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