clearly were
deposited at different periods of time. These are seen in towering columns
which made tha area famous.

The original bottom of the Gulf of Mexico now lies blanketed by over 10 to
12 kilometers of sediment.  In the area of the Mississippi River delta
and Louisiana Continental Shelf the original bottom of the Gulf of Mexico
lies buried beneath over 15 kilometers of sediments.  In comparison, the
present Gulf of Mexico is just over 3 kilometers deep at its deepest and
averages about 1.5 kilometer deep.  The coastal plains of Texas and
Louisiana are parts of the Gulf of Mexico that have been built above sea
level. The bottom of the original Gulf of Mexico beneath what is dry land
ranges from around 1 kilometer to over 9 kilometers in depth, thickening
towards the Gulf of Mexico (Sawyer et al. 1991). The Mississippi Embayment
from Cairo, Illinois south to New Orleans, was an arm of the Gulf of Mexico
that the Mississippi River has filled in.  There is  10 to 15 kilometers
of sediment that currently fill the Gulf of Mexico Basin.Isostatic loading
of the crust by sediments under the Gulf of Mexico is a classic example.
As sediment is deposited on the crust in vast quantities, the crust beneath
it sinks lower and lower into the mantle.  As a result, the bottom of the
Gulf of Mexico subsides as sediments accumulate.  Thus, it would take more
than 3 kilometer of sediment to fill in the present Gulf of Mexico at its
deepest place.  The original bottom of the Gulf of Mexico below the modern
Mississippi Delta has subsided more than 12 kilometers as the Mississippi
River has piled sediments into it (Kolb and Van Lopik 1958).Sediment
compacts, shrinks in volume, as it is buried under kilometers of strata.
Sediment when originally deposited consists of between 40% to 60% pore space
filled with water.  As the sediment is buried, the water is squeezed out,
particles are rearranged, and particles are crushed.  For example, the 0.23
cubic kilometers of sediment deposited by the Mississippi River in one year
would shrink to about 0.16 cubic kilometers as it is buried.  As a result,
the surface subsides creating more space to be filled (Penland et al. 1988).
Again, Coffin (1983) seems clueless about this factor which is well known
to any undergraduate geology student.
Dalrymple, R. W., Boyd, R., and Zaitlin, B. A., 1994, Incised-Valley Systems:
Origin and Sedimentary Sequences. SEPM
Special Publication no. 51, Society for Sedimentary Geology, Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Kolb, C. R. and J. R. Van Lopik (1958) Geology of the
Mississippi River Deltaic Plain, South-Eastern Louisiana.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Technical Report no. 3-483.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Waterways Experimental
Station, Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Penland, S., K. E. Ramsey, and others (1988) Relative Sea
Level Rise and Delta Plain Development in the Terrebone
Parish Region. Louisiana Geological Survey Coastal Geology
Technical Report, no. 4, Louisiana Geological Survey, Baton
Rouge, Louisiana.
Retallack, G. J. (1990) Soils of the Past: An Introduction
to Paleopedology. Unwin Hyman, Boston, MA.
Reading, H. G., ed. (1980) Sedimentary Environments
and Facies. Elsevier, New York, New York.
Reinhardt, J., and Sigleo, W. R. (1988) Paleosols and
Weathering through Geologic Time. Geological Society
of America Special Paper no. 216, Geological Society
of America, Boulder, Colorado.
Sawyer, D. S., R. T. Buffler, and R. H. Pilger (1991) The
crust under the Gulf of Mexico. In A. Salvador, ed., pp. 53-72,
The Gulf of Mexico Basin. The Geology of North
America, Vol. J, Geological Society of America, Boulder, Colorado.
Walker, R. G., and N. P. James, eds (1992) Facies Models:
Response to Sea Level Change, Geological Society of Canada, St. Johns,
Newfoundland.
Wonderly, D. E. (1987) Neglect of Geologic Data:
Sedimentary Strata Compared with Young Earth
Creationist Writings. Interdisciplinary Biblical
Research Institute, Hatfield, Pennsylvania.
Van Wagoner, J. C., Nummerdal, D., Jones, C. R., Taylor,
D. R., Jennette, and Riley, G. W. (1991) Sequence Stratigraphy
Applications to Shelf Sandstone Reservoirs: Outcrop to
Subsurface Examples. AAPG Field Conference, September
21-28, 1991. American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Data collected by  littlejo@vnet.net (Keith Littleton)
==
Precambrian pollen  was reported from the Grand Canyon. It is utterly
pristine (usually there is chemical alteration of the grains in older
rocks, and the spongey interior of the sacci are first to go -- but are
still perfecty preserved in these examples), very low thermal maturity (so
low that it looks modern, and completely inconsistent with other in situ
organic material in these rocks, like _Chuaria_), and the grains are fully
3-dimensional, despite the fact that everything else from these rocks is
flat as a pancake (as it should be, and as _Chuaria_ is).  The pollen
found is very obviously introduced modern pine pollen that seeped along
cracks in the outcrop.  This is commonly observed in many palynological
samples if you do not take careful precautions when collecting and
preparing them.  I see the odd modern pine pollen grain in my samples from
time to time.  There is no difficulty distinguishing it from the in situ
material because of its preservational state.  The only time you would
have difficulty is if the sample you were looking at was very young itself.
Even then you might be able to tell, because sometimes the remains of the
pollen protoplasm are still present._Chuaria_, a large, weird, organic,
circular disk of uncertain affinities (probably algal), which, strangely
enough, is  restricted to the Precambrian.  Even the ³very primitive²
stuff has a stratgraphic distribution.(Andrew MacRae)
==
 
References
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Bower, Bruce, 1995, ³Africaıs ancient Cultural Roots,²
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Chamberlain, A.T., 1991, ³A Chronological Framework for Human
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Huang, Wanpo et al, 1995. ³Early Homo and associated artefacts from Asia²,
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Pictorial Legacy,² Science, p 1525-1530
-----
³Origin By Design² by Harold Coffin (Review and Harold Publishing
Assosiation, Hagerstown MD, 21740) gives a  creationist perspective
==
Anti-Evolution : A Readerıs Guide to Writings Before and After
Darwin ~  Tom McIver  1992

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Der Zee, William R. Van Der Zee  Paperback  Published  1996

The Battle of Beginnings : Why Neither Side Is Winning the
Creation-Evolution Debate
Delvin Lee Ratzsch, Del Ratzsch  1996

Biology Through the Eyes of Faith  Richard T. Wright  1989

Creation and Evolution : Rethinking the Evidence from Science and the
Bible ~  Alan Hayward 1995

Cult Archaeology & Creationism : Understanding Pseudoscientific Beliefs
About the Past  Francis B. Harrold (Editor), Raymond A. Eve (Editor)  1995

Dictionary of Science and Creationism  Ronald L. Ecker, Martin Gardner  1990

Early Earth John C. Whitcomb 1987

How to Read the World : Creation in Evolution Christian Montenant, et al 1985

The Mythmakerıs Magic : Behind the Illusion of ŒCreation ScienceıDelos B.
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Science and Creationism  Ashley Montagu (Editor)  1984

Science and Earth History : The EvolutionCreation Controversy Arthur N.
Strahler  1988 ..

Unlocking the Mysteries of Creation Vol 1   Dennis R. Petersen 1990

What Is Creation Science  Henry Madison Morris, Gary E. Parker 1996

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The Antievolution Pamphlets of Harry Rimmer (Creationism in

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The Antievolution Pamphlets of William Bell Riley (Creationism in
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The Antievolution Works of Arthur I. Brown (Creationism in
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_Faith, Reason, and Earth History_, by Leonard Brand
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The Generations of Adam  Eric Rhode  1990

Godıs Own Scientists :Creationists in a Secular World Christopher P. Toumey
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Adam and Evolution : A Scientific Critique of Neo-Darwinism   Michael
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Biology, Zoology, and Genetics : Evolution Model Vs. Creation Model
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(Editor)  1983

Creationist Movement in Modern America (Social Movements Past and Present
Series) Raymond A. Eve, Francis B. Harrold  1990

Crystal River Flowing : Adventures in Co-Creation  Marilynn Hughes  1993
Cult Archaeology and Creationism : Understanding  Pseudoscientific Beliefs

About the Past  Francis B. Harrold, Raymond A. Eve (Editor)  1987

Evolutionists Confront Creationists (Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting
of the Pacific Division, American Association for the Advancement of Scie)
Frank Awbrey (Editor)  1984

Genesis Answer : Scientist Testament for Divine Creation  William Lee
Stokes 1984

Is God a Creationist? : The Religious Case Against  Creation-Science
Roland Mushat Frye (Editor) Charles Scribner's Sons, 1983

Origin Science : A Proposal for the Creation-Evolution Controversy
Norman L. Geisler,J. Kerby Anderson  1987

Science and Creation : Geological, Theological, and Educational
Perspectives (Aaas Series on Issues in Science and Technology) Robert W.
Hanson (Editor) 1986

Sister Earth : Ecology and the Spirit  Helder Camara  Published 1990
What Is Darwinism? : And Other Writings on Science and Religion
C. Hodge  1994
==
Mayr, _The Growth of Biological Thought_, , 1982 

"The discovery of extinct animals was not so much directly in conflict 
with the Bible as with the somewhat peculiar concept of God held in the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from which natural theology 
arises. According to the principle of plenitude, adhered to by 
most of the leading thinkers of the period but particularly by Leibniz, 
God in his ampleness of mind had surely created any creature that was 
possible. But God in his benevolence could not possibly permit any of 
his creatures to become extinct. The fossil remains of seemingly extinct 
organisms thus posed a real dilemma for which various solutions were 
proposed..."
==
==
³The ice sheet ³archive² was created as snow fell over Greenland year after
year, trapping the gases, chemicals, and dust of the atmosphere, and
eventually compressing into ice. The GISP2 core, along with a complementary
core drilled by the European Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP), spans more
than 100,000 years of climate history.²
For details, see: http:www.geo.nsf.govadgeopresspr9456.htm
There are now cores from Antarctica with 420,000 yearly layers.
==
Creationism: a religious dogma composed of massive ignorance and
incredible arrogance.
Creationist: (1) One who follows creationism. (2) A moron. (3) A
person incapable of doing math. (4) A liar.
==
Consider this question surrounding the argument from design.
The argument from design goes something like this: Life exhibits an
inexplicable level of contrivance so as to produce the appearance of an
artificial arrangement or development that cannot explained by our current
understanding of biological or evolutionary processes.  Being that life
exhibits these design elements one may draw a logical analogy between them
and similar contrivances such as man-made artifacts.  This premise being
accepted, the logical inference is that there must be an "artifact maker" or
designer i.e. God to account for the observed design.
If we are to accept, for the purpose of argument that nature exhibits this
sort of design, we are accepting a specific proposition.  It is presumed
that the theist is employing the meaning of "design" in a traditional sense
using analogy to illustrate a specific idea.  Design in this case, or the
artifacts that are designed, may be defined as contrivances or the
employment of means to achieve a goal, purpose or specific end.  
My question is this, "How is the attribute of omnipotence, often assigned to
the designer, compatible with the design argument"?
The necessity for contrivance or the need for employing specific means is in
fact a direct consequence of the limitation of power.  The very use of means
implies that the means themselves have an efficacy to purpose that the
direct action of  the one who employs them does not.  Means are only
employed when direct action is powerless to achieve the ends.  That which is
omnipotent has no need of recourse to means or contrivance to attain a
purpose or end.  There can be no obstacles to omnipotence and it should be
sufficient to produce any effect directly.  And, if the employment of means
is in itself a sign of limited power, how much more so the is the careful
and skillful application of the sublime contrivance which we see displayed
in living organisms?
==
Imagine you're walking down a beach and find a watch that has 50 gears,
10 of them necessary to perform it's function and 40 just taking up space,
turning for no reason. Wouldn't you say that the watchmaker is an
incompetent designer?   A theist might say that we don't know, maybe
those 40 gears do something that we can't know about, but this is
where analogy breaks down,
==
There are dinosaur footprints, in the American Southwest and Argentina,
that are vertical, rather than horizontal. How did these footprints form?
If it was during the flood, the mud would have been soft while it was
tilted up and the soft mud would have run back down and wiped out
the footprints. Just another point against a flood. There are dinosaur
footprints in the lower Cretaceous limestone formations in Glen Rose Texas.
The Dec 1997 Scientific American has a major article on these. There are
25 separate layers at the same Paluxy site site, with sediments from
dry land between them. Dec 1997 Sci Am
==
Carl Baugh(Glen Rose creationist) apparently never got one degree he claims
to have, and received his PhD from a one room farm house, Patriot University.
Hovind got his Dr.degree there too.
==
http:members.aol.compaluxy2paluxy.htm    Dino tracks
==
Fernley Nevada: Diatomite deposits tens upon tens of meters deep.  Millions
of layers.  Many millions of layers of alternating dark and light diatomite.
Thousands of volcanic ash deposits interspersed among the diatomite layers.
Countless fish and bird coprolites in each diatomite layer.  Countless fish
skeletons in each layer.  Each layer nearly perfectly flat and smooth.
==
There are places in the genome where mistakes occurred, an error in
copying the genes, that has inactivated them.
 ³We and some of our primate relatives have exactly the same mistakes
in exactly the same place,² Miller said. ³If our ancestors were not the same,
that would not happen. It would have been random.
³This is a very clear indication that the copying error occurred in a early
common ancestor.²
==
Popular support for creationism remains high in the United States; but
the Kansas school board election suggests that when the issue comes under
close scrutiny, evolution and hard science standards win the day.
Roper, Gallup and other surveys suggest that nearly 40% of Americans
embrace a form of so-called ³theistic evolution,² where evolutionary
processes taking place over millions of years are ³guided² by a deity.
About 45% believe that a god -- usually the Judeo-Christian flavor --
created the universe and human beings ³pretty much in (their) present
form at one time or another within the past 10,000,² according to
Dr. George Bishop of the University of Cincinnati.
³Thatıs a lot of people,² Bishop when he announced his findings.
Only about 10% of the population subscribe to an evolutionary account
which operates on natural scientific principles, without the
intervention of divine guidance.
Adding to the controversy is a Gallup Poll finding
which suggest that about one-third of Americans believe, ³The Bible is
the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word.²
Scientists are less-likely to search for supernatural explanation than
the general population.  Only about 5% of scientists subscribe to a
form of literalist, Biblical accounts regarding the origin of life and
the universe.  Fully 55% of scientists hold to a strict evolutionary
explanation, one that omits any reference to or need for a deity.
This may account, in part, for the ³populist backlash² against
teaching what are admittedly complicated scientific facts in the
classroom.  It also suggests that despite yesterdayıs victory in
Kansas, the fight over evolution and creationism is far from over.
==
The Meister ³track² with the trilobite was refuted long ago.  For the
details on why, see Strahler 1987, p. 459-460.  Strahler quotes footprint
expert, Professor Stokes:
My judgement was that since the specimen does not display an elevated rim,
and that it seemed impossible to check any additional criteria in the field,
that the finders should not publish their find as a proven footprint but
should at least leave open the possibility that it might be something else,
a natural break or spall, for example.  This was not what Meister and his
followers wanted to hear; they already had opinions favorable to their
theory [sic, hypothesis] from a variety of media people, cobblers, ministers
and interested neighbors. Stokes went on to criticize the ³footprint²
interpretation of the Meister rock in a 1986 article in the ³Journal of
Geological Education,²  v. 34, p.187-190.
Strahler goes on and states that the Meister ³print² is EVEN doubted by
several creationists, including Robert E. Kofahl and Kelly L. Seagraves
( The Creation Explanation, 1975, p. 54).  Also see: Ernest C. Conrad, 1981,
³Tripping Over a Trilobite: A Study of the Meister Tracks.
³CreationEvolution², vol. 2, no. 4, p. 30-33.

The author (apparently Robert T. Weaver, but it looks like Kent
Hovind wrote most of it) also talks about the infamous ³Meister
footprint², which is a supposed ³sandal print² in Cambrian,
trilobite-bearing strata.  The author *claims* ³Many geologists
refuse to look at the fossil.  They say ³It canıt be true! We donıt
want to see it!²³  This is utterly false.  Refer to:

Stokes, W.L., 1986.  Alleged human footprint from Middle
Cambrian strata, Millard County, Utah. Journal of Geological
Education, v.34, p.187-190.

These specimens have been looked at by various people.
Published articles include Stokes (1973, 1986), Conrad
(1981), and  Strahler (1987).  

  The fracture of the supposed footprint is defined by a bedding
plane in the middle and concentric fractures along the edge of the
block of shale where weathering has penetrated, and chemically altered the
rock. Basically, the gross shape is determined by the geometry of the
intersecting fractures defining the blocks of shale.  The weathering
forms concentric zones of alteration known as leisegang rings.  Stokes
shows pictures of all sorts of other peculiar and obviously non-footprint
shapes with similar features.

Having been to Antelope Springs and hunted trilobites there,
I can attested to the fact that such weathering features identical
in color and texture to the so-called Meister tracks can found
on just about every piece of Wheeler Shale that a person splits
in search of trilobites.  Given that thousands of fossil hunters
have split hundreds of thousands of layers of shale, a person
would expect that one weathering featuring with the vague
outline resembling a footprint or sandle track would be found.
The only difference between the so-called ³Meister track² and
the other weathering features is shape which is obviously
related to fractures in the shale as Stokes (1973, 1986)
demonstrates.

Since itıs not left and right, but interconnecting pieces - yes.
How long was the trilobite there before the alleged
footprints were made?
Since this not a footprint, this question really doesnıt have
an answer.  The weathering feature developed only after the
shale was exposed to weathering.  Thus, the trilobites are
likely more than 5,000 million years older than the feature.

Do you expect people to believe every imprint that is longer
than it is wide, is a footprint?

When were shoes first invented?
More than 500 million years after the Wheeler Shale was
deposited at the bottom of a fairly part of a cratonic sea.
We know that it was the bottom of the ocean, not from
plate tectonics as people who are rather clueless about what
they talking about claim, but because of the marine fossils,
sedimentology, and the stratigraphy of the deposits.

See Stokes (1973, 1986), Conrad (1981), and  Strahler
(1987) for such details.

For interested parties, here is a listing of the primary citations
about these psuedofootprints.

Noncreationist  Conventional Citations

Conrad, Ernest C (1981) Tripping over a Trilobite: a Study
of the Meister Tracks. CreationEvolution. vol. 4, pp. 30-33.

Stokes, William Lee (1973) Geological Specimen Rejuvenates
Old Controversy. Dialogue: a Journal of Mormon Thought.
vol. 8, no. 3-4, pp. 139, 141.

Stokes, William Lee (1986) Alleged Human Footprint from
Middle Cambrian Strata, Milliard County, Utah. Journal of
Geological Education. vol. 34, pp. 187-190.

Strahler, Arthur N (1987) Chapter 48 Out-Of-Order Fossils.
Science and Earth History-The EvolutionCreation Controversy.
Prometheus Books, Buffalo, New York. pp. 459-472.

Creationist Citations

Burdick, Clifford (1983) The Continuing Controversy in Natural
Sciences. Bible Science Newsletter. vol. 21, no. 8, p. 1.

Cook, Melvin A (1970) William J. Meister Discovery of
Human Footprints with Trilobites in a Cambrian Formation
 of Western Utah. Why Not Creationism. Walter E.
Lammerts, ed. Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing
Company, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, pp. 185-186.

Heyes, Gerald B (1987) A Interview with Geologist Clifford
Burdick. Creation Ex Nihilo. vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 9-12.  (talks
about sandal print at end of article).

Meister, William S., Sr (1970) Discovery of Trilobite Fossils
in Shod Footprint of Human in ³Trilobite Beds²- A Cambrian
Formation - Antelope Springs, Utah. Why Not Creationism.
Walter E. Lammerts, ed. Presbyterian and Reformed
Publishing Company, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, pp. 186-193.

The piece of yellow journalism that started this all was:

Searle, Don. 1967. Puzzling Fossils Unearthed.
The Deseret News, June 13, 1967, Deseret, Utah, p. 14A.
==
In Tennessee, the Senate on March 27, 1996 voted down a bill that would have
allowed schools to fire any teacher who teaches evolution as fact; the bill
had the approval of both the Senate and House Education Committees.
A House amendment to the bill had included an ³equal time² proposal;
a Senate amendment included a redefinition of evolution as an ³unproven
belief that random, undirected forces produced a world of living things.²
The Tennessee law, introduced by Tommy Burks, a Democratic state senator,
would have allowed districts to fire teachers who present evolution as fact
rather than theory.
In March of 1996, the Tennessee legislature debated and ultimately rejected
a requirement that ³No teacher or administrator in a local education agency
shall teach the theory of evolution except as a scientific theory. Any
teacher or administrator teaching such theory as fact commits
insubordination.... (Tennessee HB 2972SB 3229, 1996)

(http:www.edweek.orgew199627tenn.h15)
The education committee of the Tennessee Senate last week approved a
revised bill that would allow public school districts to fire teachers who
teach evolution as fact.  The revision of an earlier bill attempts to
clarify what forms or aspects of evolution can and cannot be presented as
fact.  The full Senate had sent the previous version of the bill back to
the committee earlier this month. The debate over the bill brought national
attention, with inevitable comparisons to the stateıs famous ³monkey trial²
more than 70 years ago. (See Education Week, March 13, 1996.) A House version
of the bill is stalled in committee pending Senate action.
The bill may face serious legal problems as well. It has a ³religious, not
a secular purpose,² and thus would not pass constitutional muster, State
Attorney General Charles W. Burson wrote in a letter to the billıs sponsor,
Democratic Sen.  Tommy Burks.
==
It seems to me that the fundamentalists just has to make one leap (ie they
claim the literal authority of the bible and reject any science that
contradicts it). Having done that they don't have to shift their position again
(however ludicrous it might be). But the theistic evolutionists appear to get
the worst of both worlds. They reject the literal bible in order to be able to
maintain some respect with science but they then have to add in all sorts of
qualifications like God guiding the natural processes.  They therefore loose
any real appeal to the bible as a literal authority, but they also do not gain
scientific authenticity. Also, if they attach their theology to a particular
model of science of a particular period, they must modify their position if
that particular version is later modified or replaced by scientific progress.
The creationist uses his appeal to the supernatural to override anything that
science says. It's bold but futile. The theistic evolutionist also makes an
appeal to the supernatural but continually changes his position to avoid
being seen as opposing science. The result is that no one knows what his
supernatural beliefs really are.  His arguments are fire-proof but pretty
contentless.

 Whenever a new scientific discovery has threatened to overturn church
dogma, there has always been some attempt to undermine the discovery.
But in the end, the most beneficial strategy has always been to change
the dogma, so that it is no longer threatened, like making the dogma symbolic
rather than literal. After all, anything can symbolize anything.
==
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND CREATIONISM. 1984. Science and creationism.
A view from the National Academy of Sciences. National Academy Press,
Washington, DC. 28pp.

DENTON, M. 1985.Evolution, a theory in crisis. Adler and Adler, Publishers,
Inc., Bethesda, MD, 368 pp.
Michael Denton is a PHD in molecular biology from New Zealand.
The MS of this book was prepared inthe 1970s and is now more than 20 years old.
The book was also written before the explosion in comparative DNA studies
which has revealed the closeness of all life in DNA sequence space, also
developmental studies increasingly suggest that the basic body plans of all
metazoans can be generated by differential deployment of the Hox genes etc and
are far closer than anyone would have expected in 1980.

Not By Chance, SC; Lee M. Spetner, P.h.d., Lee M. Spetner

Bones of Contention : A Creationist Assessment of the Human  Fossils;
Marvin L. Lubenow

Natureıs Destiny : How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe;
Michael Denton

GILLIS, A.M. 1994. Keeping creationism out of the classroom. Bioscience
44(10):650-656.

GOLDMAN, A.L. 1991. Portrait of religion in U.S. holds dozens of surprises.
New York Times, April 10, 1991, p. a 1.

HUNTER, J.D. 1983. American evangelicalism: conservative religion and the
quandary of modernity. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, N.J.

MARSDEN, G. M. 1987 Evangelical and fundamental Christianity. In M. Eliade,
(ed.), The Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 5, pp 190-197. Macmillan:
New York.

MATSUMURA, M. 1995. Voices for evolution. National Center for Science
Education, Berkeley, CA.

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL. 1996. National science education standards.
National Academy Press, Washington, DC. 262 pp.

PETIT, C. 1996. Americans flunk science basics. San Francisco Chronicle,
May 24, 1996, p. A1.

PROJECT 2061. 1993. Benchmarks for Science Literacy. Oxford University
Press, New York.

SCOTT, E.C. 1994. The Struggle for the schools. Natural History, July, 1994,
p. 10, 12, 13.

1995. Science and Christianity are compatible -- with some compromises.
The Scientist. January 9, 1995, p. 12.

1996. Monkey business. Creationism regroups to expel evolution from the
classroom. The Sciences. JanuaryFebruary, 1996, p. 20-25.
==
Flood problems
Explain why the lowest layers contain *no* animals or plants, but only
bacteria. The next layers contain only marine animals and algae.  The next
layers contain primitive insects, spore-producing land plants, and the
earliest fish.  The next layers contain lycopsid trees, the oldest land
vertebrates, flying insects, etc. In *NONE* of these early layers are there
any birds, ants, mammals, snakes, flowers, conifers, etc.  If the taxa were
all contemporary as you claim, there would not be the kind of pattern I
described.
==
It would take about .5 billion cubic miles of water to cover the earth to
a depth of 10k-20k feet (rough size of the high points on earth). It rained
for 960 hrs (40 days and nights). This would be in the neighborhood of
15 fthr!
==
Anti-Hovind http:www.talkorigins.orgfaqsmatson-vs-hovind.html
This file is also in the glk collection.
Kent Hovind uses the title of Dr. Kent Hovind, implying that he is a
scientist. His PhD ³degree² was awarded by Patriot University, which is
located in the College Heights Baptist Church in Alamosa, Colorado.
There is no faculty, no actual casework, and they offer credit for ³life
experience and ministry evaluation.² Classes can be paid for with a
monthly freewill offering. Each course is designed  to be completed in 2
to 4 weeks. It is accredited only by the American Accreditation
Association of Theological Institutions. Hovindıs  ³PhD²  is actually a
Doctorate in Christian Education, and a totally worthless one at that.
==
First-Century Jewish Scholars

The earliest scholars to record their thoughts about the six days of
creation were Jews in the first century AD-- Philo (c 20 BC-AD 45) and
Josephus (AD 37-103).

Philo expressed the notion that God created everything instantaneously
and that the six days were figurative, a metaphor for order and
completeness:
       He [Moses] says that in six days the world was created, not that
       its Maker required a length of time for His work, for we must think
       of God as doing all things simultaneously, remembering that ³all²
       includes with the commands which He issues the thought behind them.
       Six days are mentioned because for the things coming into existence
       there was need of order.4

Philo amplified his reasoning in a later work:
       It is quite foolish to think that the world was created in six days
       or in a space of time at all.  Why?  Because every period of time
       is a series of days and nights, and these can only be made such by
       the movement of the sun as it goes over and under the earth; but
       the sun is a part of heaven, so that time is confessedly more
       recent than the world.  It would therefore be correct to say that
       the world was not made in time, but that time was formed by means
       of the world, for it was heavenıs movement that was the index of
       the nature of time.  When, then, Moses says, ³He finished His work
       on the sixth day,² we must understand him to be adducing not a
       quantity of days, but a perfect number, namely six.5

Josephus, in writing a survey of the Genesis creation days, noted the
need to explain the meaning of the expression ³one day² and promised to
offer an explanation,6 but he never fulfilled his promise.  His comments
suggest that he did not find this expression either easy or
straightforward to interpret.

Second-Century Christian Scholars

The earliest known Christian writings on the subject of the creation
time frame date to the second century.  Justin Martyr (c AD 100-166) and
Irenaeus (c AD 130-200) used Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8 as the support
for their view that the creation days were each a thousand years long.7,
8

Describing the events of the sixth creation day, Irenaeus expresses the
reason behind his interpretation:
       Thus, then, in the day they did eat, in the same did they die.
       .  For it is said, ³There was made in the evening, and there was
       made in the morning one day.²  Now in this same day that they did
       eat, in that also did they die.  . . . On one and the same day on
       which they ate they also died (for it is one day of creation). . .
       .  He (Adam) did not overstep the thousand years, but died within
       their limit . . . for since ³a day of the Lord is as a thousand
       years,² he did not overstep the thousand years, but died within
       them.9

Third-Century Christian Scholars

Hippolytus (c AD 170-236), of the late second and early third centuries,
apparently wrote more extensively than others on the Genesis creation
days, but most of these writings have been lost.  We learn from the
writings of Ambrose (c AD 340-397), however, that Hippolytus, like
Irenaeus, interpreted the days as a thousand years each.

Clement of Alexandria (c AD 150-220) echoed Philoıs belief that the
Genesis creation days were not literal, twenty-four-hour days.10, 11  He
claimed that the creation days communicated the order and priority of
created things but not the time.  As he understood it, creation could
not take place in time since ³time was born along with things which
exist.²12

Origen (c AD 185-254) taught that in approaching certain difficulties in
Scripture we should seek a spiritual meaning, not always a literal one.
In the six creation days of Genesis he saw just such a difficulty.13, 14

He claims that time as we mark it did not exist until the fourth day.
Hence, for him, at least the first three creation days could not
possibly have been twenty-four-hour days:
       The text said that ³there was evening and there was morning,² it
       did not say: ³the first day,² but said, ³one day.²  It is because
       there was not yet time before the world existed.  But time begins
       to exist with the following days.15

       Now what man of intelligence will believe that the first, and the
       second, and the third day, and the evening and the morning existed
       without the sun, moon, and stars?16

Neither could the seventh day be twenty-four hours, according to Origen.
He saw the six Genesis creation days as representing the time that men
work on the earth (the period of human history) while the seventh day
represents the time between the creation of the world and its extinction
at the ascension of all the righteous:
       He [Celsus] knows nothing of the day of the Sabbath and rest of
       God, which follows the completion of the worldıs creation, and
       which lasts during the duration of the world, and in which all
       those will keep festival with God who have done all their works in
       their six days, and who, because they have omitted none of their
       duties will ascend to the contemplation (of Celestial things) and
       to the assembly of righteous and blessed beings.17

Writing later in the third century, Lactantius (c AD 250-325),
Victorinus of Pettau, and Methodius of Olympus, all concurred with
Justin Martyrıs and Irenaeusı view of the creation days as thousand-year
epochs.18, 19, 20

Augustineıs Analysis

Among all the early leaders of the Christian church, no one penned a
more extensive analysis of the creation days than Augustine (AD
354-430).  In The City of God, Augustine wrote, ³As for these Œdays,ı it
is difficult, perhaps impossible to think-- let alone explain in words--
what they mean.²21  In The Literal Meaning of Genesis, he added, ³But at
least we know that it [the Genesis creation day] is different from the
ordinary day with which we are familiar.²22  Elsewhere in that book he
made this comment:
       Seven days by our reckoning after the model of the days of
       creation, make up a week.  By the passage of such weeks time rolls
       on, and in these weeks one day is constituted by the course of the
       sun from its rising to its setting; but we must bear in mind that
       these days indeed recall the days of creation, but without in any
       way being really similar to them.23

Augustine took the evenings and mornings of the Genesis creation days in
a figurative sense.  He concluded that the evening of each creation day
referred to the occasion when the angels gazed down on the created
things after they contemplated the Creator, and that the morning
referred to the occasion when they rose up from their knowledge of the
created things to praise the Creator.24

In Confessions Augustine notes that for the seventh day Genesis makes no
mention of an evening and a morning.  From this omission he deduced God
sanctified the seventh day, making it an epoch extending onward into
eternity.25

Other Fourth-Century Scholars

Eusebius, a bishop of Caesarea (c AD 260-340), between AD 314 and 316
wrote a lengthy apologetic work, Preparation for the Gospel, which he
arranged into fifteen books.  In books I-VI he attacked the creation
doctrines of the Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians, Egyptians, and pagans. In
book VII he devoted six pages to explaining the Genesis creation
account.  However, nowhere in all this discussion does Eusebius ever
address the date for the creation of the universe or the earth or the
length of the Genesis creation days.  Evidently, he was aware,
nonetheless, that the Hebrew word for day, yÙm, could refer to a time
scale longer than twenty-four hours since he quotes Genesis 2:4 thusly:
       This is the book of the generation of heaven and earth, in the day
       that God made the heaven and the earth, and all the things that are
       therein.26 (emphasis added)

In book XI Eusebius again brings up the subject of the events of
creation but neglects any mention of the timing or the time scale for
the creation events, other than to state that there was a definite point
of beginning and to quote Genesis 2:4 as he did in book VII.27

Basil (c AD 330-379), a bishop of Caesarea, wrote nine homilies on the
first chapter of Genesis.  He hints at the difficulty of discovering the
date for the universeıs creation:
       You may know the epoch when the formation of the world began, if,
       ascending into the past, you endeavour to discover the first day.
       You will thus find what was the first movement of time.28

In reference to the first Genesis creation day Basil poses the question,
³Why does Scripture say Œone dayı not Œthe first dayı?² His response:
       The beginning of time is called ³one day² rather than ³the first
       day,² it is because Scripture wishes to establish its relationship
       with eternity.  It was, in reality, fit and natural to call ³one²
       the day whose character is to be one wholly separated and isolated
       from all the others.  If Scripture speaks to us of many ages,
       saying everywhere, ³age of age, and ages of ages,² we do not see it
       enumerate them as first, second, and third.  It follows that we are
       hereby shown not so much limits, ends, and succession of ages, as
       distinctions between various states and modes of action.29

In the remainder of his homilies on the first chapter of Genesis, Basil
shifts attention away from the timing of creation to the actions of
Godıs creating-- that is, to the how and what of His creation.

Ambrose (c AD 340-397), a bishop of Milan, is the early church leader
most frequently quoted as supporting the interpretation of the six
Genesis creation days as a 144-hour period.  Among early church leaders
Ambrose holds the record, by far, for commentary on the six creation
days.  But in his 280-page homily on the six days of creation he devotes
less than a page to the discussion of the length of the creation days.
Even then, he does not make an explicit statement as to their length.
He appears to imply, though, that the creation days are twenty-four-hour
periods:
       Scripture established a law that twenty-four hours, including both
       day and night, should be given the name of day only, as if one were
       to say the length of one day is twenty-four hours in extent. 
       The nights in this reckoning are considered to be component parts
       of the days that are counted.  Therefore, just as there is a single
       revolution of time, so there is but one day.30

However, in the following sentence Ambrose-- perhaps thinking about
Genesis 2:4 where the Hebrew word for ³day,² yÙm, refers to the entire
creation week-- acknowledges:
       There are many who call even a week one day, because it returns to
       itself, just as one day does, and one might say seven times
       revolves back on itself.31

One sentence later, he refers to yomıs possible definition as an era or
epoch:
Hence, Scripture appeals at times of an age of the world.
He follows this acknowledgment with the examples of the ³day of the
Lord² and the ³eternal day of reward² in the new creation.  Thus, it is
not clear how old Ambrose deemed the universe and the earth to be.

Reactions to the Historical Positions
On recent occasions I have met with a jarring reaction to this evidence
that the early church fathers were not monolithically aligned in their
interpretation of the Genesis creation as a 144-hour time period.  That
reaction has two prongs: The first is an accusation of syncretism or
compromise with Greek philosophy; the second, a dismissal of some early
scholarsı entire body of work because of ³error² in some point of
doctrine.

Letıs deal with that first prong.  Some Greek philosophers posited the
notion that the cosmos is eternal, with no beginning or ending.  Each of
the early Christian leaders quoted above, whether he saw the creation
days as long or short, expressed belief that God created the heavens and
the earth a finite time ago-- a belief clearly and directly at odds with
Greek thought.  Moreover, far from embracing or accommodating Greek
philosophy, Irenaeus and others were scathing in their attacks on it.

And what about the character of these historical figures?  Does the
³compromiser² label fit men who devoted their lives to refuting false
teachers within the church and to challenging secular societyıs morals,
practices, and teachings?  Some, like Justin, Irenaeus, and Origen, were
either martyred or tortured for their faith in Jesus Christ.

As for the second prong, it grows dull in the light of realistic
perspective.  Consider the limitations under which they labored--
limitations on resources, communications, travel, and so on.  They lived
and worked during the formative years of the church, most of them before
the universal recognition of the New Testament canon.  They were
attempting to discern and articulate the theological and practical
implications of what Christ had taught and what the apostles had written
and to integrate all this with what they knew of the Old Testament
Scriptures.  How unfair to demand of them what even modern scholars with
all our resources are incapable of producing-- doctrinal perfection!

Fair Conclusions

The time scale of creation, including the length of a creation day,
appears to have been something less than a pivotal issue among the early
leaders of Christianity.  It received little attention compared with
such matters as the triune nature of the Godhead, the deity of Christ,
or the means, methods, and products of Godıs creation.

A majority of those who wrote on the subject rejected the concrete
interpretation of the Genesis creation days as six consecutive
twenty-four-hour periods.  However, since so many of the writings of the
early Christian leaders have been lost, care must be used in drawing any
conclusions based on statistics.

What may be more significant is that these early Christian authors are
free of the charge of todayıs modern scientific bias.  They wrote long
before astronomical, geological, and paleontological evidences for the
antiquity of the universe, of the earth, and of life existed.

Perhaps most significant is that nearly all of the key figures
acknowledged that the length of the Genesis creation days presented a
challenge to their understanding and interpretation.  Those who did not,
implied the same in their studious avoidance of any specific comment on
the subject.

For the most part the early church leaders expressed their views
tentatively.  There is no indication that they sharply debated the
issue.  Instead they seem to have been tolerant of diverse views.

References: Chapter Two: Interpretations of Early Church Leaders

1.  Taylor, Ian T., In the Minds of Men: Darwin and the New World Order
       (Toronto: TFE Publishing, 1984), pages 283-285.

2.  Morris, Henry, ³The Compromise Road,² Impact 177 (El Cajon, CA:
       Institute for Creation Research, March 1988), page ii.

3.  DeYoung, Donald B., ³Christianity and the Age of the Earth,² Grace
       Theological Journal 4.2 (1983), page 298.

4.  Philo, Judaeus of Alexandria, ³De Opificio Mundi² (On the Account of
       the Worldıs Creation Given by Moses), Philo, vol.1, trans. F. H.
       Colson and G. H. Whitaker (London: William Heinemann and Cambridge,
       MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), page 13.

5.  Philo, Judaeus of Alexandria, ³Legum Allegoria² (Allegorical
       Interpretations of Genesis II., III., Book I, section 2), in Philo,
       vol.1, pages 146-149.

6.  Josephus, Flavius, ³The Antiquities of the Jews,² The Life and Works
       of Flavius Josephus, trans. William Whiston (Philadelphia: John C.
       Winston, 1957), page 32.

7.  Justin Martyr, ³Dialogue With Trypho, chapter 81,² Writings of Saint
       Justin Martyr, in The Fathers of the Church, vol.6, Ludwig Schopp,
       editorial director (New York: Christian Heritage, 1948), pages
       277-278.

8.  Irenaeus, ³Against Heresies,² Book V, Chapter XXIII, Section 2, The
       Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol.1, ed. Alexander Roberts and James
       Donaldson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1981), pages 551-552.

9.  Irenaeus, pages 551-552.

10.  Clement of Alexandria, ³The Stromata, Book VI², Clement
       ofAlexandria: A Study in Christian Platonism and Gnosticism, by
       Salvatore R. C. Lilla (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971),
       pages 198-199.

11.  Clement of Alexandria, ³The Stromata, Book VI, Chapter XVI,² The
       Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol.11, pages 512-514.

12.  Clement of Alexandria, page 513.

13.  Origen, Origen on First Principles, Book IV, Chapters I and II,
       trans. G. W. Bufterworth, introduction by Herrri De Lubac (New
       York: Harper Torchbooks, Harper and Row, 1966), pages 277-278.

14.  Origen, ³Against Celsus,² Book VI, Chapter LX, in The Ante-Nicene
       Fathers, vol. IV, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Grand
       Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979), pages 600-601.

15.  Origen, ³Hornilies on Genesis and Exodus,² trans. Ronald E. Heine,
       The Fathers of the Church, vol.71, Hermigild DressIer, editorial
       director (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press,
       1982), page 48.

16.  Origen, Origen on First Principles, Book IV, Chapter III, page 288.

17.  Origen, ³Against Celsus,² Book VI, Chapter LXI, in The Ante-Nicene
       Fathers, vol. IV, page 601.

18.  Lactantius, ³The Divine Institutes, Book VII, Chapter XIV,² in The
       AnteNicene Fathers, vol. VII, page 211.

19.  Victorinus of Pettau, ³The Created World, Book VI,² in The
       Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. VII, page 342.

20.  Methodius of Olympus, ³Fragment,² in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol.
       VI, page 310.

21.  Augustinus, Aurelius, Bishop of Hippo, ³The City of God, Book XI,
       Chapter 6,² in The Fathers of the Church, vol.14, Roy Joseph
       Defferrari, editorial director (New York: Fathers of the Church,
       Inc., 1952), page