NationStates Jolt Archive

Go here for the argument: http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=383368

a truly appropriately named thread. i don't believe i've ever encountered a creationist that was right about much of anything when it comes to science. or theology. or politics for that matter.

Is there a name for this type of thread? And is it allowed?

not so much a case of right or wrong, more of better theorised argument or creationism. I know a few personally, and to be honest I'm sick of the generic answer 'Because God made it so'.

Is there a name for this type of thread? And is it allowed?

lol, anything is allowed, persay, even though it gets on people's nerves. I think it's like beating a dead horse. Anything that people say on these evolutionist vs. creationist threads have already been said.

Personally, I think that evolution is perfectly provable, and i think its out of stubborn denial that these religious whackos stick with their opinions.

And I'm tired of "Because Science says it's true."

Scientists have been wrong many times before. Don't think that we are an enlightened age that knows all.

At one time, "scientists" thought that the earth was the center of the universe, just for one example.

I'd bring in my personal reasoning as to why I believe the world was created by God, but I've seen how you people "debate" and I really have no interest in being called unreasonable by people who are just as unreasonable, if not more so.

And I'm tired of "Because Science says it's true."

Scientists have been wrong many times before. Don't think that we are an enlightened age that knows all.

At one time, "scientists" thought that the earth was the center of the universe, just for one example.

I'd bring in my personal reasoning as to why I believe the world was created by God, but I've seen how you people "debate" and I really have no interest in being called unreasonable by people who are just as unreasonable, if not more so.

the evidence is readily available

there is no need to debate

you are wrong

And I'm tired of "Because Science says it's true."

Scientists have been wrong many times before. Don't think that we are an enlightened age that knows all.

At one time, "scientists" thought that the earth was the center of the universe, just for one example.

I'd bring in my personal reasoning as to why I believe the world was created by God, but I've seen how you people "debate" and I really have no interest in being called unreasonable by people who are just as unreasonable, if not more so.

Actually it's debatable whether anything that we would call science existed then. It was the ancient Greeks who said that the Earth was the centre of the universe, and the Catholic Church made it a tenet of faith, even when people like Galileo were able to demonstrably prove that it wasn't true. Still, evidence has never really worried those too blinded by their unquestioning acceptance of religious 'truths'.

lol, anything is allowed, persay, even though it gets on people's nerves. I think it's like beating a dead horse. Anything that people say on these evolutionist vs. creationist threads have already been said.

Personally, I think that evolution is perfectly provable, and i think its out of stubborn denial that these religious whackos stick with their opinions.

I mean this thread, one with a troll statement designed to funnel people into another thread. Is that allowed?

Actually it's debatable whether anything that we would call science existed then. It was the ancient Greeks who said that the Earth was the centre of the universe, and the Catholic Church made it a tenet of faith, even when people like Galileo were able to demonstrably prove that it wasn't true. Still, evidence has never really worried those too blinded by their unquestioning acceptance of religious 'truths'.

True... but it is also debatable that the Christian religion kept science alive during the "dark ages". Take Mendel, the father of Genetics. He was a monk who was raising plants in his garden. Newton was a Christian. It is arguable if the principles that modern scientific theory is based upon could have been formed at all without the idea that there is a rational God, thus, the Universe must be rational. I'm not saying that Christianity is the only religion that would have given rise to the idea that the niverse can be studied. It is, however, my opinion that, with the beleive that everything was created by many random factors, the chance for mankind believing the Universe is rational enough to be studied would be much lower. Now, this is my personal opinion. There is no way to prove whether or not modern science would have been possible without religion. My statement about how many of the "Dark Age" and "Renaissance" scientists -were- Christians. So you cannot blame Christianity for being the cause of less scientific breakthroughs. You can, however, blame the Catholic Church ((As an established organisation, not as a religion)) ;) as well as modern Christians who refuse to beleive what there is PROOF for. Real proof, not sketchy evidence.

Terra... learn how to have a reasonable discussion, please. Statements like yours only lead to flame wars and nothing productive. It is just as wrong to blindly believe everything a scientist tells you without question as it is to believe everything a pastor tells you without question. One example is that scientists date fossils ((as one method)) by the layer of rock they take them out of. They also date the layers of rock ((as one method)) by the fossils they take from them. This is circular reasoning. Fossils as proof that the earth is billions of years old is also poor reasoning. There have been cowboy hats found fossilised. Something like a mass Flood ((which was recorded in many different mythologies, not just the Bible)) could create the conditions needed for a lot of fossils, in many different layers, very quickly. Carbon dating ((I'm sure you've heard this reasoning before.)) is also based on specific calculations that assume already that the earth is billions of years old. I know, however, that this isn't the only dating method. It is, however, the one most frequently used as "proof".

This all said, I do believe evolution happens. you can't deny things like those moths that darkened color to match the polluted trees when factories were built. I don't believe in spontanious generation, apart from God's Six Days of Creation. I also believe, given the corrent evolutionary pressure, a different kind of animal could be formed. I don't believe that you can get mammals from fish, however. The changes required would be neigh impossible for random chance to make. Too many changes would have to have occured almost at once for it to happen, and the in-between stages would have had a slim chance of survival. Sentience also strikes me as unlikely, evolution-wise. Looking at suicide rates and some primary facets of human nature, it just doesn't strike me as conducive to a "natural selection" type of development.

I'm an open-minded person, but where the hell do you fundamentalist whackos get off?!? "God did it" sounds like something a juvenile idiot would use as a foundation for an argument. First, prove that god exists, then we'll discuss whether or not it created everything.

And I'm tired of "Because Science says it's true."

Scientists have been wrong many times before. Don't think that we are an enlightened age that knows all.

At one time, "scientists" thought that the earth was the center of the universe, just for one example.

I'd bring in my personal reasoning as to why I believe the world was created by God, but I've seen how you people "debate" and I really have no interest in being called unreasonable by people who are just as unreasonable, if not more so.

The difference between science and religion is science admits when it is wrong.

The difference between science and religion is science admits when it is wrong.

That would be funny... if it wasn't the truth...

True... but it is also debatable that the Christian religion kept science alive during the "dark ages". Take Mendel, the father of Genetics. He was a monk who was raising plants in his garden. Newton was a Christian. It is arguable if the principles that modern scientific theory is based upon could have been formed at all without the idea that there is a rational God, thus, the Universe must be rational. I'm not saying that Christianity is the only religion that would have given rise to the idea that the niverse can be studied. It is, however, my opinion that, with the beleive that everything was created by many random factors, the chance for mankind believing the Universe is rational enough to be studied would be much lower. Now, this is my personal opinion. There is no way to prove whether or not modern science would have been possible without religion. My statement about how many of the "Dark Age" and "Renaissance" scientists -were- Christians. So you cannot blame Christianity for being the cause of less scientific breakthroughs. You can, however, blame the Catholic Church ((As an established organisation, not as a religion)) ;) as well as modern Christians who refuse to beleive what there is PROOF for. Real proof, not sketchy evidence.

Terra... learn how to have a reasonable discussion, please. Statements like yours only lead to flame wars and nothing productive. It is just as wrong to blindly believe everything a scientist tells you without question as it is to believe everything a pastor tells you without question. One example is that scientists date fossils ((as one method)) by the layer of rock they take them out of. They also date the layers of rock ((as one method)) by the fossils they take from them. This is circular reasoning. Fossils as proof that the earth is billions of years old is also poor reasoning. There have been cowboy hats found fossilised. Something like a mass Flood ((which was recorded in many different mythologies, not just the Bible)) could create the conditions needed for a lot of fossils, in many different layers, very quickly. Carbon dating ((I'm sure you've heard this reasoning before.)) is also based on specific calculations that assume already that the earth is billions of years old. I know, however, that this isn't the only dating method. It is, however, the one most frequently used as "proof".

This all said, I do believe evolution happens. you can't deny things like those moths that darkened color to match the polluted trees when factories were built. I don't believe in spontanious generation, apart from God's Six Days of Creation. I also believe, given the corrent evolutionary pressure, a different kind of animal could be formed. I don't believe that you can get mammals from fish, however. The changes required would be neigh impossible for random chance to make. Too many changes would have to have occured almost at once for it to happen, and the in-between stages would have had a slim chance of survival. Sentience also strikes me as unlikely, evolution-wise. Looking at suicide rates and some primary facets of human nature, it just doesn't strike me as conducive to a "natural selection" type of development.

Mmmm...id agree with christians began the rennaissance (sp?). But, during the actual dark ages...the institution of religion, the catholic church primarily, was more interested in destroying knowledge that conflicted with their beliefs.

The reason there was information to bud to an enlightenment was honestly, muslim and middle eastern cultures, who saved much of the information and knowledge the ancient greeks and romans had discovered.

True... but it is also debatable that the Christian religion kept science alive during the "dark ages". Take Mendel, the father of Genetics. He was a monk who was raising plants in his garden. Newton was a Christian. It is arguable if the principles that modern scientific theory is based upon could have been formed at all without the idea that there is a rational God, thus, the Universe must be rational. I'm not saying that Christianity is the only religion that would have given rise to the idea that the niverse can be studied. It is, however, my opinion that, with the beleive that everything was created by many random factors, the chance for mankind believing the Universe is rational enough to be studied would be much lower. Now, this is my personal opinion. There is no way to prove whether or not modern science would have been possible without religion. My statement about how many of the "Dark Age" and "Renaissance" scientists -were- Christians. So you cannot blame Christianity for being the cause of less scientific breakthroughs. You can, however, blame the Catholic Church ((As an established organisation, not as a religion)) ;) as well as modern Christians who refuse to beleive what there is PROOF for. Real proof, not sketchy evidence.

Terra... learn how to have a reasonable discussion, please. Statements like yours only lead to flame wars and nothing productive. It is just as wrong to blindly believe everything a scientist tells you without question as it is to believe everything a pastor tells you without question. One example is that scientists date fossils ((as one method)) by the layer of rock they take them out of. They also date the layers of rock ((as one method)) by the fossils they take from them. This is circular reasoning. Fossils as proof that the earth is billions of years old is also poor reasoning. There have been cowboy hats found fossilised. Something like a mass Flood ((which was recorded in many different mythologies, not just the Bible)) could create the conditions needed for a lot of fossils, in many different layers, very quickly. Carbon dating ((I'm sure you've heard this reasoning before.)) is also based on specific calculations that assume already that the earth is billions of years old. I know, however, that this isn't the only dating method. It is, however, the one most frequently used as "proof".

This all said, I do believe evolution happens. you can't deny things like those moths that darkened color to match the polluted trees when factories were built. I don't believe in spontanious generation, apart from God's Six Days of Creation. I also believe, given the corrent evolutionary pressure, a different kind of animal could be formed. I don't believe that you can get mammals from fish, however. The changes required would be neigh impossible for random chance to make. Too many changes would have to have occured almost at once for it to happen, and the in-between stages would have had a slim chance of survival. Sentience also strikes me as unlikely, evolution-wise. Looking at suicide rates and some primary facets of human nature, it just doesn't strike me as conducive to a "natural selection" type of development.

I'll address a couple of your points.

1) The flood could not have produced the fossil record we see today. Fossils are sorted by what we think is age - we think the older ones are further down. Now, a flood would produce a radically different type of sorting - it would sort based on hydrodynamic characteristics of bones, such as size or density. But then, bones of recent large animals (such as mammoths) would, theoretically, be in the same strata as bones of what we think of as more ancient large animals - say, some dinosaurs. We'd expect that, for example, pollen grains would not be sorted by age - after all, pollen grains from the past would be hydrodynamically the same as modern pollen grains.

Except they're not. They're sorted approximately in the way we'd expect through carbon dating. Carbon dating, of course, can only be applied to relatively "modern" samples, less than 50,000 years old; older samples need to be analyzed with other dating methods.

2) Carbon dating is calibrated by tree-ring data. By looking at tree rings, you can count back years; exceptional events such as climate changes leave marks such as wider tree rings - using this, you can match the rings on one tree to that of another, and extend the chronology back. This method of dating trees agrees with the values given by carbon dating.

3) I'm not sure whether you're disagreeing with the age of the earth as 4+ billion years. If you are, I'll type up a quick paragraph or so, if not I won't.

4) Hmm, I'm not quite sure how much of evolution you "accept" and how much you don't. Isn't it kind of strange to arbitrarily pick-and-choose which transitions you think happen and which don't based on whether or not you can see how the transition could be done.

Are you denying all macroevolution? Or just specific transitions?

Actually, the fish-mammal transition did not happen, as such.

Fish -> amphibians
amphibians -> reptiles
reptiles -> mammals.

Multiple transitions there.

http://www.holysmoke.org/tran-icr.htm - they give nice one-line summaries of various transitional fossils we have, including some from those three transitions.

I'm not sure whether you're against macroevolution in general? Or against specific transtions?

Anyhow. I'll explain more once I know what your position is.

5) Okay... "The changes required would be neigh impossible for random chance to make." - that's pretty hard to prove. In fact, chance can come up with lots of brilliant things when given billions of years plus a mechanism for sorting out the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. Natural selection. This really doesn't deserve to be a separate point, it's part of #4, but oh well.

6) Sentience - well, that seems to be a product of intelligence. Once our brains are advanced enough to observe the world in detail, then we'll percieve ourselves, and thus be sentient. Seems like a pretty advantageous thing to me.

Creationists are wrong. In all their disguises ("Intelligent design," anyone?). They're bothersome enough when they just yell at you, they're even worse when they argue that creationism should be taught in science class. (If you get the AZ Republic, BLARG, I know you do, some moron wrote in about that today.) Creationism is:
1. Not science.
2. Wrong.

Hey Mentho. I actually don't get AZ republic. Save me a copy and I'll read it when we hang out.

Neteizhie(sp) said it best, "The greatest hoax man ever came up with is convicing us that their is a all poweful being up their that made us." And This quote " Relgion is a form of mind control, and it works because millions of people are dumb enough to follow it"

Religion is the Opiate of the Masses anyone?

Anyway, the thread content (link to another thread) was mean to get people to the real debate because I misnamed the original thread.

Hey Mentho. I actually don't get AZ republic. Save me a copy and I'll read it when we hang out.
Here's the article Creationist tripe (http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/1221landsbaum21.html)
I wrote in again. Hopefully my letter will be there tomorrow or sometime soon.

I'll address a couple of your points.

1) The flood could not have produced the fossil record we see today. Fossils are sorted by what we think is age - we think the older ones are further down. Now, a flood would produce a radically different type of sorting - it would sort based on hydrodynamic characteristics of bones, such as size or density. But then, bones of recent large animals (such as mammoths) would, theoretically, be in the same strata as bones of what we think of as more ancient large animals - say, some dinosaurs. We'd expect that, for example, pollen grains would not be sorted by age - after all, pollen grains from the past would be hydrodynamically the same as modern pollen grains.

Except they're not. They're sorted approximately in the way we'd expect through carbon dating. Carbon dating, of course, can only be applied to relatively "modern" samples, less than 50,000 years old; older samples need to be analyzed with other dating methods.

2) Carbon dating is calibrated by tree-ring data. By looking at tree rings, you can count back years; exceptional events such as climate changes leave marks such as wider tree rings - using this, you can match the rings on one tree to that of another, and extend the chronology back. This method of dating trees agrees with the values given by carbon dating.

3) I'm not sure whether you're disagreeing with the age of the earth as 4+ billion years. If you are, I'll type up a quick paragraph or so, if not I won't.

4) Hmm, I'm not quite sure how much of evolution you "accept" and how much you don't. Isn't it kind of strange to arbitrarily pick-and-choose which transitions you think happen and which don't based on whether or not you can see how the transition could be done.

Are you denying all macroevolution? Or just specific transitions?

Actually, the fish-mammal transition did not happen, as such.

Fish -> amphibians
amphibians -> reptiles
reptiles -> mammals.

Multiple transitions there.

http://www.holysmoke.org/tran-icr.htm - they give nice one-line summaries of various transitional fossils we have, including some from those three transitions.

I'm not sure whether you're against macroevolution in general? Or against specific transtions?

Anyhow. I'll explain more once I know what your position is.

5) Okay... "The changes required would be neigh impossible for random chance to make." - that's pretty hard to prove. In fact, chance can come up with lots of brilliant things when given billions of years plus a mechanism for sorting out the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. Natural selection. This really doesn't deserve to be a separate point, it's part of #4, but oh well.

6) Sentience - well, that seems to be a product of intelligence. Once our brains are advanced enough to observe the world in detail, then we'll percieve ourselves, and thus be sentient. Seems like a pretty advantageous thing to me.


First off, thank you for your reasonable, lengthy post. It is a rare thing that I get one of those. Thank you.

1) The Biblical Flood had water coming from both the ground and the sky, and I imagine it would have bee very turbulant. I think more than bone density and size would have come into play. Things such as the location/height above sea level would have also played a large role in deciding where they lay. I will concede, however, as I don't have enough knowledge currently to argue any better than that.

2) I should have read up more on what specificly was based on assumptions in carbon dating. Once again, due to lack of knowledge, I concede the point for now.

3) Call me nuts if you will, but yes, I disagree with the earth being that old. I don't claim to know the real age, but I'd say 10k-16k years or so. I'll answer more on this after seeing your paragraph.

4) I accept macroevolution as a possibility. I, personally, find the Punctuated Equilibrium theory to be the most likely. I think change in species is possible. Change in genus or more complicated than that I have yet to see convincing evidence for. Evolution as the origin of species is still a theory. I know the fish-mammal thing wasn't assumed to have happened, but a fish with legs wouldn't be conducive to survival, it would be detrimental. A fish that could breath air really wouldn't have any egde over any other fish unless it needed to breath air. Things like this would have had to evolve at the same time to get amphibians, and that greatly reduces the odds even more. It's possible ((nothing is impossible, just some things are infinately improbable... bonus points for knowing where that is from ;) )), I just find it highly unlikely, to say the least.

5) Think I covered that in #4 ;)

6) I'm not saying sentience in itself is bad for a species, I'm saying that many aspects of it are. The human race has created about as many problems as it has solved, due to its sentience


Note to others... if you want me to respond to you, don't just state what you think, tell me why you think that. Calling me names and saying I am wrong is not conducive to anything. Saying you disagree and why is conducive. Try to at least -act- like open-minded adults.

I don't take everything scientists as true, I look at the evidence and conclude for myself. Same with pastors. I am not a fundamentalist, I am a rational human being. I've gone through much study on different aspects of Christianity and other religions to come to my current belief system. I am not some spoon fed, ignorant fool.

I also find it hilarious that someone who is open-minded would call other people "Fundamentalist Wackos". Christians get called intolerant everyday for less offensive comments than that. In my personal experience, the more insistant someone is that they are open minded, the less true it is. Whether or not God exists is a debate for another time, though I would recommend "He Is There and He Is Not Silent" by Francis A. Schaffer. He provided excellent philosophical reasoning for some major questions of philosophy. 1. Do we exist 2. Does God Exist. He also gives reasons as to why the Christian God satisfies many of the core needs of the human race. Dont' criticize me about it, though. Read the book before you argue on it.

As regards to the Catholic Church trying to destroy knowledge... I won't deny it. During the dark ages, however, there were several monks who developed theories that were ignored mostly, but were actualy many years ahead of their time. I don't deny that a lot of bad, stupid things have been done in the name of religion, but I do think that religion has also had a positive effect as well. Religion isn't a bad thing, it is the perversion of religion to further one's own goals that results in bad things.

And I'm tired of "Because Science says it's true."

Scientists have been wrong many times before. Don't think that we are an enlightened age that knows all.

At one time, "scientists" thought that the earth was the center of the universe, just for one example.

I'd bring in my personal reasoning as to why I believe the world was created by God, but I've seen how you people "debate" and I really have no interest in being called unreasonable by people who are just as unreasonable, if not more so.

ya, scientists did think that the Earth was the center of the universe, but when they realised they were wrong and tried to fix it, the church told them to go fuck themselves. at least science *tries* to change to correct itself and goes beyond a mantra of "because darwin said so" or "because Copernicus said so."

I've never dipped into any of these religion threads, cause there are many other interesting topics here. Wow, you science based guys are angry. Creationism is simple, it doesn't have to fit into a scientific model because thats not what it is.

Someone said that science admits when it it wrong, but you see that every bit of science that has been built up could be knocked down tomorrow, or the day after that by a new theory? Thats the good thing about science, but also its failing as a "normal" religion.

It was written in a book many years ago how the world was created, religious people have faith in that version of creation and can't go changing it, because what they believe is based on something written long ago. Science is rewriten every day, in 50 years todays scientific model of the creation of the earth may be considered laughable, and science people will accept the new way, because it has been shown to them to be superiour scientifically.

Science is dynamic while religion is static. If you don't like your religion, you don't change it, you join a new one. If you see something in science isn't right, you can use the scientific method to change it. You can try to interpret the bible or other holy writings scientifically, but thats not the way they were intented, so don't go crazy if that doesn't hold up to your rigorious scientific scrutiny.

Don't go having an any aneurysm because someone who believes in a religion says "Because god did it." because thats what they believe, and no amount of technobabble and scientific proof will change that if they have faith in that.

Science is mainly about the physics of the world, what it is, how it got like this, and what can we do with it, and less about the metaphysics of the world.

Religion is about what mental and spiritual force created the world, why we are here, what we should do while we are here and how we should be going about doing that.

If I see a man lying in a ditch with bad bruises and a broken leg, science tells me that that man fell from up here and accelerated downward at 9.80m/s until he met the ground and then underwent a rapid deceleration (~100ms) that caused him to stop and the normal force fo the ground is now holding him up so he doesn't keep going down. This is all well and good, but it tells me nothing about what I should do about this situation. I could wish him a good day and walk by while he dies in the ditch for all science cares.

My philisophy, which is largely based on my religion may tell me that I am better off leaving him and getting him help in town, even though he might die while I'm gone, or it could tell me that I don't want to get involved as I may be blamed, or it could even tell me to stop and help the man. This is what religion is used for, not for explaining scientifically why the world is how it is today.

Okay, I'm back, will respond... here on the USA East coast, I posted my last message at midnight and went to bed.

First off, thank you for your reasonable, lengthy post. It is a rare thing that I get one of those. Thank you.

1) The Biblical Flood had water coming from both the ground and the sky, and I imagine it would have bee very turbulant. I think more than bone density and size would have come into play. Things such as the location/height above sea level would have also played a large role in deciding where they lay. I will concede, however, as I don't have enough knowledge currently to argue any better than that.


Well, we'd still expect to see sorting based on hydrodynamic characteristics of the fossils. For example, we would expect small animals to be closer to the top - they'd sink slower and would be more affected by currents. And yet small organisms dominate the lower strata.

Also, ecological information is consistent within but not between layers. Fossil pollen is one of the more important indicators of different levels of strata. Each plant has different and distinct pollen, and, by telling which plants produced the fossil pollen, it is easy to see what the climate was like in different strata. But this makes no sense if all of the pollen was buried at once in a global flood.

How can a single flood be responsible for extensively detailed layering? One formation in New Jersey is six kilometers thick. If we grant 400 days for this to settle, and ignore possible compaction since the Flood, we still have 15 meters of sediment settling per day. And yet despite this, the chemical properties of the rock are neatly layered, with great changes (e.g.) in percent carbonate occurring within a few centimeters in the vertical direction. How does such a neat sorting process occur in the violent context of a universal flood dropping 15 meters of sediment per day? How can you explain a thin layer of high carbonate sediment being deposited over an area of ten thousand square kilometers for some thirty minutes, followed by thirty minutes of low carbonate deposition, etc.?

Also, for example, looking at the greenland ice caps. Such a mass of water as the Flood would have provided sufficient buoyancy to float the polar caps off their beds and break them up. They wouldn't regrow quickly. In fact, the Greenland ice cap would not regrow under modern (last 10 ky) climatic conditions.

Ice cores from Greenland have been dated back more than 40,000 years by counting annual layers. [Johnsen et al, 1992,; Alley et al, 1993] A worldwide flood would be expected to leave a layer of sediments, noticeable changes in salinity and oxygen isotope ratios, fractures from buoyancy and thermal stresses, a hiatus in trapped air bubbles, and probably other evidence. But such evidence doesn't show up.

...note, however, that this is merely evidence against a global flood great enough to cause significant changes. There have, of course, been very large (but not global) floods that could have been the basis for the account in the Bible.


3) Call me nuts if you will, but yes, I disagree with the earth being that old. I don't claim to know the real age, but I'd say 10k-16k years or so. I'll answer more on this after seeing your paragraph.

The most direct means for calculating the Earth's age is a Pb/Pb isochron age, derived from samples of the Earth and meteorites. This involves measurement of three isotopes of lead (Pb-206, Pb-207, and either Pb-208 or Pb-204). A plot is constructed of Pb-206/Pb-204 versus Pb-207/Pb-204.

If the solar system formed from a common pool of matter, which was uniformly distributed in terms of Pb isotope ratios, then the initial plots for all objects from that pool of matter would fall on a single point.

Over time, the amounts of Pb-206 and Pb-207 will change in some samples, as these isotopes are decay end-products of uranium decay (U-238 decays to Pb-206, and U-235 decays to Pb-207). This causes the data points to separate from each other. The higher the uranium-to-lead ratio of a rock, the more the Pb-206/Pb-204 and Pb-207/Pb-204 values will change with time.

If the source of the solar system was also uniformly distributed with respect to uranium isotope ratios, then the data points will always fall on a single line. And from the slope of the line we can compute the amount of time which has passed since the pool of matter became separated into individual objects.

A young-Earther would object to all of the "assumptions" listed above. However, the test for these assumptions is the plot of the data itself. If those requirements have not been met, there is no reason for the data points to fall on a line.

The resulting plot has data points for each of five meteorites that contain varying levels of uranium, a single data point for all meteorites that do not, and one (solid circle) data point for modern terrestrial sediments. It looks like this:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth/pb-iso.gif

...this gives an age of 4.5 billion years for when the solar system coalesced into separate planets. (Information from talkorigins.org )

Trying to find "old" rocks on the earth gives generally lower ages, since the earth was initially molten. According to http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html , the oldest reliably dated rocks come from Greenland and are dated at approximately 3.6 billion years, according to various radiometric dating methods. The different techniques, done by different groups of scientists, all converge on approximately the same value.

I've found references to rocks that have been dated older, but haven't been able to find a detailed explanation of how, so I'm not going to include them here.


4) I accept macroevolution as a possibility. I, personally, find the Punctuated Equilibrium theory to be the most likely. I think change in species is possible. Change in genus or more complicated than that I have yet to see convincing evidence for. Evolution as the origin of species is still a theory. I know the fish-mammal thing wasn't assumed to have happened, but a fish with legs wouldn't be conducive to survival, it would be detrimental. A fish that could breath air really wouldn't have any egde over any other fish unless it needed to breath air. Things like this would have had to evolve at the same time to get amphibians, and that greatly reduces the odds even more. It's possible ((nothing is impossible, just some things are infinately improbable... bonus points for knowing where that is from ;) )), I just find it highly unlikely, to say the least.


The fish-amphibian transition was not a transition from water to land. It was a transition from fins to feet that took place in the water. The very first amphibians seem to have developed legs and feet to scud around on the bottom in the water, as some modern fish do, not to walk on land. Thus, the first legs/fins would be able to develop gradually, in the water, supporting only as much weight as they could.

The next step would be developing the ability to breathe air - to a fish living in shallow water, this would be a clear advantage. This transtion isn't well-documented - unlike fins/legs, lungs don't leave fossils. Actually, according to some sources I've found, lungs most likely developed in the devonian period in fish that lived in habitats that would occasionally go low on oxygen content - fish living in ponds that would, in times of drought, lose their incoming streams and then be stagnant for a while. A fish that could gulp in some air, into it's gastrointestinal tract, and extract even a little bit of oxygen from it would have an advantage over a fish that couldn't. A sac in the gastrointestinal tract, could then evolve into lungs.

From what I've been able to find, this transition isn't well-documented though - we're nowhere near being sure. Fossils show intermediate stages between fins and legs fairly clearly, but information about the existence of lungs would always be circumstantial, I'm not sure how it would be found besides "if it lives on land, it must have already had lungs." Bones are a whole lot easier to find than organs.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part1a.html - down near the bottom of that page, the second-to-last section describes some fossils that have been found, and conclusions that have been made from them. They don't illustrate the transition completely, but provide hints that it is possible.


6) I'm not saying sentience in itself is bad for a species, I'm saying that many aspects of it are. The human race has created about as many problems as it has solved, due to its sentience

True, true. We with our sentience are screwing with our environment pretty badly... hopefully we won't end up killing us all with either nuclear weapons or depletion of natural resources or something.

Mitochondrial DNA proves that creationism is wrong. Why do mitochondria have DNA when it's not used for cellular reproduction? The only possible explanation is that two single celled organisms developed a symbiosis long ago, and that symbiotic alliance was transmitted to the multi-cellular organisms that evolved from them. If creationism was true then there would simply be no explanation for a non-reproductive part of a cell having reproductive machinery.

This may sound stupid, but who cares if Creationists are right or wrong? It's kind of like arguing over what killed the dinosaurs..argument doesn't get us any closer to knowing, and it's not like once we prove our point, it's going to be true.

This may sound stupid, but who cares if Creationists are right or wrong? It's kind of like arguing over what killed the dinosaurs..argument doesn't get us any closer to knowing, and it's not like once we prove our point, it's going to be true.
It matters because creationists want to teach their religious beleifs in science classes and ban the teaching of evolution. This leaves students without the basic framework that explains biology. Without evolution biology is a bunch of loosely related facts.

It matters because creationists want to teach their religious beleifs in science classes and ban the teaching of evolution. This leaves students without the basic framework that explains biology. Without evolution biology is a bunch of loosely related facts.


arguing here isn't going to have an effect on that. Why not write a textbook instead, or persuade your school system to adopt a text that you believe is a fair, scientific representation of biology and evolution?

Meh. It's fun to debate.

I don't see why anti-evolutionists say that our theory's ridiculous because it involves things "randomly coming together", because it doesn't, really.

Anyway, the intelligent design thing.....the human eye, for example, has come about through millions of years of evolution and natural selection etc., that's why it is so effective - yet it's nowhere near perfect anyway.

The universe is not perfect either. Nothing natural is really even close. The reason it works well is due to natural selection etc., the reason it's not perfect is the same. If intelligent design worked, then things would be more perfect. Right?

I know people have saif this already but I've never heard a convincing argument for creationism and to be hugely sarcastic I'll point out that creationism is based on a book written by a man who saw god in the sky a few thousand years ago. Whereas, Darwin did research a few hundred years ago and the research continues today. I can't help but find the latter more convincing.

As poor of an excuse as it may be, I am only 16. I don't have the knowledge to debate on that level, though I thank you for taking this debate as seriously, if not even more so, than I have. You are quite possible the best debater I have met in a forum. Bravo.

-Flood stuff-
You'd also have more events like bodies getting stuck together due to the presence of limbs and sticky fluids, a MUCH denser fossil record, boulders en masse, lots of swirls of sediment, and things utterly mixed like they'd been shoved in a blender. You'd also have very very few fish, since, you know, they SWIM and BREATH WATER, though the salinity would be notably low : you'd end up with mostly brackish species surviving.


The fish-amphibian transition was not a transition from water to land. It was a transition from fins to feet that took place in the water. The very first amphibians seem to have developed legs and feet to scud around on the bottom in the water, as some modern fish do, not to walk on land. Thus, the first legs/fins would be able to develop gradually, in the water, supporting only as much weight as they could.


Also as tools in mating and dealing with water issues. We have plenty of examples of fish with leg-like fins to this day, many of whom like to WALK ON LAND.

Lung Fish
http://mama.essortment.com/lungfish_rank.htm

Mud Skipper
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~thebobo/mud.htm

Rat Fish
http://www.local6.com/news/2403030/detail.html

Cat Fish
http://www2.nrm.se/ve/pisces/clarias.shtml.en


-On lungs and transition fossils-


What's nice, many of the above examples also show how fish have been dealing with breathing air. Goldfish, if I recall, have a similar thing, where they can gulp air from the air itself to deal with stagnant water.