------------------------------------------------------------------------

Methods of dating the earth are inaccurate.

Exactly what is meant by "inaccurate" leaves much to be desired. Please see
the August 1989 Scientific American article on the Age of the Earth. (page
90, by Lawrence Badash, "The Age-of-the-Earth Debate")

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Radioactive dating can't be calibrated.

You are in this case Dead Wrong. Dating of ancient rocks by radiometric
methods (e.g., Uranium-Lead, Potassium-Argon, Rubidium- Strontium) does
NOT, repeat NOT depend upon our having available a sample of known age to
calibrate the method. Indeed, this is PRECISELY WHY these methods are so
useful. The only calibration required is the measurement of decay rates,
which can be done IN THE LABORATORY. Furthermore, these methods can be used
in ways that do NOT, repeat NOT depend on any assumptions about the initial
amounts of the various isotopes involved. Please read the section in
Chapter 17 of Strahler's book, Science and Earth History.

It is true that Carbon-14 dates must be calibrated for variations in the
amount of 14C produced in the atmosphere; however, the corrections are
small (~10%) and affect only recent ages (~50,000 years). This method is
not used to date rocks.

     The guy who thought that radioactive dating required knowing the
     initial amount of lead. He apparently had never heard of
     isotopes, either. He made a big thing about a science he was a
     master of: he wrote its name on the blackboard: "numerical
     analysis". He indicated how this allowed him to "proved" that
     radiodating was wildly inaccurate. No mention of the fact that
     the earth was still real old. He encouraged people to go buy a
     book on numerical analysis: he gave its name. He didn't bother to
     encourage people to buy a book on dating, perhaps because he
     hadn't read one himself ?

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Radioactive decay rates did not remain constant, so you can't accurately
date things

If radioactive decay rates were to change, the structure of stars would be
affected. But even very distant stars (whose light has been travelling
towards us for very long times) have the structure that is predicted by
theory assuming present decay rates. They do not have the structure that
would be predicted for them if the decay rates were many orders of
magnitude larger.

There are two major kinds of radioactive decay, alpha decay and beta decay.
They are due to different physical processes and are governed by different
natural constants. If the decay rates were to change in time, this would
produce discrepant dates in rocks that can be dated independently by
several different decay series. These discrepancies are not observed.

If the decay rates were large enough to produce 4.5 billion years' of
apparent aging in only 6000 years of wall-clock time, the decay rates would
have had to have been millions to billions of times as large when Adam and
Eve were around as now. The heat generated would have melted the earth,
which would still be molten. Furthermore, the earth would have been too
radioactive to support life then. Adam and Eve would have glowed for other
reasons than their nearness to God.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

These laws affirm the fact that the creation of matter or energy is not
know taking place, and, in fact, that the available energy of the universe
as a whole is continually running down rather than building up.

Point of fact, matter IS being created currently. Also destroyed. See
"virtual particles". And the "available energy of the universe as a whole"
says nothing about localities within it...

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Helmholtz's contraction theory says the sun is < 20,000,000 years.

This (suns energy comes from contraction) is decades old and discarded soon
after the discovery of radioactivity. See the Scientific American article
from August 1989. The German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz formulated
this concept around 1869. It has been soundly rebuffed in the last 100
years.

     The guy who thought that we were detecting 0 (zero) solar
     neutrinos, thus proving his theory that the sun was shining due
     to the gravitational energy released as it shrank. (they are
     there, and have been detected)

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sun is shrinking by ~5 feet per hour. i.e losing 0.01% per year. 6,000
creation = ~6% shrinkage, but 20,000,000 years ago the sun touched the
earth and 100,000 years ago the sun was twice as large (making life
impossible)

I am interested in how you decide that this is a steady-state system? A
"Sun" that large could not possibly have this solar system.

A brief discussion of this is found in ``Looking Inside the Sun'',
ASTRONOMY, March 1989.

Analysis of historical records of eclipses and transits give varying
numbers. One result gives 2.25 arcseconds per century, similar to the above
figure. Another result gives an upper limit of 0.3 arcsecond per century,
but is also consistent with no shrinkage. Two more historical analyses
indicate that the sun was a bit larger a century ago than today. Current
measurements indicate that the sun is not now shrinking.

The long term stability of the size of the sun remains unknown.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lunar dust--only 1 to 3 inches, not 54 feet.

The calculation you refer to is given by Henry Morris on pp. 151-153 of
Scientific Creationism. It is based on a grossly erroneous figure of 14
million tons of meteoritic dust per year, quoted by Petterson in 1960.
Morris misinterpreted Petterson's article. Petterson published a figure of
15 (not 14) million tons per year as an upper limit. In other words,
Petterson said that the value is not more than. 15 million tons per year.
He was not able to measure an actual value. Morris erroneously chose to
interpret it to mean it was equal to 14 million tons per year. Accurate
values were measured in the late 1960's. The actual value is much lower
than 15 million tons per year. Dalrymple gives the value of 22,000 tons per
year, nearly 700 times smaller than your figure. That changes your 54 foot
figure into about 2 cm, which is quite consistent with the amount of
surface soil the astronauts found on the Moon (it was considerably more
than 1-2 mm).

My copy of "Everyman's Astronomy" indicates that the earth collects about
9000 kg per day from meteors of visual magnitude 5.0 or brighter. Assuming
a typical rock density of 3 g/cc, this corresponds to an accumulation rate
of one inch per 10 billion years. Unfortunately no data is presented for
fainter meteors. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the actual rate is
one or two orders of magnitude higher, but "1 inch in 8000 years" is off by
six orders of magnitude.

A dust accumulation rate of "one inch per 8000 years" should should create
a spectacular year round meteor shower, and cause severe pitting of the
space shuttle windshields in just a single orbit. My quick estimates give
values far higher than have been actually observed.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Deterioration of earth's magnetic field, at present rates, implies an
excessive field 10,000 years ago.

(Decay of Earth's Magnetic Field - Result of research by Thomas Barnes
during his tenure as Physics Professor at UTEP. Published in Origin and
Destiny of Earth's Magnetic Field, 1973. Barnes notes the measured values
over the last 150 years and models according to uniformitarian principles.

The decay is not a steady state. In fact, there is considerable evidence
for reversals. The atlantic ocean floor as it spreads shown the weakening -
reversing - strengthening recorded in its stone as the continents spread
from the mid-atlantic ridge.

The field is expected to reverse sometime in the next few thousand years. A
time scale on page 78 shows the reversals over the past 170 million years,
as deduced from the magnetic patterns in oceanic crust. I counted about 200
reversals on the chart.

Briefly, Barnes took approximately 150 years of data on the Earth's dipole
magnetic field and extrapolated it backwards to about 10000 years Before
Present (B.P.). He stated that the field 10,000 years ago would, on this
calculation, have been as strong as that of a magnetic star, and stated
(correctly) that this was absurd. However, there are four fatal flaws in
his analysis.

In the first place, Barnes studied only the dipole component of the Earth's
magnetic field, In fact, the very same data that Barnes used show that the
nondipole component of the field increased during the same period of time,
almost exactly cancelling the decrease in the dipole field that Barnes
calculated (D. Brent Dalrymple, U. S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park CA, in
Reviews of 31 Creationist Books). This alone is sufficient to destroy the
basis of his work.

The second failure of Barnes' study was the idea that one can take data
from a short period of time and simply extrapolate it backwards to obtain a
reliable estimate at a time remotely removed from the data. Anyone
competent in analyzing scientific data knows that extrapolations are good
only for a relatively short period of time, if at all, and that the further
away from the actual data one goes, the less reliable it becomes. Barnes
extrapolated 150 years' worth of data back 10,000 years! In real life, one
would be surprised if extrapolation of these data more than a few hundred
years back were accurate.

The third failure of Barnes' study was the mathematical model he chose. He
decided to fit the data to an exponential. The data fit a straight line
just as well (see Figure 1 of Stephen G. Brush's article in Scientists
Confront Creationism), but a straight line would have given a much older
age for the Earth than the 10,000 years that Barnes, because of his
Biblical literalism, wishes to promote.

The fourth failure of Barnes' study was his failure to consider any other
evidence than the 150 years worth of data from geomagnetic observatories
that he used. There exists, in paleomagnetic data, a long record of the
Earth's magnetic dipole strength (extending backwards for millions of
years). The data are in agreement with the observatory data Barnes used
over their common intersection, but they differ drastically from Barnes'
extrapolation when one goes further back in time.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Atmospheric helium should have built up more from U decay.

This statement is false. It falls precisely within predicted limits.

Please read:

Calculations on the Composition of the terrestrial Planets
     Reynolds & Summers, Journal of Geophysical Research vol 74, no 10 May
     15, 1969 p 2494
The formation of the Earth from Planetesimals
     Wetherill, Scientific American June 1981
Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Evolution on the Primitive Earth
     Cloud, Preston E., Jr., Science 160, (17 May 1968), pp 729 - 736
The Effect of a Planet's Size on the Evolution of its Atmosphere
     Mart, Michael H, published in some conference or another; I got a copy
     from the author. (ave Allen davea@ll-vlsi.ARPA)
Our Evolving Atmosphere
     Is Anyone There? by Isacc Asimov
The Evolution of the Atmosphere of the Earth
     Hart, Icarus, 33, 23-39, 1978
Evolution of the Atmosphere and Oceans
     Holland, Lazar & McCaffery, Nature vol 320, 6 mar 1986
Heat and Helium in the Earth
     O'Nions & Oxburgh, Nature, vol 306, 1 Dec 1983
The Atmosphere
     Ingersoll, Scientific American, Sept 1983

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Receding moon would have been touching earth 2 billion years ago.

Check up on your orbital dynamics... Assumes a steady rate of recession.
Assumes the moon wasn't captured less than 2 billion years ago.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

All comets would have disintegrated after 10,000 years.

Jupiter and Saturn wreak havoc to the comet orbits. Some long-period comets
are perturbed into short period orbits, others are permanently ejected.
Comets are believed to have a short lifetime after being perturbed to short
periods.

Actually, the Oort cometary cloud hypothesis (published by Jan H. Oort in
1950) was originally proposed in order to explain "the rate of appearance
of long-period comets" (i.e. there are a lot of them). It really didn't
have anything to do with the age of short-period comets (which the note
above refers to). [Long-period > 200 yrs, short-period &l< 200 yrs.]

The problem that is referred to by the creationist here is that the short-
period comets have not occupied their present orbits for very long (in
astronomical terms). Each time a comet passes close to the sun, some of its
matter is driven off into space by the sun's energy (forming its "tail").
"Short-period" comets are believed by astronomers to have a lifetime of
only a few thousand years, because after that all of their "tail-producing"
matter would be used up (indeed, astronomers have noted comets to "vanish";
the remaining material only makes its presence known upon entering the
Earth's atmosphere; this is likely the origin of meteoroid swarms.)

However, the fact that a comet cannot have occupied its present orbit for
very long does not automatically imply that it is young. The Oort
hypothesis does explain this problem as well, in that long-period comets --
if frequent enough -- will be moved into short-period orbits by a
relatively near approach to a planet (comet loses momentum, planet gains
it, comet is now in a vastly shorter orbit, planet is now in a very
slightly longer orbit).

In fact, of the short-period comets, roughly half orbit pretty much between
the sun and jupiter, leading astronomers to believe that jupiter "captured"
them into their current orbits. (Statistically, we would expect the largest
planet -- the best "capturer" -- to have captured the most short-period
comets).

Finally, nobody really knows about the Oort cloud. Astronomers like the way
it explains the frequency of long-period comets, and there is much support
for it amongst them. It apparently also explains the youth of the
short-period comets, quite nicely. However, until we see a comet get sucked
into a short-period orbit (apparently this must happen every 100 years or
so), or until we send something out to 10,000 A.U., Oort's proposal remains
a hypothesis. (Conclusion: it was not cooked up to explain young short-
period comets; this is something of a "fringe benefit". But we aren't very
sure that it's true, either.)

[From Strahler, "Science and Earth History", New York:Prometheus, 1987; p.
143]

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

An important element in the argument against the evolutionary universe is
the failure of conventional cosmology to solve the problem of galaxy
formation.

     ``With the development of GUT, we see galaxy formation is no
     longer a problem at all but simply one more natural phenomenon
     with a perfectly natural explanation.'' [James S. Trefil, The
     Moment of Creation]

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Biblical cosmology

And in several places in the Bible, the sky is referred to as a vault, with
the stars stuck on it. Genesis 1 refers to water above this vault (an idea
no doubt borrowed from the Babylonian cosmology, which pictured the Earth
as a flat disk inside a cosmic bubble in a cosmic sea). The Book of
Revelation states that the stars will someday fall out of the sky like figs
from a tree. The Bible says little about the shape of the Earth, referring
in one place to the "circle" of the Earth (a disk shape), and in another
place to the "four corners" of the Earth (a rectangular surface shape). In
one of the Gospels, the Devil tempted Jesus by taking him up a mountain
where he could see "all the kingdoms of the world" (no further info on this
remarkable mountain). This would only be possible if the Earth was flat.

The Bible does indicate more clearly, however, that the Earth is
motionless. Witness Joshua's telling the Sun (and not the Earth) to stop
just so he could win one of his battles, and some of the Psalms that state
that the Earth is motionless. The Joshua story can be used to find a
Biblical estimate of the distances of the Sun and the Moon from the Earth.
Since we are told that the Sun was stopped to illuminate the Valley of
Gibeon, and the Moon to illuminate the Valley of Aijalon, we conclude that
either one of them would have been insufficient for both -- and that
requires that the Sun be low when viewed from the Moon's valley, as it
were, and vice versa. This implies that the distances to the Sun and the
Moon are comparable to the distance between the Valleys of Gibeon and
Aijalon, which is about 10 mi.

In all fairness to the writers of the Bible, none of this cosmology is any
worse than the cosmological pictures developed by surrounding peoples, with
one exception. Ancient Greek proto-scientists (if that is the proper word)
were, without any modern technology, able to establish that the Earth was
approximately spherical, and were able to work out the approximate size of
the Earth and the distance to the Moon. The distance to the Sun was more
difficult, and almost all were agreed that the Sun moved around the Earth.
But this knowledge was gained only after the Old Testament was written,
though some of the writers of the New Testament may have learned of
Aristotle's demonstration of the approximate sphericity of the Earth three
centuries ago. The Greeks had data which anyone else living before modern
times could collect, but they put the pieces together in the right fashion,
and, for some reason, there is no hint of that in the Bible.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rift between mathematicians & biologists

Here's an interesting story... (I think)... In 1967, a few mathematicians
and biologists were chatting over a picnic lunch organized by Victor
Weisskopf, prof. of physics at MIT. A "weird" discussion took place as the
conversation turned to the subject of evolution by natural selection. The
mathematicians were stunned by the optimism of the evolutionists about what
could be achieved by chance. The wide rift between the participants led
them to organize a conference on "Mathematical Challenges to the
Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution"...(skip to the conference)... which
opened with a paper by Murray Eden, Prof. of Electrical Engineering at MIT,
entitled "The Inadequacy of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific
Theory". Eden showed that if it required a mere six mutations to bring
about an adaptive change, this would occur by chance only once in a billion
years --while, if two dozen genes were involved, it would require
10,000,000,000 years, which is much longer than the age of the earth. (See
Gordon R. Taylor's "The Great Evolution Mystery"). "Since evolution does
occur and has occurred, something more than chance mutation must be
involved. Von Neumann & complexity

It's hard to see how the described "wide rift" between biologists and
mathematicians could exist, since most of the population geneticists I know
are mathematicians--like my thesis advisor, a PhD in Statistics. Population
genetics is an intrinsically mathematical subject, as my students found
with great dismay about 2 weeks into the course I TA'ed on the subject.....

I get a little angry when people seem to be implying that evolution is
casually refutable and was refuted (by a professor of electrical
engineering?) decades ago. Do they really think that two decades of bright,
dedicated biologists would stick to a theory that this kind of argument
could refute?

Adaptive change by mutation has been shown in the laboratory and is not in
question. It is quite easy to demonstrate in bacteria, and advantageous
forms which were generated by the co-occurrence of multiple mutations are
quite possible. Three points are usually being missed by people who make
Prof. Eden's mistake:

  1. Disadvantageous forms can persist in the population for a long time;
  2. Multiple ways to the same end (multiple mutations giving the same
     result) are not only possible but common;
  3.  Intermediate steps often have an inobvious advantage in themselves,
     making them targets of natural selection.

Seriously, there is something badly wrong with the mathematician's models
if this story is true. In the first place, there isn't really a necessity
for each mutation to occur from a blank slate - virtually all species have
a fair amount of diversity. In the second place, there is a considerable
amount of recombination - even with base pairs on the same chromosome
(crossover) (or maybe the mathematician has never heard of sex :-).
Thirdly, the rate of mutations can be measured and is significantly higher
than what appears to be implied by the fixing of 6 mutations in 1 billion
years. Fourthly, if any intermediate forms have any slight advantage (due
to partial implementation of the feature), then those forms will be
selected -- and selection is NOT a random process. Fifthly, many single
point mutations have similar/identical effect (that is, it wouldn't be
necessary for 6 specific mutations to occur but one from each of 6
different sets, a much easier problem).

All I can figure is that the model assumes a population of a single
homozygous individual whose progeny never exchange any genetic material and
in which the mutated genes never recombine by crossover during mitosis. In
other words, sort of like analyzing the aerodynamics of racehorses by
assuming a spherical horse

Sounds like he's talking about six simultaneous mutations, which may very
well be statistically phenomenal. Not required they be simultaneous by
evolution however, and once one mutation is replicating throughout a group
of related organisms, the odds then go up that one of them might develop
another significant mutation in addition to the one they are now carrying.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Exponential population growth

And by the same exponential growth law we are up to our armpits in roaches.
This does obviously not happen, therefore there are other constraints.

What leads Creationists to conclude that the exponential growth constants
for a 50 year sample apply to 5000 years? This is known as "extrapolating
beyond region of known fit".

The growth curve is exponential. The population origin can be extended back
much further in time, and the recent doublings are bunched together.

I love exponential growth when used by those unaware of the basics for the
derivation. You can use the same system to show that we are up to our
armpits in fruit flies every 3 years or so...

According to U.N. figures, the world population in 1650 was 508 million, up
from 200-300 million in 1 AD. This corresponds to a growth rate of 0.032 to
0.057% per year during much of recorded history, far lower than the "sickly
0.5%" used here.

5000 years of growth at 0.057% would increase the population by a factor of
17, much less than the 7*10^10 implied by a rate of 0.5%.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Various conceivable patterns fail to emerge, despite an overwhelming
tendency to diversify.

There is always luck. If the mutation does not occur, you cannot select for
it. Evolution is not aimed. That's a deity's job. Evolution handles the
current entity, not some future not-yet-conceived entity for some not-yet
environment.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Complexity from simplicity

     ``There was no primordial chaos before the big bang - not really.
     Instead, everything was neatly concentrated in one location. Then
     it scattered, and is still scattering, a disorderliness far
     exceeding the structural order of galaxies, stars, planets, and
     life forms which have appeared in the course of the process.''
     [Poul Anderson "Science & Creation" Analog, Sept 1983]

Ref the information example. It is easy to get VERY complicated systems
containing a tremendous amount of information starting from very simple,
low information systems. Two methods:

  1.  fractal structures - start with a very simple rule and repeat it over
     and over and over. The resulting structure can be (usually is) VERY
     complicated, but the formation equations can be very, very simple. And
     the universe has had a long time to do so. Example: Look at a
     snowflake.
  2. chaos - You can get very, very complicated systems if you use
     nonlinearities in the progression. That is why weather forecasting
     doesn't work.

Complexity does not imply design. Recursion or nonlinearity work quite
well. And the world is recursive and very non-linear.

I went and got "Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata" by Von Neumann. You
know that it was done in 1966 before most of the chaos & fractal work?

As an initial look, I see how this is NOT applicable to life as Micha tried
to do in < 10541@dasys1.UUCP >. Looking at section 5.3.2 "Self-Reproducing
automata" we find that, under his constraints, the secondary (initially
quiescent) automaton is identical to the parent, except that the
constructing automaton is larger, and in a sense more complex, because the
construction automaton contains the complete plan and a unit which
interprets and executes this plan. This should NOT apply to biological
forms as discussed here because:

The plan IS the unit that executes itself. In Mary's term, the life is the
language. and, what I consider more relevant The constructed automaton IS
NOT A DUPLICATE of the constructing automaton. No parent unit that I am
aware of (excluding fission reproduction, in which the parent unit cannot
be identified afterwards) is the child a duplication of the parent. In
every case that I am aware of the constructed unit is a simpler and much
smaller unit, which grows OF ITSELF into a near-copy of the original. Since
the complexity is added AFTER the reproduction process, the reproduction
process should not be a limiting factor. Proof: watch almost ANYTHING grow
up.

Therefore, while the descent is INITIALLY simpler than the parent, its
final state can be more complex. Therefore, the argument that information
theory proves that life could not have come from non-life is invalid.

BTW: New systems of cooperating parts have evolved, and they are not even
biological. See "The Evolution of Cooperation", in particular the computer
simulations in which the routines "decide" ON THEIR OWN that cooperation is
"better".

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Simulations cannot produce effects

And I am as sure of the statement "Selection can change the frequencies of
variants", since I've done computer simulation to test it. That's most of
evolutionary theory right there.

Mary, that is very interesting. Could you describe how you modeled
selection pressure. Any thing that I have seen (i.e., non technical info)
is so vague about what selection is that I have no idea how to model it.
Examples like the light vs dark moths seems too simplistic to me. It shows
how the number of species (or the amount of variation) can decrease but it
gives me no hint as to how the number of species can increase.

Directional selection (selection "for" or "against" something) in a static
environment will lose variation. To get a more interesting result, you can
look at either of two things:

1. Selection which is not directional. Here are some examples:

Frequency dependent selection. Forms which are rare are at an advantage.
There are several decent real-world examples of this; female fruit flies
prefer males who look "different", and animals which have immune system
genes different from their neighbors' seem less likely to get diseases from
them.

Heterozygote advantage. The organism with two different forms of the gene
has an advantage over others. The classical example is sickle-cell anemia
in humans, where the person with one sickle and one normal allele is
protected from malaria.

Two kinds of selection pulling in different directions. For example,
females may prefer brightly colored males, but so may predators. Some
values for the parameters here will give a balance of different forms in
the population.

2. Non-static environments. This is much harder to model, but interesting.
You can easily get frequency-dependent selection out of an environment with
two food sources, both subject to overexploitation. Environments which
change over time either randomly or in a cycle can also maintain
variability.

The simplest model I know in which something like speciation can be seen to
happen is one that contains two factors:

There is a gene with two variants, and the heterozygote is worse than
either homozygote.

There is the possibility for evolving reproductive isolation based on the
first gene.

Reproductive isolation could be modeled in several ways. You could
explicitly add a gene that controls mate recognition. You could arrange
your simulated organisms on a grid and restrict most mating to near
neighbors, and see if two populations separated from an initial mixture.

Don't forget that if you use random rather than strictly proportional
selection (that is, if you use a random number to see who lives and who
dies), population size makes a huge difference. It is almost impossible to
maintain high variability in a tiny population, even with strong selection.

     Von Neumann clearly chown that more complicated systems cannot
     come from less complicated systems. Information gets downgraded

I got the Scientific American article (September 1964, vol 211) on
interlibrary loan (too early for local holdings) to read Mathematics in the
Biological Sciences. The lead in is: "Biologists use mathematics, but the
complex systems they study resist mathematical description. The kind of
description that might someday be helpful is suggested by the abstract
analysis of self-reproduction."

Note that this was before most of the developments in Chaos Theory, which
does what they are talking about. Most of the examples in the article are
concerned with modeling specific systems (neurons primarily), cellular
automaton (see newsgroup comp.theory.cell-automata) and a couple of other
systems. The relevance to evolution is not brought up until the last column
on the last page. The applicability of the approach at all is questioned by
the author, though the specifics are said to probably be possible. The last
sentence: "Nobody has yet done the engineering design work required to
build such a machine, but I think it will someday be built." Not exactly
the posture of one "disproving" the concept, is it?

I checked out the Von Neumann book Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata and
am currently reading the fifth lecture "Re-evaluation of the Problems of
Complicated Automata - Problems of Hierarchy and Evolution". The third
lecture: "Statistical Theories of Information" brings in the thermodynamics
issues as it related entrophy, enthalpy, and information. A worthwhile note
is that Von Neumann points out that no local system is closed, and that
local increases are easily accommodated by decreases elsewhere.

A major disagreement that I have so far is the difference between the
automata discussed and actual systems.

  1.  The cellular automata discussed are assumed to be in their final
     state. No further increases in complexity are apparently allowed. This
     is blatantly false in actual systems which continuously grow.
  2.  The descendants are perfect copies of the parents. In fact, this is
     one of Von Neumann's criteria in self-reproduction. In reality, (with
     the exception of very few EXTREMELY simple systems) the "child" is
     nowhere near as complex as the parent. As a major difference, the
     child is not capable of reproduction. Therefore, actual biological
     systems do not fit within the Von Neumann's definitions for
     self-reproducing automata.

These two differences alone can account for evolutionary change without the
need for a parent to produce (directly) a more complex child. The parent
simply produces a LESS complicated child, which is NOT a replication of the
parent, which then grows to a more complicated system than the parent. This
can be observed happening when a tree produces seeds (which as-is are
incapable of reproduction and are plainly NOT a duplicate of the tree)
which in turn develop of themselves into a grove, which is more complicated
(see Von Neumann's book on how he measures complexity - the editors
introduction covers it in one place with examples as opposed to across
numerous lectures for those in a hurry).

Did you bother to read Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata? The fifth
lecture is entitled "Re-Evaluation of the Problems of Complicated Automata
- Problems of Hierarchy and Evolution". After a good bit of evaluation &
discussion Von Neumann writes: "There is thus this completely decisive
property of complexity, that there exists a critical size below which the
process of synthesis is degenerative, but above which the phenomenon of
synthesis, if properly arranged, can become explosive, in other words,
where synthesis of automata can proceed in such a manner that each
automaton will produce other automata which are more complex and of higher
potentialities than itself."

Further down this same page he discusses why a system of "less than a dozen
kinds of elements are needed.".

That system could come into being other than being constructed by a system
designed to do so. Luck, for instance.

A close comparison with Turing's machine is done on the next page.

And one page further we get what appears to be an analogy to Mary's
definition of life: "it might be quite complicated to construct a machine
which will copy an automata that is given it, and that is preferable to
proceed, not from original to copy, but from verbal description to copy."
This "description" almost appears to be Mary's "language".

Therefore, this entire string is fallacious.

First, Von Neumann was not talking about the development of systems like
those we observe (he said that was the case early in the quoted chapter),
and those differences make the development trivial. And it turns out that
EVEN WITH THESE AUTOMATA evolution (once past the simplest stage) is
possible.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

No new species (alternately, "kinds") are evolving today.

     Three species of wildflowers called goatsbeards were introduced
     to the United States from Europe shortly after the turn of the
     century. Within a few decades their populations expanded and
     began to encounter one another in the American West. Whenever
     mixed populations occurred, the specied interbred (hybridizing)
     producing sterile hybrid offspring. Suddenly, in the late Forties
     two new species of goatsbeard appeared near Pullman, Washington.
     Although the new species were similar in appearance to the
     hybrids, they produced fertile offspring. The evolutionary
     process had created a separate species that could reproduce but
     not mate with the goatsbeard plants from which it had evolved.

The article is on page 22 of the February, 1989 issue of Scientific
American. It's called "A Breed Apart." It tells about studies conducted on
a fruit fly, Rhagoletis pomonella, that is a parasite of the hawthorn tree
and its fruit, which is commonly called the thorn apple. About 150 years
ago, some of these flies began infesting apple trees, as well. The flies
feed and breed on either apples or thorn apples, but not both. There's
enough evidence to convince the scientific investigators that they're
witnessing speciation in action. Note that some of the investigators set
out to prove that speciation was not happening; the evidence convinced them
otherwise.

In 1916, a single pair of wallabies escaped from a zoo in Oahu. They
survived and bred in the wild, and now there is a whole population. They
are smaller and more lightly colored than the Aussie wallabies. They eat
Hawaiian plants that are poisonous to the Aussie wallabies, because they
evolved a new liver enzyme to detoxify them. They can no longer breed with
the Australian wallabies, so they qualify as a new species.

[Sources: "Instant Evolution", Science Digest, July 1982 Saladin / Gish
debate at Auburn University at Montgomery, 24 March 1984]

How can you say that no new species have arisen when dozens of previously
undiscovered species are found each year in Costa Rica alone? Also, isn't
the latest evidence that maize evolved about 4000 years ago?

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Slight variation can't turn one kind into another. "One lion may be fitter
than another lion, but ... all his offspring will still be lions."

What is a "kind"?

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just because two animals LOOK similar does not mean there is "common
ancestry"

The interesting point is that, when checked, there IS.

Genetic comparisons reveal (objectively) a kinship where it was before
predicted on evolutionary grounds.

I believe the error rate is less than 1%. What is fascinating about the
comparisons of the numbers of genes shared between species is that when you
draw a genetic tree of what species are related to what, it looks almost
identical to the tree drawn by anthropologists who make their tree based on
comparisons of morphology (humans look more like chimps than turtles
therefore chimps are more closely related). This is the beauty of science
that a hypothesis (relatedness of species) is shown by two completely
differing mechanisms just as the age of artifacts can be determined by rock
layers (those on top are newer) and carbon and other radioactive dating
techniques.

How is this done? In brief: DNA similarity is measured by mixing fragments
of DNA from the two species and measuring the thermal stability of the
resulting hybrid molecules, which is proportional to the degree of
matching. It can be calibrated by using DNAs of known composition, for
example the genomes of completely sequenced viruses. Accuracy is limited by
the ability to measure the melting temperature and by the slight difference
in stability between A-T base pairs and C-G ones. There has been heavy
theoretical debate (ending in an amazing shouting match at a meeting last
summer, alas--I was there, and it was embarrassing) about whether the
method is accurate enough to resolve the chimp/ human/gorilla trichotomy.

DNA similarity does measure overall composition, and two organisms could be
very different morphologically while still having high DNA similarity
(indeed, chimps and humans are much more dissimilar than most pairs with
the same DNA distance). However, overall composition is probably a better
guide to relatedness than specific genes, which are likely to be under
different selection in humans and chimps.

What is the noise, and what is the signal? "Junk" DNA is the most useful
for determining phylogeny, because it is more likely to evolve in a gradual
time-dependent fashion. Coding and controlling regions are interesting in
that they tell us about the differences.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mendelian inheritance says that recessive characters reappear, and thus we
should expect humans with characteristics of apes.

They do. Tails, for instance. And other "ape" traits that happen to also be
"human traits". Like toes, body hair, simian crease
(XRHAH@scfvm.gsfc.nasa.gov for instance),...

This disregards the basic mechanisms of natural selection and genetics. It
makes the wrong assumption that ape-like characters are recessive and that
all of the traits in the ancestor population are present but usually
unexpressed in the supposed descendant population. Neither idea is true.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

There exist impossible gulfs between animal/vegetable,
invertebrate/vertebrate, marine animals/amphibians, amphibians/reptiles,
reptiles/birds, reptiles/mammals, mammals/humans.

Eight impossible gulfs. Impossible to find gulfs.

1) Between the living and non-living or dead matter

This is the abiogenesis debate.

The rest is a taxinomy of man with the similarity argument turned into the
gaps argument. Is the glass half empty or half full?

What is this gulf? I have yet (despite looking and asking many) found it at
all, let alone found it to be an impossible gulf.

The spectrum between clearly living and singular elementary particles is
wide, and not linear (few things really are) but it appears to be
continuous.

2) Between the vegetable and the animal kingdoms

Animal cells have some similarity with plant cells, and indeed there are
forms, euglena, with cloroplasts and flagellae, that look like
intermediates. Cells from both kingdoms are eukeryots that are distinct
from other cell types belonging to at least three other kingdoms.

There are quite a few plant/animals in the same creature. Most microscopic
because a plant doesn't collect enough energy to be mobile in large scale.
But there are plenty of small ones. What is a euglena? And where do
protista & viri fit in here?

3) Between the invertebrates and the vertebrates;

The vetebrates are biochemically closest to the echinodermata, and
urochordates. The free swimming soft chord animals are similar to the
sessile forms.

See also sharks and squids.

4) Between marine animals and amphibians;

A steady change from fish to lobefined air breathing fish to amphibians
with fish like larval stages can be observed in extant species and in the
fossil record.

See also mudpuppies and frogs. An amphibian that never leaves the water is
a marine animal. This gulf is not only impossible, it is non-existent.

5) Between amphibians and reptiles;

Amphibians predate reptiles in the fossil record. The development of the
amneonic egg, with shell and the difference in the skin of extant reptiles
and amphibians suggests that the reptilian characters were adaptations
developed on amphibian ancestors. The time in the fossil record when the
reptiles became important was one when amphibian habitats were being
reduced and when reptiles could have succeeded on drier continents.

What is this gulf, and what was a dinosaur? (warning: trick question!
Specifically what is the impossible gulf between, for instance, a
salamander and a chameleon?

6) Between reptiles and birds;

The ornithischia, with bird-like pelvises appeared before the modern birds,
whch began to appear in Cretaceous time. Intermediates are known.

7) Between reptiles and mammals;

The therapsida in permean time, Mammal-like reptiles appear before the
first mammals, but intermediate forms are known, and a fairly complete
record of the changes in the facial bones between these reptiles and true
mammals is known from Permean time. Does anyone know if mammalian dentition
is documented into this time. Did the Therapsida have differentiated
dentition?

8) Between mammals and the human body;

The distinguishing characteristic of living MAMMALS is lactation. Despite
the invention of baby bottles, human females still lactate.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The failure of some organisms to evolve at all.

If it passes the selection filter, no change required. These organisms are
excellently adapted to their particular niche in their environment. (like
sharks: the "perfect eating machine", right?)

Like the brachiopod Lingula, and the cockroach, identifiable through most
of the phanerazoic and still with us. If an organism is well adapted to a
niche it can readily occupy, then why should it evolve?

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

No new phyla, classes, or orders have appeared.

Subsequently to what?

Trees of descent for organisms are drawn by grouping organisms together
based on common features. Twigs which are close together are organisms
which differ only in few and minor respects. Main branches, down at the
bottom of the tree, are groups of organisms that differ in many and major
respects. One of the main premises of evolution is that this tree is (more
or less) proportional to time. Asking for a phylum to appear today is
asking for a major branch to be up at the tip of the tree--it makes no
sense, considering the way such trees are drawn!

It is perfectly possible that in several million years there will be
recognizable phyla which were just differentiating today, but there is no
way to recognize a "new phylum" in the bud. For example, modern plants use
two different photosynthesis reactions. It is quite possible that those two
groups will eventually be so different that we will call them separate
phyla, because the two reactions probably favor different evolutionary
pathways. But how can we know in advance whether or not this will happen?
That's what you're asking for when you want to see a new phylum arise
today.

This is just not true. while most of the phyla present today were present
at the beginning of the Cambrian, and their origin is shrouded, there is
enough of a fossil record from the so-called eo-cambrain to suggest that
some of the animals found in Australia are different phyla that became
extinct by the time fossils became abundant. The affinities of several
Cambrian groups is by no means clear, and they might be separate phyla,
such as the archeocyathids. Our phylum, Vetebrata (Chordata), appears no
earlier than Ordovician, and then only the cartilaginous and jawless fish
are known. All the other classes appear later than that.

Vascular plants, and all more advanced plant phyla appear no earlier than
Silurian time.

There are now five kingdoms known, based on their biochemistry and there
are enough precambrain microfossils to document their appearance. The
geochemistry of sediments in Precambrain rocks is understood well enough to
establish when the oxygen level of the biosphere was high enough to support
modern plants and animals, that comprise two of the five kingdoms. Before
this date it can be inferred that the Plant and Animal kingdoms did not
exist. I am not familiar with Precambrain events to fix this date, 1.8
billion years B.P. ?, or to document the micro fossils that might bear this
out.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The occurrence of parallel evolution, in which similar structures evolve in
quite different circumstances.

If you start with the same ancestor, they can only vary so much. Also, what
he thinks are "different circumstances" are not necessarily so. Physics has
an interesting set of constraints...

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Many species have remained absolutely fixed throughout geologic time.

There are no known examples of organisms that have not evolved over a
period of time and this includes cockroaches, lungfish, lampreys, sharks,
bacteria, and all other organisms that some people claim are "frozen in
time". Some of these species appear to be morphologically similar to
ancestors that lived in the past but evolution is much more than external
appearance. When the structure of their genes and proteins are examined it
becomes obvious that they have evolved at the molecular level. In fact the
rate of evolution of these species is similar to that of species whose
external appearance has changed more drastically. It is incorrect to claim
that some organisms have not evolved simply because their external
morphology has not changed.

The problem here is that the fossil record only preserves some parts of an
organism. The fact that these parts have not changed very much doesn't mean
that the species has not evolved.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

A great many modern species are very evident degenerate, rather than
higher, forms of those found as fossils.

There is no hierarchy to evolution. There is no reason to suppose that
modern organisms should be "higher" than extinct ones. Loss of a structure
is just as much evolution as gain of one. If Creationists admit that some
organisms have become "degenerate" then they are admitting to evolution.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

All the great phyla appear quite suddenly in the fossil record.

Marvelous. As long as he gets to pick which ones he wants, they do. Collect
the data to support you conclusion. Keep throwing out the outliers (97%
discarded?) till it fits.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Selection cannot change the frequency of variants

Since evolution is, by definition, a change in the frequency of genes in a
population, then this statement is equivalent to saying that selection
cannot cause evolution. There are many experiments in the literature that
directly demonstrate how false and ridiculous this statement really is.
Perhaps the easiest examples for the non-biologist are those that involve
human selection, as in breeds of dogs or cattle. In those cases selection
for distinct characteristics has led to populations with differing
frequencies of alleles (variants). Thus selection has been PROVEN capable
of changing the frequency of variants or alleles in a population and we
have every reason to believe that it did so in the past as well.

Directional selection (selection "for" or "against" something) in a static
environment will lose variation. To get a more interesting result, you can
look at either of two things:

1. Selection which is not directional. Here are some examples:

Frequency dependent selection. Forms which are rare are at an advantage.
There are several decent real-world examples of this; female fruit flies
prefer males who look "different", and animals which have immune system
genes different from their neighbors' seem less likely to get diseases from
them.

Heterozygote advantage. The organism with two different forms of the gene
has an advantage over others. The classical example is sickle-cell anemia
in humans, where the person with one sickle and one normal allele is
protected from malaria.

Two kinds of selection pulling in different directions. For example,
females may prefer brightly colored males, but so may predators. Some
values for the parameters here will give a balance of different forms in
the population.

2. Non-static environments. This is much harder to model, but interesting.
You can easily get frequency-dependent selection out of an environment with
two food sources, both subject to overexploitation. Environments which
change over time either randomly or in a cycle can also maintain
variability.

The simplest model I know in which something like speciation can be seen to
happen is one that contains two factors:

There is a gene with two variants, and the heterozygote is worse than
either homozygote.

There is the possibility for evolving reproductive isolation based on the
first gene.

Reproductive isolation could be modeled in several ways. You could
explicitly add a gene that controls mate recognition. You could arrange
your simulated organisms on a grid and restrict most mating to near
neighbors, and see if two populations separated from an initial mixture.

Don't forget that if you use random rather than strictly proportional
selection (that is, if you use a random number to see who lives and who
dies), population size makes a huge difference. It is almost impossible to
maintain high variability in a tiny population, even with strong selection.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mutations are never beneficial

The textbook example of the effects of radiation upon genes is the old
"carnation seeds exposed to radiocobalt". Clearly some of the flowers
produced are prettier than the originals. Therefore, the "never" is
disproved.

Mutations are almost always harmful.

Note: "almost". A lot can happen in a large population over long times.

Mutations rarely occur.

Note: "rarely". A lot can happen in a large population over long times.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

3000 years was time enough for all languages, religions to develop.

Actually the premise is false. The Sino-Tibetan family of languages is
distinct from the Indo-European family of languages, which English seems to
have been derived from. Considering how long ago the 50 arguments were
written (was it around 1930?), this ethnocentrism is not surprising.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Complex organs couldn't have arisen from a single mutation, and just part
of the organ is useless. Favorite examples are eyes and insect wings.

There have fairly good descriptions, on the net, of how eyes could have
evolved, and of how bird lungs could have evolved. These were nice
rebuttals of the claim that "it wasn't useful until finished, so it
couldn't have got started".

And how many of these "numerous coordinated innovations" can be caused by
one change? Check out, for instance, the effect of changing the age at
which bone growth stops in human beings.

There are semi-venomous snakes, and in fact the issue was discussed earlier
how some snakes "drip" the venomous saliva while ones with more developed
systems "inject" the saliva via hollow teeth. Whales have semi-legs (ok, so
they're not fish). How about the cooperating jawbones that have slowly
become our hearing mechanisms, seen to be incrementally represented from
reptilian jawbones.

The complete developmental flowchart of the nematode worm--what cells
divide to form what other cells all the way from the 1-cell egg to the
thousand-cell adult--has been determined. It contains numerous examples of
repeated tricks that look very much like subroutines. For example (this is
from memory and may not be precise) there is a pattern of a cell dividing
twice to form two muscle cells, one neuron and one cell which dies that
occurs dozens of times in the worm's development, not always in exactly the
same situation-- different kinds of nerve cells are produced--but with
exactly the same pattern (that is, it is the most posterior cell which
dies, and so forth).

People often assume that to evolve a new structure requires new code. In
this case at least, however, a new nerve with attendant muscle fibers could
be made (and there are mutants which do this) just by triggering this
subroutine in a cell which normally doesn't do it.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The instinct of animals proves wisdom of a "higher order".

Again, argument by design. The complexity and specialization of characters
is evidence of a designer, in this view.

Proves that it something stupid is wired in you don't get descendants.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hybrids are infertile, so a newly evolved individual couldn't breed.
Hybrids are often not fertile or robust. They may be desirable to man if
man amde, but they may not succeed in an evolutionary sense.

The premise is incorrect. First, what is meant by "hybrid" is unclear in
this context - is it a hybrid only if it is infertile? And even in those
cases in which the offspring is usually infertile, that is not always the
case. As witnessed the horse and the donkey.

It is not individuals that evolve but populations. A population evolves by
gradual changes in gene frequency until it becomes a distinct species that
is no longer capable of interbreeding with similar populations that shared
a common ancestor. All of the individuals within the population can mate
successfully with each other so there is no problem with "hybrids". There
are quite a few examples of different populations of the same species which
have trouble interbreeding, in other words the hybrids are not viable.
These populations are evolving and may become separate species. It is a
common mistake to assume that a new species begins when an individual
"mutates" or "evolves" in a single step - this is simply not how evolution
works.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Evolution doesn't explain personality, emotions, abstract reason,
conscience, etc.

Please read:

The Evolution of Behavior
     Smith, Scientific American, Sept 1978
Xenopsychology
     R. A. Freitas, Analog Apr 81
Directly Interacting Extra-terrestrial Technological Communities
     Viewing, JBIS, vol 28, pp 735-755, 1975
Computer Simulation of Cultural Drift: Limits on Interstellar Colonization
     Bainbridge, JBIS, vol 37, pp 420-429, 1984
The Improbability of Behavioral Convergence in Aliens
     Behavioral Implications of Morphology Coffey, JBIS, vol 38, pp
     515-520, 1985
The climatic background to the birth of civilization
     Lamb, Advancement of Science vol 25 pp 103 - 120 1968

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

"No people of English descent are more distantly related than thirtieth
cousin," which doesn't allow enough time for evolution.

Incorrect argument. The island population of Great Britian might well have
interbreeded more than is the case if it were mixed with the rest of the
world's human population, if you are inclined to believe Davenport's claim
at all.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The animals couldn't have distributed themselves all over the globe.

This is written at the time Wagener proposed Continental Drift for the
first time. He is rejected by the geologists of the day, but now Plate
Tectonics is well accepted among geologists and is used to construct
paleobiogeography that explains fossil distributions.

And like horses (that man transported), camels, pandas, kangaroos,
marsupials,.. In fact, this supports the evolutionary postulates in that
the distribution matches transportation capabilities.

What is more interesting is why are not animals everywhere? If they all got
themselves originated from one place (did this twice, supposedly - everyone
was originally present in Eden for the naming and everything was together
again in the ark) why are not marsupials found everywhere? Ibid old world
vs. new world species.

The Supercontinent Cycle
     Nance, Worsley, & Moody, Scientific American, July 1988
Alfred Wegener and the Hypothesis of Continental Drift
     A. Hallam, Scientific American Feb 1975

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Geographic Distribution of Quadrupeds

Since the creationists (from the biblical account) would have had EVERY
animal in the same place (twice, in fact. Once for the naming in Eden, once
again for the rescue in the arc.) why are the quadrupeds distributed so
differently? There are a number of large animals that are strictly on one
continent, unless somebody moved them (in fairly recent recorded history).
They could NOT have gotten there on their own RECENTLY (evolved there,
yes), nor could a selective extinction removed every individual of the
opposite set. Please explain:

New World Only:                 Old World Only
===============                 =============
Sapajous (Monkeys)              Horse, zebra
sagoins (monkeys)               sheep, goats, antelopes
Opossum                         wild boar
Cougar, jaguar                  panther, leopard
Coatis                          hyena, civet
Stinking weasels                porcupine, hedgehog
Agoutis                         apes, baboons, true monkeys
Armadillos                      scaley lizard
Ant-Eaters
Sloths

detached species                detached species
tapir                           elephant
Cabiai                          rhinoceros
Llama                           hippopotamus
Peccary                         giraffe
                                camel
                                lion
                                tiger

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Vestigial organs: "If the perfect organ were better than the rudimentary
organ, how can man be the 'survival of the fittest'?"

This is the appeal to progress and perfection that biases a lot of thinking
about evolution, even by some biologists of the past. The changes seen are
just adaptations of existing structures, not perfections or progress toward
a goal.

Note: "fittest" is not "optimal".

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Embryology: "it is hard to see why the history of the species should be
repeated by the embryo."

This is similar to the argument used by Bob Bales that it is hard to see
evolution in the fossil or living evidence. The problem with this claim is
that the understanding of what you would look for comes from first looking
at living things, fossils, and in this case embryos. You must know how to
describe these things in some detail before you can decide if the claims
that similar structures indicate common ancestry, or that embryonic stages
mimic ancestral forms. "It is hard ", means you haven't looked. Present an
objection based on what all agree is evidence.

That is more a function of his "hard to see" than why it does.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

A staggering speculation: essentially that evolution doesn't make sense
given the lake of common animals between the major groups.

This doesn't make sense. The "major groups" are defined by human
classifications that often are there for ancestral reasons that support
evolution (via the "family trees") or are fairly arbitrary (for instance,
by location or discoverer) and make perfect sense.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Evolution doesn't explain abiogenesis or how genes are expressed.

To the creationists. And it does explain how to study the unknown, rather
than bowing out.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

If life arose by chance, half of the amino acids should be right-handed; in
fact, all are left-handed.

Once the preference for one enantiomer over another gets started in nature,
it is relatively easy to see how this preference is perpetuated. Biological
reactions work much like machines having templates, stamping out the
preferred, and ONLY the preferred configuration generation after generation
after generation.

As to how one became initially started, there are many possibilities:

  1. Luck. The first one to form just happened to be L, and then the rest
     followed.
  2. There may be some effect during formation due to coriolis force or the
     (hemisphere dependent) magnetic field (as lightening went DOWN, the
     effect may be polarized)
  3. Quantitative calculations indicate that the fundamentally left-handed
     neutral-weak force with the electromagnetic force could introduce an
     energy preference (very slight). Aside from any steric preferences,
     one form could be energetically more stable than the other.

[William C. McHarris Professor of Chemistry and of Physics and of Astronomy
at Michigan State University "Handedness in Nature" January 1986 Analog]

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mathematical probability: "it is so improbable that one and only one
species out of 3,0000,000 should develop into man, that it certainly was
not the case".

Whence the 3,000,000 number, and how is the "improbability" assigned? Some
say inevitable... If 500 developed into man, how would you tell? Besides,
given the way evolution works, one would dominate and 499 would have (while
developing) be suppressed, quite likely into extinction. The "less
successful" are extinct or in zoos.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The repeated occurrence of changes calling for numerous coordinated
innovations, both at the level of organs and of complete organisms.

First, how do you determine that "numerous coordinated innovations" are
required? That may merely be your evaluation. For instance, some of the
common examples:

poisonous snakes - fangs & poison glands.
     A Gila monster has poison glands with no fangs, and there are snakes
     with furrowed fangs with no poison glands.
fish to land animal - legs and lungs.
     The mudpuppy is a fish without lungs that goes on the land, and the
     ceoclanth (sp) has almost legs with no lungs. And then there is the
     African Lungfish, the floridian walking catfish,...

Coral snakes (southern US) don't have a very sophisticated delivery system
- they also chew on their victims to deliver the poison. I'm not very
familiar with the anatomy of a coral snake, but it does not have the usual
"fangs" associated in the popular mind with a poisonous snake - as I recall
there is just a small sac or pore at the base of what look like ordinary
reptilian teeth.

The last time I studied poisonous snakes (some years ago), it was thought
that poison delivery had evolved several times, independently, in snakes.
This was based on differences in toxins and in delivery systems, as well as
its occurrence in otherwise distantly related snakes, all of which have
closely similar non-poisonous forms. The delivery systems cover the whole
range from the simple, rather typical, teeth of the coral snake to the
elaborate, retractile, tubular fangs of pit-vipers. Some have slightly
elongate "fangs" with simple grooves on one side, for instance. Thus, we
can see almost the entire range of intermediate anatomies in evolving fangs
purely in living species. Gap?? What gap? We do not even need the fossils,
which we also have.

And how many of these "numerous coordinated innovations" can be caused by
one change? Check out, for instance, the effect of changing the age at
which bone growth stops in human beings.

This needs to be elaborated. If a genome is being stressed to some
metastable level where its states can multiply, then rapid changes to more
than one structure in the organism can occur simultaneously.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The puzzle of how organs, once evolved, come to be lost (degeneration).

Evolution operating on the amplification and diminution of structures is
well known. The appearance of vestigial structures, at all, reflects on the
use of preexisting developmental pathways, rather than on the
purposefulness or efficiency of the process.

"Use it or lose it" is a popular expression which may help the
understanding. Maintaining something is a drain on materials and energy.
Selection would go against a disadvantageous drain.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The speed at which evolution occurred varies.

Why is that a problem? You change the mutation rate and the selection rate
and the change rate also alteres.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The existence of long-term trends (orthogenesis).

So? Study any climatology? The environment has some VERY long-term trends.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pre-adaptation: Organs appear before they are needed.

Now, how do you tell this???

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Overshoot" or evolutionary "momentum" occurs.

A not uncommon problem with non-linear search routines, and with systems
with very long delay times in the feedback.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why did man lose his hair and tail?

Note that hair and tails ARE still present. The selection process is a
statistical phenomena.

There is a theory that sometime within Man's evolutionary past he had an
aquatic phase. This is upheld by:

      The layer of fat beneath the skin is more characteristic of marine
     mammals.
      The pattern described by the hair remaining on the body describes
     fairly closely what would be a flow pattern. Also, the pattern of
     denser hair (top of head, chin, pubic region) matches the marine
     growth areas
      Humans have a diving reflex like that of the semi-aquatic mammals
     that live in cold climates. When the face hits cold water, the entire
     metabolism slows and the interior distribution of the blood flows.
     This has been observed in numerous near-drownings in cold water (it
     doesn't seem to cut in on warm water).

Thus, we have the same amount of hair (almost) as any other marine mammal.
And for the exact same reasons. We just didn't have a long enough marine
phase for further adaptations (lose arms & legs).

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Over-specialization with no adaptive value.

How do you determine this? Besides, most nonlinear search routines I am
familiar with have a tendency to overshoot... The process is not
particularly efficient or purposeful.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Can this all be just mutation and natural selection?

Two points: first, although Darwin invoked only variation and selection,
modern evolutionary theory also gives a very important role to genetic
drift, the occurrence of changes due to chance fluctuations in small
populations. This force can work in the opposite direction than selection,
and can override selection if the population is small enough. (Brown mice
do better in the wild than white, but if I start with only two of each in
an area I will end up with only whites some of the time.)

Second, "mutation" can cover some things which are much more powerful than
single changes in genes--specifically duplication of genes and merging of
two genes into a new one. These mechanisms can produce new yet highly
non-random genes.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The scientific discovery (not creationtific discovery) a few years back
that mitochondrial DNA was identical in all people of various ancestry and
thus showed that mankind arose from one female.

First, mitochondrial DNA is NOT identical in all humans. However the
differences can be used to construct a family tree of sorts, and the most
reasonable interpretation of the data is that all modern humans inherited
their mitochondria from one woman, dubbed Eve (possibly to bait
creationists), who lived (I think) around 200 Kyears ago.

(The mutation rate observed for the mitochondrial DNA was used to establish
the times involved.)

Second, the fact that the mitochondria of all of us can be traced to one
woman does not mean we arose solely from her-- it just means that she's one
of our common ancestors.

The maternal inheritance of mitochondria is analogous to the inheritance of
last names in our paternalistic society.

The point is, there may have been many contemporaries of "Eve" who are also
common ancestors of ours-- she just happens to be at the node of our common
maternal line. If a consistent paternalistic society had existed throughout
human history, (and nobody ever changed their names) we would probably all
have the same last name; this would not mean that the first man to have
this name was solely responsible for the human race, just that he would be
at the node of our common paternal line.
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chaos Theory

     As far as the brain obeying certain chaotic processes, the brain
     is too structured and controlled to allow anything like that to
     occur. Biological processes are very closely controlled in the
     body and in the brain. That is necessary for survival. Reflexes
     are something the brain cannot control. Your heart beats
     regularly and you breathe in your sleep. Your brain releases
     hormones at just the right moment to allow you to run away from a
     lion, or, when cornered, fight off an attacker with more strength
     than you thought you had. When you consider the mind as it is
     usually defined (the thinking, conscious part of the brain), it
     must also function properly at all times, or you would not be
     able to survive. Evolutionary pressures would not favor a mind
     which works on a process based on chaos theory.

The connection of chaos with complex real living systems is circumstantial,
but suggestive. I do not have a firm demonstration that full-blown living
processes are adequately described by systems of nonlinear differential
equations. Two examples I have heard about, I do not have references, are
human brain waves can be modeled with a strange attractor, and a good model
of cardiac electrical function and sudden failure has been built using
chaos.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The fundamental principle of evolution - the concept of development, with
increasing organization and complexity - seems to be essentially
contradictory to the impregnably established laws of energy conservation
and deterioration.

Huh? If by "development" he means adaption to the environment I have no
idea what "increasing organization and complexity" is fundamental for. And
maybe by "deterioration" he means "entrophy or enthalpy"?

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

There is not the slightest genuine evidence of biological life as we
understand it anywhere else in the universe.

There are a LOT of complex chemicals of extraterrestrial origins composed
of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and I think even a bit of sulfur. And the
Viking has found some odd reactions. And if you don't mind taking
environmental conditions more alien than mars as "elsewhere", I have seen
some dandy pictures of things that sure look like life in eternal
blackness, no oxygen, hotter than a pot of boiling water,...

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Vestigial organs are probably the results of mutational changes which, as
we have seen, are usually deteriorations.

Also know as "adaptions", right? Thanks. Whale legs are definitely an
adaption to their current environment. Thank-you.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Embryology, instead of supporting evolution, actually offers abundant
testimony to a great Designer and does not in any way give countenance to
theories of materialistic origin and development.

How odd... Same data, different conclusion.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Similarities (embryology & comparative anatomy) are more reasonably
explained in terms of origin at the hand of a common Designer.

An odd definition of "reasonable"...

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

What is known to be true about evolution?

I am not sure what you mean by "KNOW". None of this is divine revelation.
But I am as sure about the statement "There is plentiful genetic variation
in natural populations", having worked first-hand with the data supporting
it, as I am of just about anything else in the world. And I am as sure of
the statement "Selection can change the frequencies of variants", since
I've done computer simulation to test it. That's most of evolutionary
theory right there.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why are men alone so murderous of their own species?

We are not alone. Most social animals seem to have some similar sorts of
behaviors. When a male baboon displaces the old dominant male, young
baboons must watch their ass, as the new dominant male will often attempt
to kill them.

The same thing happens with lions, I believe.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

We have never seen any natural processes which result in a complexity
increase.

This is easy. Are you familiar with a small creature called a "Volvox"?
This is a small spherical animal that lives in the water and is made up of
individual cells of algae.

Separate algae cells have been observed organizing into a Volvox, with the
advantage of being able to propel itself in a way similar to an octopus,
and capture food inside the sphere. The algae cells operate in a unified
manner, just as the cells in a larger organism do.

Here is a clear example of increased complexity for the sake of survival.
Since mutation is factual (i.e. we have observed mutation, so it is not
conjecture), why do you find it so hard to believe that increasingly
complex organizations of cells, combined with favorable mutations, can
result in a higher form of life?

I have a biological example. The cat in my house has a pair of extra toes
growing inward on both of its forepaws. This is not unknown, and I have
seen it before. Even more interesting, I have seen the cat use those extra
toes as a human would use a thumb to grip small objects, such as a penny,
in a manner that a cat with ordinary forepaws could not. A new part,
adapted from an old part that all others of the species has. A new ability
that others of the species doesn't have. An increase in complexity in a
biological context.
jap2_ss@uhura.cc.rochester.edu

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

There are gaps in fossil record where you'd expect intermediate forms.

There are more fossils than Creationists will admit. Many intermediate
forms are known--for example, the development of the mammal skull
characteristics from the therapsida of Permian time.

What gaps remain can be explained by erosion, lack of proper conditions for
fossilization, the punctuated equilibrium model, or simply not looking in
the right places yet.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Methods of dating the earth are inaccurate.

Exactly what is meant by "inaccurate" leaves much to be desired. Please see
the August 1989 Scientific American article on the Age of the Earth. (page
90, by Lawrence Badash, "The Age-of-the-Earth Debate")

In an abstract from Nature, Vol. 341, p. 518 (12 October 1987).

"Direct dating of Phanerozoic sediments by the 238U-206Pb method," by
Patrick E. Smith & Ronald M. Farquhar, Geophysics Laboratory, Department of
Physics, University of Toronto, Ontario, Toronto, Canada M5S 1A7

"Direct radiometric age determination of Phanerozoic carbonates has been a
long-standing problem in geochronology. Rb-Sr and K-Ar dating schemes,
commonly used to constrain the chronology of Phanerozoic sediments, have so
far proved to be unsuccessful in dating these rocks because of their poor
enrichment in radiogenic 87Sr and 40Ar and also because of analytical
difficulties. Recent studies have demonstrated that large amounts of
radiogenic Pb exist in some carbonates and that they could be dated by the
Pb-Pb method. However, the precision of this method is severely limited to
samples having very high uranium to lead ratios because by the beginning of
the Phanerozoic (~590 Myr ago) 98% of 235U originally present in the Earth
had decayed to 207Pb. Here we report the first isochron age of carbonates
using the 238U-206Pb method on corals. This method, which gives good
accuracy even for low U concentrations, has great potential for the direct
dating of sedimentary sequences and should be valuable for refining the
Phanerozoic timescale."

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

K-Ar dating of Hawaiian lava is wildly inaccurate.

That's why geologists don't pay much attention to analyses of rock samples
unless their geological context is well understood. Since Hawaii is built
on oceanic crust that is about 80-100 million years old (the age is known
more precisely than this; I don't have the references handy), it was
immediately obvious that the observed isotopic ratios didn't represent the
ages of the rocks.

Our confidence in radiometric dating techniques comes from years of careful
comparisons to other radiometric techniques and to relative age
determinations from biostratigraphy (fossils in layered rocks). In some
cases, there are multiple isotope systems that may be analyzed in the same
sample. Since these different systems react differently to the processes
that disturb age recording, if the systems disagree with one another the
age significance of the data is suspect.

Geoscientists try to use all available tools in combination to make sure
that they're not fooled by a single spurious analysis. In some journals,
analytical results aren't publishable unless they're backed up by field
relations and/or by other analytical methods.

The particular case of young Hawaiian volcanic rocks is interesting for
reasons other than the absurd age interpretations. Since these rocks are
very poor in the potassium from which radiogenic argon decays, their argon
content is determined largely by the composition of the argon in the rocks
from which the Hawaii lavas were derived. The data tell us something about
the composition of the mantle down to about 150 kilometers below the
surface, where earthquake data tell us the lavas originate.

The example of the Hawaii rocks is a Red Herring, as I will demonstrate
momentarily. However, the answer to your last question is very simple. If
you can date a rock by a number of different methods, involving different
decay series, and if you arrive at the SAME AGE using any of a half-dozen
different and completely independent methods, then you can be quite
confident that the age you have measured is reliable.

If you wish to dispute these ages, you have to come up with EVIDENCE that
they are unreliable. It is not sufficient to wave your hands and express
your skepticism. We all know you are skeptical, but saying "how do we
know," without EVIDENCE to suggest that there is a problem, is just
whistling past the graveyard.

And now for the Red Herring. Creationists often bring up the example of the
Hawaiian pillow basalts with anomalous K-Ar ages, but they neglect to
mention that geologists already thought that rocks formed under THESE
PARTICULAR conditions would give unreliable K-Ar ages because they would
trap argon before it can escape. The studies in question were performed to
confirm this under controlled conditions, and thus to confirm to the
scientific community that THIS PARTICULAR type of rock is unsuitable for
radiometric dating. The misuse of this work by Creationists is particularly
despicable, IMHO.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Erosion should've dumped at least 30 times more sediment in the sea. and
all the continents would be worn to sea level in just 14,000,000 years.

Ever heard of plate tectonics?

Please read:

On Volcanism and Thermal Tectonics on one-plate Planets
     Solomon, Geophysical Research Letters, vol 5, no 6 June 1978
The Supercontinent Cycle
     Nance, Worsley, & Moody, Scientific American, July 1988

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Top soil--6 inches form in 5,000-20,000 years, but earth averages 7 to 8
inches.

Or erosion.

Your county Soil Conservation Board will be happy to tell you why your
topsoil is getting shallower, and what you can do to curb the problem.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mississippi delta would have formed in 5000 years.

So? You have (given a steady-state system which it is NOT) identified a
possible geographic feature less than 5k years old.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Niagara Falls-the rim is wearing back at a known rate and taken ~5,000
years from its original precipice.

That's neat - and the steady-state assumptions are? And how did you get the
"original precipice" without deciding up front how old you wanted it?

The Niagara River HAS been where it is for only a few millenia (or tens of
millenia). Before that, the whole area was under glacial ice! (And it some
millenia after the ice retreated for the land to reach its present level
and the drainage paths to reach their present alignment.

I'd love to see what happens in the year the falls erode back to Lake Erie!
At the present rate of erosion, I think that's supposed to be ~100,000 AD.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Deterioration of earth's magnetic field, at present rates, implies an
excessive field 10,000 years ago.

The decay is not a steady state (you love this - Morris does, too). In
fact, there is considerable evidence for reversals. The atlantic ocean
floor as it spreads shown the weakening - reversing - strengthening
recorded in its stone as the continents spread from the mid-atlantic ridge.

The usual creationist assumption behind this extrapolation is that the
decay is exponential, which excludes the possibility of field reversals.
The limited existing measurements cannot yet distinguish between
exponential, linear, or other decay patterns.

The source of the earth's magnetic field remains uncertain. A good summary
of what is known is found in "Ancient Magnetic Reversals: Clues to the
Geodynamo", SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, May 1988, p. 76-83.

The field is expected to reverse sometime in the next few thousand years. A
time scale on page 78 shows the reversals over the past 170 million years,
as deduced from the magnetic patterns in oceanic crust. I counted about 200
reversals on the chart.

The sun reverses its magnetic field every 11 years in a 22 year cycle.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not enough dissolved minerals in oceans.

Dissolved minerals - the stuff moves in cycles, and as such most of the
minerals are very close to their balance levels. Remember "carbon cycle"?
The same general idea holds for everything else. Remember the space
shuttle? Except for the last time, it has been landing on salt. Like from
the oceans, remember?

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Other "geological clocks" that suggest a "young" earth- juvenile water
(from volcanoes), oil deposit pressure, Stalactite Growth (limestone)

Juvenile water is covered in those same computer models, and again nothing
tricky is involved at all. Oil deposits themselves require a time well over
6000 years to exist, so try again. Stalactite growth - of some, perhaps.
You are still identifying merely temporary features

Please read:

The Formation of the Earth from Planetesimals
     Wetherill, Scientific American June 1981
The Steady State of the Earth's Crust, Atmosphere and Oceans
     Siever, Scientific American, May 1974
The Evolution of the Atmosphere of the Earth
     Hart, Icarus, 33, 23-39, 1978
Evolution of the Atmosphere and Oceans
     Holland, Lazar & McCaffery, Nature vol 320, 6 mar 1986
Enhanced CO2 greenhouse to compensate for reduced solar luminosity on early
earth
     Owen & Cess, Nature, vol 227, 22Feb 1979
How Climate Evolved on the Terrestrial Planets
     Kasting, Toon, & Pollack, Scientific American, Feb 1988
Climatic Changes of the last 18,000 years: Observations and Model
Simulations
     COHMAP members, Science vol 241, 26 Aug 88, p 1043-1052

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Polonium halos indicate granite-producing magma cooled suddenly, not over
millions of years.

Gentry's work is of particular importance because it involves actual field
and laboratory work followed up by papers appearing in refereed scientific
journals, offering some credibility to the field of "creation research."
There is, however, a serious weakness in Gentry's work. It has been devoted
almost entirely to the physics of the polonium halos, thereby neglecting
the geological setting of the samples in which the halos are found. Because
of this neglect, Gentry makes unwarranted generalizations about the nature
of the world's Precambrian rocks.

THE BASIC PREMISE

Polonium halos are small spherical "shells" of radiation damage that
surround radioactive inclusions within certain minerals in rocks, which
Gentry has described in his book "Creation's Tiny Mystery." [1] The halos
are formed by alpha particles released during the decay of an isotope. As
an alpha particle nears the end of its path and slows, it causes disruption
of the crystal structure leaving a small damage track. Over time, repeated
decays from the parent isotope will leave a spherical halo of
discoloration. The distance that an alpha particle travels depends upon the
energy of the decay and that, in turn, is a function of the particular
nuclide that decays. Theoretically, then, the radii of a series of halos
that surround a radioactive inclusion permit identification of the specific
decaying nuclides. Gentry has claimed that certain of these halos indicate
that the granite "basement rocks" of the earth are "the primordial Genesis
rocks" and were created instantaneously about six thousand years ago.
Essentially, Gentry has found that in certain samples of Precambrian
biotite (a mica) the inner ring halos for uranium and other nuclides in the
decay chain which should be producing Polonium 210, Po214 and Po218 are
missing; only the polonium rings for these three isotopes are present. In
addition, Gentry observed little or no uranium in the radioactive
inclusion. His conclusion is that the polonium must have been primordial
and, because of the short half-lives of the polonium isotopes (138.4 days ,
0.000164 sec. and 3.04 minutes, respectively), the granite, therefore, must
have been created in the solid state in "only a brief period between
'nucleosynthesis' and crystallization of the host rock." [1, p. 270] The
fact that Gentry has published in Nature, Science and Medical Opinion and
Review leads one to believe that there is a fair amount of support for his
work, but Gentry avoids making direct creationist statements in these works
-- it seems he is only cautiously trying to link the rocks of the
Precambrian to the rocks that existed right after the Earth's formation -
or creation. His book, however, leaves no doubt on his position: "Were tiny
polonium halos God's fingerprints in Earth's primordial rocks? Could it be
that the Precambrian granites were the Genesis rocks of our planet?" [1, p.
32]1

THE GEOLOGY

The first curiosity that Wakefield uncovered was that the sites from which
Gentry obtained his samples were not in the older Archean era of the
Precambrian, as one would expect, but in fact were in the considerably
younger (as dated radiometrically and structurally) Proterozoic era;
specifically, the Proterozoic Grenville Supergroup of the Grenville
Province, here in Ontario. This misunderstanding came about because Gentry
is annoyingly vague on exact sites in his book. One mine, the Silver Crater
Mine, is mentioned specifically, while the remaining sites are described
only as being in Madagascar, New Hampshire and Norway. This tendency
towards vagueness also occurs in his Medical Opinion and Review article, in
which he refers to "the Wolsendorf (Bavaria) fluorite." [2] After some
research, Wakefield tracked down the three sites, all near Bancroft in
southern Ontario. Regarding the first site, the Fission Mine, it appeared
to Wakefield that this was where Gentry obtained his fluorite samples and
some of his biotite. Gentry denied this, saying they had come from Germany,
but Louis Moyd of the National Museum in Ottawa indicated that samples from
the Fission Mine were in fact sent to Gentry. I will break tradition
briefly and quote Wakefield exactly,

"it is clear we are dealing with intrusive calcite vein dikes (rocks
containing mostly the mineral calcite and other minerals, such as mica)
that are small in length and width and cut metasedimentary rocks which
still retain bedding planes. Radioactive minerals abound in this locality.
Percolating water from the hill the deposit occupies is strongly
radioactive and was sold in the 1920s for therapeutic purposes."

The second site, the Silver Crater mine, is related to the Fission mine and
is a calcite intrusive of the same origin. Neither of these mines are in
fact granites, a fact Gentry gets wrong. In addition, while Gentry claims
that "halos occur in many mica samples which have not undergone
metamorphism of any kind," the micas of the Silver Crater were indeed
formed during metamorphism under the load of moderate-depthed overburden,
whch has since been eroded off. Gentry's primordial biotite was in fact
metamorphically derived.

The third site, the Faraday mine, I will touch on only briefly. Gentry
emphasizes that the oddity of the halos is that there is no uranium or
thorium in the nucleus at the center of the polonium halos. Unfortunately
for him, the Faraday pegmatite was mined for uranium -- a total of some
four million tons of U(3)O(8) ore were mined for a total of 7.3 million
pounds of uranium oxide until the mine's closure in 1984. The most common
radioactive mineral was uranothorite, hence lots of uranium and thorium.

Gentry's case rests heavily on a "God-of-the-gaps" approach to the halos;
that is, it requires that there be no acceptable naturalistic explanation
for the halos. Once such an explanation is found, Gentry's case crumbles.
One paper that proposes such a naturalistic explanation is by N. K.
Chaudhuri and R. H. Iyer [3]. I make no pretense about being able to
understand the model they present; perhaps those with the necessary
background will help out here. Gentry also has problems with accuracy in
his quotation of other scientific sources. In one case, Gentry (p. 71)
refers to a paper by N. Feather [4], saying that Feather discusses "clear
mica (without any conduits)," but there is no reference to this in
Feather's paper. In another instance, Gentry quotes Steven Talbott for
scientific support and provides a copy of Talbott's article in the
appendices of his book, but Talbott himself states that he has relied on
two sources for HIS information: phone calls with Gentry and "the available
technical literature", which turns out to be based on Gentry's own
articles. What Gentry has in essence done is to reference himself and
attempt to pass this off as independent corroboration.

[1] Gentry, R.V., 1986. Creation's Tiny Mystery. Knoxville, Tenn. Earth
Science Associates.
[2] Gentry, R.V., 1967. "Cosmology and the Earth's Invisible Realm."
Medical Opinion and Review. October, p. 79.
[3] N.K. Chaudhuri and R.H. Iyer, "Origin of Unusual Radioactive Halos,"
Radiation Effects, 1980, vol. 53, pp. 1-6.
[4] N. Feather, "The unsolved problem of the Po-halos in Precambrian
biotite and other old minerals," Comm. to the Royal Soc. of Edinburgh, no.
11, 1978.

And for a more recent:

In the 6 October 1989 issue of SCIENCE magazine (Vol 246, #1 pp 107-109),
there is a report on work with Radiation Induced Color Halos (RICHs) in
quartz, suggesting a mechanism for the "Po halos" that removes their
utility as Creation Science evidence.

The abstract and first two-and-a-half and last one paragraphs of the
report, giving a summary of the problem and the authors' conclusion:

ABSTRACT

"The radii of radiation-induced color halos (RICHs) surrounding radioactive
mineral inclusions in mica generally correspond closely to the calculated
range of common uranogenic and thorogenic alpha particles in mica. Many
exceptions are known, however, and these variants have led investigators to
some rather exotic interpretations. Three RICHs found in quartz are
identified as aluminum hole-trapping centers. Whereas the inner radii of
these RICHs closely match the predicted range of the most energetic common
alphas (39 micrometers), the color centers observed extend to 100
micrometers. Migration of valence-band holes down a radiation-induced
charge potential might account for these enigmatic RICHs. Such RICHs
provide natural experiments in ultraslow charge diffusion.

"In 1907 Joly pointed out that microscopic color halos commonly observed
surrounding small inclusions of radioactive minerals were caused by damage
produced by alpha particles emanating from the inclusions. Shortly
afterwards, Rutherford noted a close correspondence between the radial size
of halos and the energies of the alpha particles. A number of workers have
described and measured these radiation-induced color halos (RICHs) and,
from their sizes, have tried to match them with specific radionuclides in
the inclusions. Although it seems possible to relate the sizes of most of
the described halos to alpha emitters in the U and Th decay chains, there
are many exceptions. Particularly controversial have been two (perhaps
artificial) classes of RICHs referred to as Po halos and giant halos.

"The Po haloes are RICHs that have a size and ring structure apparently
comparable with the range in silicate minerals of alpha particles emitted
by uranogenic Po radioisotopes of mass 210, 214, and 218, although this
interpretation has been challenged. Significantly, rings that can be
attributed to the other five alpha decays in the 238-U seroes seem to be
lacking. That the half-life of 218-Po is 3 min has not deterred some
investigators from proposing separation of Po from its radioactive
progenitors before its inclusion in minerals. Indeed, Po halos have even
been offered as possible evidence of an instantaneous creation.

"Giant halos are anomalous RICHs that have radii extending more than
approximately 47 um from the edge of the inclusion..."

[Their proposal is that aluminum inclusions can create a semi-conductive
area where beta particles can cause diffusion and discoloration over a very
large area]

"...We strongly suspect...that the sizes and structure of giant and Po
RICHs in mica are also artifacts of radiation-induced conductivity and
their explanation requires neither unknown radioactivity nor an abandonment
of current concepts of geologic time."

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

In some places older fossils appear above young ones.

Lewis Overthrust, Northern Montana, Glacier Nat'l Monument. Lewis
Overthrust, Northern Montana including Glacier Nat'l Park Here inorder to
explain the problem of much older fossils superimposed on much younger
rocks we have a massive sheet of rock 6000 ft+ thick and 100+ miles long
moving some 65 (or more) miles with no trace of friction or distortion...
EVEN THOUGH THE ROCKS THEY REST ON ARE CRETACEOUS SHALES AND MUDSTONES
WHICH WOULD SHOW DISTORTION QUITE EASILY!

In "The Rocks and Fossils of Glacier National Monument", U.S. Geological
Survey Professional Paper 294-K (1959) C. P. Ross and Richard Rezak note:

     Most visitors, especially those who stay on the roads, get the
     impression that the Belt strata are undisturbed and lie almost as
     flat today as they did when deposited in the sea which vanished
     so many million years ago. Actually, they are folded, and in
     certain places, they are intensely so. From points on and near
     the trails in the park, it is possible to observe places where
     the Belt series, as revealed in outcrops on ridges, cliffs and
     canyon walls, are folded and crumpled almost as intricately as
     the soft younger strata in the mountains south of the park and in
     the Great Plains adjoining the park to the east.

Ross and Rezak repeatedly show how "crushed and crumpled" the rocks in the
thrust fault are:

     The intricate crumpling and crushing in the immediate vicinity of
     the main overthrust, visible in localities like that near Marias
     Pass, (shown in figure 139), must have taken place when the heavy
     overthrust slab was forced over the soft rocks beneath...

     In some places only a single fault surface formed, with crushed
     and crumpled soft rocks beneath...

     Rocks between these faults were crumpled and crushed in a variety
     of ways. In some places the zone in which fracturing occurred was
     as much as 2000 feet thick; generally it must have been at least
     several hundred feet thick.

The statements made by you that there exists "no indication of friction [?]
or structural distortion in either the Lewis thrust plate or overridded
[sic] surface!" and "In order to explain the stratigraphic imposibility
[sic] of such older rocks over younger rocks thrust model is invoked"
(don't they teach grammar at the Colorado School of Mines?) is misleading
at best and an outright lie at worst. I'm trying to decide if you are
ignorant or just plain dishonest. If you'd like to see photographs of the
actual thrust fault which we are discussing, may I suggest that you examine
the December 1988 issue of the Geological Society of America Bulletin? I'm
sure your library receives it. While it is true that the thrust fault is
often described as being "knife sharp" and there is little structural
distortion above and below it, the fault is undoubtably present. You can
walk up to it in places and place your hand on it. The thrust model, as you
put it, was not just invoked without any supporting evidence. Geologists,
unlike creationists, gather data and use it to support their theories.
While the actual mechanics of overthrusting may still be poorly understood,
geologists are making progress in understanding it (there have been
hundreds of papers published on it).

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Heart Mountain, north of Cody WY

If you believe that a large block of limestone could be moved uphill for
that distance without becoming pulverized I have some land in Fl. you would
be interested in... Or would you be more interested in the Brooklyn Bridge?

aka

Heart Mountain, north of Cody WY A huge mountain of Paleozoic limestone
setting on top of Eocene/Miocene clastics... no indication of friction...
no indication of pulverization... yet in order to avoid the failure of
uniformitarianism geologists predict that this "block" of material was
broken off from Sunlight Basin and moved by the vibration of volcanic
eruptions over a 3000 ft. structure (the Dead Indian hill block fault) for
a distance of over 25 miles.

"in order to avoid the failure of uniformitarianism" is a biased judgement
that does not address the issues, I will ignore it. William G. Pierce in
his article "Heart Mountain and South Fork Detachment Thrusts of Wyoming"
in American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin Vol. 41 (1957),
notes that the level Cambrian strata broke off along a bedding plane, and
slid downhill. The thrust block slid over younger rocks, parts of the
thrust block eroded away, and a volcano finally deposited some debris over
the area where a piece of the block had once stood. The volcanic debris,
not being a part of the original thrust block, never slid.

Pierce also notes that the thrust block strata are often grossly deformed
even when the underlying strata are not. He shows how the strata from one
piece of the thrust block are often sliced across at a slant, forming an
angle with the horizontal strata underlying the thrust fault.

If you will allow me to quote from Strahler's book Science and Earth
History (Note: Bill Jefferys mentions this book frequently. I advise
everyone who reads this group to run not walk to the library and GET it. It
would be most useful for Bob Bales and Joe Applegate to read this.
Challange to Bob Bales. I will read any creationist book you wish me to,
and post a critique to the net if you will read this book and post your
critique of Strahler. Why do I think Bob won't take up the challenge?)

From Chapter 40 page 393:

     For reasons as yet undetermined, the entire layer of
     post-Cambrian strata simply began to glide as a unit
     southeastward over a bedding surface located immediately under
     the massive Bighorn dolomite formation of Ordovician age and
     above the topmost Cambrian formation. This layer detached itself
     along a vertical breakaway fracture shown at the left. Movement
     was evidently on a very low downgrade, decling some 650 meters in
     elevation from the breakaway fracture to the end of the bedding
     slip zone, a horizontal distance of some 50 km. As the rock sheet
     traveled, it broke up onto blocks on a succession of vertical
     tension fractures. The blocks thus became separated by open gaps,
     in which the bedding plane of gliding (identified as the Heart
     Mountain fault) was exposed at the surface. Geologists have
     applied the term "tectonic erosion" to the surface exposure of a
     fault plane by sliding away of the overlying mass.

So it seems 1) it didn't move uphill as you claim. and 2) there was
pulverization of the rocks.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

These are just two of the unconformities which are unexplainable by the
uniformitarian model on which the evolutionary model is based...

But the point is, whenever one small area is undisturbed, its fossils are
found in a very definite order from top to bottom. The fossils close to the
top resemble modern species far more than the fossils closer to the bottom.
When fossils are occasionally found in the "wrong" order, one finds that
the rocks are in disturbed areas like mountain ranges, where the sediments
are being squished up and out over the surface of the earth like an ice
cream bar crushed in a vice. These mountain sediments show plenty of
physical evidence of overturning and overthrusting that has nothing to do
with fossils. Therefore, geologists who avoid overturned rocks when they
determine the fossil sequence are not committing circular reasoning.

William Smith, a canal engineer, was the father of modern stratigraphy. He
was the first to notice that the higher rocks consistently had different
fossils than the lower ones did. He was also a creationist, and used his
discovery only to make money, yet the whole of geology today is based on
his discovery.

Geology is self-correcting, so of course, there is always an infinitesimal
chance that it will someday contradict evolution, or perhaps render
evolution a poorer explanation of the evidence than creationism. It will no
doubt take something a bit more serious than the anomalies Joe mentioned
here. We're still waiting.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

A near planetary collision or an asteroid impact could do a lot of
geomorphic change! And geologically overnight!

Yeah, and it would probably kill everything, given the size it would have
to be. see national geographic, june 1989, 'the march toward extinction',
p. 662, especially the chart starting on p. 666.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shifting the poles rapidly over Hapgood's waveguide zone would be just as
effective and fast!

What's wrong with the possibility of shifting them slowly?

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Carcasses deposited in icy mucky dumps. Evidence of rapid removal and
deposition of soil, forest in arctic.

...the evidence plainly points to the removal of large areas of soil and
forest along with their rapid deposition and freezing in the arctic... now
what besides a tidal surge of immense proportions would do that... and if
such a surge wiped the face of Asia and Alaska, why is it unlikely to
extend it to Mesopotania, where it would have depositied it's debris in the
vicinity of Ararat!

Severe temperature changes are known to be responsible for great
catastrophic mortalities. Such mortalities are typically associated with
unusually cold spells or severe winters. Severe storms are also responsible
for catastrophic kills and quick sedimentary deposition. During hurricanes
and other severe storms, bottom sediment can be stirred up to a
considerable depth and easily bury animals.

There is absolutely no question that modern day catastrophes are constantly
occurring and that many of these can result in catastrophic kills and rapid
deposition of sediment. In short, fossils and fossil graveyards are being
formed today. You may be correct in assuming that the evidence of rapid
deposition you cite is generally evidence for some catastrophic mode of
formation, but you are incorrect in assuming that only the Genesis Flood
can account for such deposits. Especially in the face of the great amount
of other evidence in direct conflict with the Genesis Flood hypothesis,
evidence of slow deposition, evidence in coral reef formations, evaporite
deposits, fossil lake deposits, glacial deposits, and desert deposits. When
we look at the sedimentary rock record we find some deposits that bear
evidence of having been formed by moving water and could have been formed
in flood water, but by no means are all rocks like that, in fact there are
a considerable number of formations that could not have formed in surging
flood waters at all.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

There are no layers which require more than 6000 years to build up

What about

      the abyssal plain ?
      the Greenland icecap
      Green River

Plus, at the satellite-measured recession rate of the NA continent, the
Atlantic gets a Real Big age. This is consistent with the mag stripes
alongside the mid-Atlantic ridge.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

A while back I heard a Southern Baptist preacher declare that no more
fossils were being formed because the rate of sediment deposition today is
too slow to capture and preserve anything.

This, he said, is proof that the flood happened because that would have
been the only time the rate of sediment deposition would have been high
enough to make fossils. (I didn't bother to ask him how he explained the
layering of fossils, but I'm sure he would have used some variation of the
idea that the larger fossils naturally floated to the top and the small
ones settled to the bottom.)

There was a bit of wondering going on amongst the dinodiggers on why so
many fossils of a particular type had a specific distribution, especially
when that distribution was of a single kind, large numbers, and not
uncommon. A light flashed when it was realized that herding animals today,
when fording a river, sometimes panic. The stampede occurs IN the river,
and many drown. The distribution of animal bodies downstream appear to be
the same as those dinosaur distributions. Thats one.

Tar pits work quite well today. That's two.

I've seen stuff deposited in marine sediments. That's three.

There are about a dozen cars mostly buried about 9 miles from here where a
parking lot caved in into the drainage ditch/river feeder caved in. I have
little doubt that any small animals in the parking lot went with them.
That's four.

Sedimentation rates look like they are going like gangbusters to me. Look
at the estuaries filling in. Look at the marine channels filling in. You
don't get sedimentary build up on top of hills.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Folded rocks show that it was done when they were soft He next stated that
when you hit something that's hard, it breaks or shatters. These folds are
smooth, so it must be that the rock (he showed and mentioned sandstone) was
still forming from mud, and was still soft. This means that the layers
formed very rapidly, to still be soft (down at the bottom layer) when the
whole shebang got faulted.

His (inevitable) conclusion: it all formed during Noah's flood.

Rebuttal: nothing "hit" that rock. Conventional geology understands the
strength and brittleness of these things: they can and have been measured
in labs. Note, I'm not saying that rocks of a given type are identical. The
point is that science has dealt with all this quantitatively. The rocks got
folded by compression, not by sudden impact: and in fact some rocks do
shatter. I've seen examples - for instance, hard black fragments embedded
in a softer gray rock. The gray rock had flowed while the black shattered.

Folding can happen in a lot less than geological time. If you go to the
Roman dig at the Fort at Housesteads, in Northumbria, you can see the
remains of Roman barracks which now lie in definite waves, because of the
movement of the earth beneath them. The mortar between the stones is still
intact.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oldest living things, bristlecone pines, are younger than 5000 years.

Sure. In fact, if you go for grove instead of individual tree and match
similar growth rings (similar events in overlapping lifespans) it goes well
over 11,000 years.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Man and dinosaurs coexisted.

(Creationist Institute of California). Refuted. Institute discredited and
licence (to grant science degrees) recently revoked.

BTW: Those "footprints" in the Paluxy river bed are NOT human. A simple
observation of the tracks reveal that while an arch is present forward of
the heel, there are only three toes. If a track is observed which is
uneroded, webbing is visible between the toes. A special on NOVA allowed
these tracks to be visible to millions.

Dr. Walter Brown, now director of the Center for Scientific Creation in
Phoenix, AZ.

Brown, may fall back on a rather novel technique that he has employed in
the past -- denying having ever supported the idea. Brown first used this
tactic not long after the Paluxy River tracks were shown conclusively to be
either dinosaur tracks or erosion marks. When asked for his opinion, Brown
claimed that he had NEVER supported the Paluxy River tracks. However, he
was forced to 'fess up when shown the transcript of a local Ontario TV
program, "Speaking Out," when he stated that Paluxy River was very good
evidence for creationism.
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The suddenness with which major changes in pattern occurred and the virtual
absence of any fossil remains from the period in which they were alleged to
be evolving.

This can be explained by punctuated evolution, in this regard it is
important to note that not all suggested lineages in the fossil record have
such abrupt changes and gaps. There are several fossil successions that
record critical evolutionary steps and at a fine taxinomic resolution. The
development of the modern horse is a fairly complete succession, as is the
development of mammal skull characteristics from the therapsida of Permean
time. Other examples of pretty gradual evolution?

Instantaneous changes of taxa, on a geologic time scale, between long
periods of stability does not pose insurmountable problems for
neo-evolution since it is genetic equilibrium that allows long stable
periods and stressing the gene pool into metastable states that allows for
punctuated evolution.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Many extinctions lack obvious reasons.

The "obvious reasons" are obvious to him, and do not necessarily have
anything to do with reality (i.e. 'cause he don't see it don't make it
gone)

This may be a problem for compiling a history of life, but the existence of
extinctions at all poses problems for anyone claiming life has teleology.
If a divine creator is calling the shots then finding extinctions casts
doubt on the perfection of his plan, or even the existence of a plan.

As for finding causes for extinctions, this is going to be an area of some
debate for years to come. The ideas that have been advanced find some
common collapse of habitat that is consistent with evolutionary biology.
The suddenness, or seeming catastrophe of proposed events do not really
threaten uniformitarianism because they are changes of rate, but not of
process.

The "Lack of Obvious Reasons", may overstate the problem, for a series of
events such as asteroid impact, continental collisions, destruction of
barriers between habitats, all have been advanced and all point to the
destruction of habitat and with it mass extinctions.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The doctrine of evolution is atheistic and therefore immoral.

Unlike creationism, evolution doesn't require the acceptance or rejection
of any religion. In fact, many theists believe in evolution. The doctrine
that atheism is immoral is bigotry, and therefore immoral. Competition
doesn't imply hatred or war.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Competition for survival implies "strife, hatred, war, and death."

The Soviets did have a problem along these lines. Lysenko in particular
disbelieved in natural selection for these reasons. He got charge of the
Soviet Union's grain production. Their agricultural industry has almost
recovered...

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The great complexity of nature shows it was designed. Laws require a
lawmaker; organization requires an organizer.

No, it doesn't. The patterns within a kaleidoscope are very complex, and
extremely organized (in the sense of symmetrical patterning) but are not
designed.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Bible says so.

In the resolution from the 67th General Convention of the Episcopal Church
acted in September 1982 to "affirm its belief in the glorious ability of
God to create in any manner," rejected "the rigid dogmatism of the
'Creationists' movement," and supported "scientists, educators, and
theologians in the search for truth in this Creation that God has given and
entrusted to us."

Addressing the Pontifical Academy of Sciences before its meetings on
Cosmology and Cosmogony in October 1981, Pope John Paul II reaffirmed the
statement of Pope Pius XII that the universe was created "millions of years
ago" directly contrary to creationists views. The Pope declared that "The
Bible itself speaks to us of the origin of the universe and its make-up,
not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise..."

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Bible is accurate on other points, so it must be accurate on creation.

Leviticus 11:113,19 and Deuteronomy 14:11-18 list fowl, and both have bats
in the list with heron, lapwing, and bat closing off the list. The bat is
not a bird.

Leviticus 11:6 has a hare chewing its cud. Rabbits do no such thing.

reminder for Barry: "cud" is not "shit".

BTW: 'Gerah', the term which appears in the MT means (chewed) cud, and also
perhaps grain, or berry (also a 20th of a sheckel, but I think that we can
agree that that is irrelevant here). It does not mean dung, and there is a
perfectly adequate Hebrew word for that, which could have been used.
Furthermore, the phrase translated 'chew the cud' in the KJV is more
exactly 'bring up the cud'. Rabbits do not bring up anything; they let it
go all the way through, then eat it again. The description given in
Leviticus is inaccurate, and that's that. Rabbits do eat their own dung;
they do not bring anything up and chew on it. thanks to Robert Low

Leviticus 11:21-23 lists things with four legs. Among the list are locust,
beetle (cricket in some translations), and grasshopper.

Psalms 58:8 says "as a snail melts..." Snails do not melt.

Gen 1:20-21 has the waters bringing forth Gen 2:19 has them coming from the
ground. Maybe some one should tell them about eggs?

Genesis 30:39 cattle looking at pilled rods conceive and bring forth
ringspeckled, speckeled and spotted calves. changing the characteristics of
a descendant by showing them a rod just doesn't work...

Matthew 4:8 ..took upon a high mountain and shewed all the kingdoms of the
world.

  1. Geology - rock simply isn't strong enough for such a megamountain.
  2. astronomical bodies are spherical, and you cannot see the entire
     exterior surface from anyplace.

Genesis 3:14 "...and dust though shalt eat all the days of thy life."
Snakes, while built low, do not eat dirt.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Referring to a genesis "day") It ALWAYS (Morris's stress) refers to a
twenty-four-hour day.

So much for the apologists...

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Later Biblical characters (Moses & Paul) refer to the fact of creation, not
the myth.

Are we to take people that we have no independent record of as
authoritative references in the only document they ARE mentioned in? This
is like Santa Claus in The Night Before Christmas testifying as to the
veracity of the "visions of sugarplums".

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Even Jesus Christ believed in the Genesis record of creation.

Ibid, though this is clearly an attempt at pleading from authority.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is thus absolutely impossible to believe in the Bible as the complete
and literal Word of God and to believe in the theory of evolution. But,
more than that, it is almost impossible to believe in a personal God of any
sort if one believes in evolution.

The Pope doesn't agree with this statement. Nor do many other leading
religious figures. They will be glad that this civil engineer pointed it
out for them...

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The atheistic and satanic character of the doctrine is evidenced in the
many evil social doctrines it has spawned.

What?!?! Talk about irrelevant mud-slinging!!!

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fall of man: Records say civilization was man's original condition.

Which records are these? The Old testament? And of course. Without the
civilization you don't have the records. So "as far back as they go" is
civilization. When there isn't civilization, the records quit going.

This one is very interesting, it reveals the core prejudice of christian,
and other, origins, that man is fallen from some primordial grace. The
evolutionary evaluations of origins avoids the opposite prejudice as well,
that evolution is always progressive. It says that the idea of progress in
the condition of a lineage is misleading; change is reflected in adaptation
and specialization which may be by turns successful or lethal.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Place of man's origin: Evidence confirms origin in one locality.

Observing population distributions takes divine inspiration? One successful
group spread and killed off the less successful ones. Supports evolution,
too.

OK Bible scholars, where does Moses say man came from? The claim here of
proof of God's inspiration is wrong, even if Moses got it right. Man came
from Africa, despite years of searching for human ancestors in Europe and
Asia. Evidence says Man came from Africa, despite years of searching for
human ancestors in Europe and Asia.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Order of events in creation matches what an observer would have seen: 1:
Beginning, 2: an earth in darkness, 3: light, 4: atmosphere, 5: dry land,
6: plants, 7: discernable sun, moon, stars, 8: sea and air creatures, 9:
beasts, 10: man.

The actual order should be more like 1: beginning, 2: light, 3: sun, stars,
4: atmosphere, 5: earth, 6: dry land, 7: sea creatures, 8: moon, 9: beasts
(amphibians and reptiles), 10: fruiting plants (which is what Genesis
specifies), 11: air creatures, more beasts, 12: man. I'm not sure the order
is exact (the moon may have come earlier, for example), but it is more
accurate than the Genesis version.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Earth is unsupported (Job 26:7)

Job 38:4 says Earth has a foundation. Job 26:11 says heaven is supported by
pillars.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Earth is round (Isaiah 40:22)

Matthew 4:8 ..took upon a high mountain and shewed all the kingdoms of the
earth. Not on a round surface he didn't...

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Water cycle is described (Eccl. 1:7)

Job 38:22 says that snow and hail are kept in storehouses.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Good sanitation practices are given (Deut 23:13, Num. 19:11-22, etc.)

People aren't stupid. They could have figured these out without divine aid.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

History is accurate.

Not unsurprising. It was written while the history was current events.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The authors admit their human failings (Deut 32:50, Acts 19:20, etc.)

This is true of lots of writings, even some USENET articles. Besides, does
it make sense to claim that a book is infallible because its authors admit
that they are fallible?

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Bible is harmonious throughout.

Given the amount of editing it went through, you would expect it to be
reasonably harmonious, but it still contains contradictions. For example,
Matt. 27:5-8 vs. Acts 11:18-19 and Matt. 1:16 vs. Luke 3:23.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Numerous prophecies fulfilled.

Prophecies weren't meant to predict the future. The word originally meant
"divinely inspired speech." Not until 1300 did it come to mean "predicting
future events." [Oxford English Dictionary] Besides, there are lots of
mundane ways to predict the future:

  1.  Make the wording sufficiently vague that, with proper interpretation,
     it could apply to practically anything.
  2.  Predict something which has already happened.
  3.  Rewrite history to say that your prediction was actually fulfilled.
  4.  Give no time limit for the prediction.
  5.  Predict something which is extremely likely to occur.
  6.  Make so many predictions one of them is bound to occur. Later, edit
     out those that failed.
  7.  Predict something that you yourself can cause to happen.

All of the predictions below can be fit into one or more of these
categories.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------


Religion's views on creationism:

In the resolution from the 67th General Convention of the Episcopal Church
acted in September 1982 to "affirm its belief in the glorious ability of
God to create in any manner," rejected "the rigid dogmatism of the
'Creationists' movement," and supported "scientists, educators, and
theologians in the search for truth in this Creation that God has given and
entrusted to us."

Addressing the Pontifical Academy of Sciences before its meetings on
Cosmology and Cosmogony in October 1981, Pope John Paul II reaffirmed the
statement of Pope Pius XII that the universe was created "millions of years
ago" (in european millions is american billions. directly contrary to
creationists views. The Pope declared that "The Bible itself speaks to us
of the origin of the