CREATIONISM FAQ

Objectives...

In this FAQ you will learn:

What Evolution is not
How to destroy Creationism for good
Why every fossil is a transistional fossil

Outline...

The Biggest Sore Losers the World has Ever Seen
Evolution is not Creationism
Rock Solid Evidence and the Missing Link
Incompetent Science
Explaining Evolution

When the very famous Scope's Monkey Trial took place in 1925, few Creationists realize that Mr Scope lost his case against the creationists.

"Not really. The defense threw the trial when Darrow told the jury they had to convict, and the conviction was overturned on a legal technicality by the appellate court."

The verdict was appealed but the conviction was not overturned, it was "set aside". That was because the appellate court agreed with everything that the creationists and the judge had decided, with the exception of the $100 fine.

"If you really want to quibble over the words, the online sources say 'overturned'".

The appelate court did not repeal the law under question, which is what would have happened if there had been an actual overturning -- namely to overturn the law to forbid public teaching in Tennessee of "any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals". The creationists had no need or desire to pursue the case any further since they had already won the battle.

"The apellate court was just being disingenious, they wanted to thwart the ACLU, which wanted to take it to the US Supreme Court. As a result, the US Supreme Court did not get to do so until 1968."

It wasn't until 1987 that the Supreme Court got around to prohibiting creationism from being taught in public schools. 1968 was simply the date that creationists lost their first case against prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools .

"Have you ever read the biology text in question, the section on Darwinism that Scopes supposedly taught in class? Aren't you glad the ACLU fought so hard in 1925 to make sure that the children of Tennessee were taught racial superiority and eugenics?"

The children of Tennessee were taught racial superiority and eugenics by their teachers, not by Darwin. Darwin was simply parroting what he and all the children were already being taught by all the teachers of his day. The important thing to note is that the theory of evolution itself does not teach racism. But taking your logic to it's natural conclusion, whatever you wish to say about the mildly racist Darwin and evolution, you would also have to conclude the same thing or worse about, say, the viruently racist creationist Louis Agassiz and creationism. Maybe the creationists had better get the log out of their own eye before attempting to extract the splinter out of Darwin's eye? In the relentless progress of scientific thinking, it is not important what people used to believe in ages past as compared to what they actually believe today -- and the fact is that no university course in evolution teaches racism. Darwin was only speaking for himself, not for all evolutionists from then on and into the future.

The anti-evolution movement was given even more impetus by the outcome of the Scopes Monkey Trial and it wasn't until 1968 that it was finally suppressed. Yet Mencken's trial reports of the circus-like nature of the proceedings and the horrible "theological bilge" of the prosecution was an embarassement to all creationists everywhere and set the stage for the anti-creationism movement that was to follow by turning public opinion against creationism. Creationists can't seem to forgot that embarassement so now they are at it again, dressing up their religious nonsense this time with the white lies of the "intelligent design theory" and hoping to have a re-trial of the Scope's Monkey Trial (which they lost). But why would one want to have a retrial of a case that they thought they already won? Haha! Do creationists, with their theological bilge, seriously think that they won't become the laughing stock of the world all over again?

EVOLUTION IS NOT CREATIONISM

It might seem a little obvious that evolution is not creationism, so why the title? Because Creationists constantly confuse evolution with all kinds of things that have absolutely nothing to do with evolution: abiogenesis, geology, biology, cosmology, paleontology, genetics -- the list goes on and on and on. It seems the blunders creationists make, are never ending. So as an example to all creationists, let us show them how to do their homework properly: First and foremost, define your terms...

ABIOGENSIS. The spontaneous development of life from non-living matter.

BIOLOGY. The study of living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, and distribution.

COSMOLOGY. The study of the universe, including it's structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, and distribution.

EVOLUTION. The observation that lifeforms will gradually change or mutate their gene pool, in response to specific adaptation to imposed demands, often culminating in the development of a new species.

GENETICS. The study of the mechanisms of hereditary transmission and the variation of inherited characteristics among similar or related organisms.

GEOLOGY. The study of the Earth, especially it's crust, including it's structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, and distribution.

PALEONTOLOGY. The study of life as it existed in prehistoric times.

"The explanation of the so called "Big Bang" involves a ridiculously large quantum fluctuation. That's actually one of the currently accepted scientific theories. I'm still not certain how conservation of energy can be satisfied in such an energetic fluctuation, but there it is, creation by random event."

The "Big Bang" is about cosmology, not evolution. Nobody knows what caused the Big Bang. It is all speculation. So, ignoring the speculation, what actual evidence do we have that the Universe did not always exist? None. Furthermore, only our local part of the entire Universe is expanding, not the whole entire Universe. You are also ignoring the fact that there is nothing to limit the Big Bang to a single shot, when it is scientifically accepted that there could be an infinite number of Big Bangs, and each Big Bang can go through cycles of expansion, contraction, and expansion again.

"As it turns out, all one can learn about the history of life can be learned from the groupings one finds in nature as Darwin observed. The rest is storytelling of one sort or another. We have access to the tips of the "fossil tree", the tree itself is theory."

That is a topic well covered by the subject of phylogeny. Phylogeny is the study of the race history of an animal or vegetable type. The interesting thing about this tree is that there have never been any discrepancies in it's recursion upwards. To put it into words that you can understand, when animals that are most alike are compared on the tree, never ever has there been a documented case where a more advanced creature's fossilized and dated remains came before a more primitive version of that creature. The dating of fossils just so happens to coincide with the race history as one would expect if the theory of evolution were correct. Creationism on the other hand, would cause us to expect that a huge amount of animals or vegetables would have simultaneous datings and not be separated by millions (and even billions) of years as they have been found to be.

"Abiogenesis is one of the legs in a three legged stool when it is applied to evolution."

Then why apply it to evolution? It was never applied to evolution before until you came along so why start now? Abiogenesis is about the origin of life and not what happened afterwards. What happened afterwards is what evolution is all about.

It is not known exactly how life came from non-life yet, although the observable evidence that life came from non-life is clearly abundant. Since that happened, we also know that it is only a matter of time before we can know exactly what took place when it did happen. It wasn't until the last 200 years of history that mankind finally decided to crawl out of their caves of superstition, wake up, and realize that evolution even took place. So naturally beginners cannot be expected to do an expert's work.

In the book DESIGNING THE MOLECULAR WORLD by Philip Ball, there is a description of how randomly polymerized amino acids heated in a mixture of amino acids in a dry state, using aspartic acid and glutamic acid as catalysts, formed what are called protenoids. When the resulting protenoids were dissolved in water, they would form hollow spherical vesicles which would display many of the properties of "living things" such as reproduction and digestion.

"After all those decades, what has the fruit fly experiments shown? Dobzhansky revealed one result: 'The clear-cut mutants of Drosophila, with which so much of the classical research in genetics was done, are almost without exception inferior to wild-type flies in viability, fertility, longevity.'"

But it has never been the purpose of these experiments to create more viable, more fertile, or longer-lived fruitflies. The only purpose of the fruitfly experiments is to help increase our knowledge of how genes work and not simulate the process of evolution.

"Fruit fly breeding procedures, would seem to refute, rather than support evolution."

Breeding procedures were never meant to support evolutionary theories, it is supposed to help scientists gain new insights in genetics, although this new understanding of genetics has the side-benefit of helping us to understand evolution better as well. There is not a single scientist in the world that believe that they could recreate, especially in as little as the last 200 years since the discovery of evolution, what took nature many many thousands of years to perform. There hasn't been enough time for that kind of experiment.

"The genetic changes are so hopelessly micro [small] that if a thousand such mutations were combined in one specimen, there would still be no new species."

There is not one fruitfly experiment in existence that deals with directed evolution (the only kind of evolution that nature has shown us). At the very most stretch of the imagination, it could only be called undirected evolution, and anything that is undirected is obviously going to fail.

"Often in evolutionary literature England's peppered moth is referred to as a modern example of evolution in progress...but was the peppered moth evolving into some other type of insect? No, it was still exactly the same peppered moth, merely having a different coloration. Hence, the English medical journal On Call referred to using this example to try to prove evolution as 'notorious.'"

Respectable scholarly journals do not describe the pepper moth as an example of evolution but of the very beginning of the very long process of speciation. It is proof of natural selection...which was something that many religious people fervently denied happened until the moth was discovered to have changed.

"Word games. Evolution is this....evolution is that....Evolution is everything from minor genetic variation to wholesale creation of species."

You fail to understand that you are talking only about the mechanisms of evolution and not about the definition of evolution. That evolution has occurred is a fact. It is the mechanisms which scientists are trying to discover, uncover, and understand because there are so many of them.

"Since some germs have proved resistant to antibiotics, it is claimed that this is because evolution is taking place. But the hardier germs are still the same type, not evolving into anything else. And it is even acknowledged that the change may have been due, not to mutations, but to the fact that some germs were immune to begin with. When the others were killed off by drugs, the immune ones multiplied and became dominant."

Then why didn't these already immune germs first show up the very first time that the antibiotics were used? Why were millions of people completely cured of these diseases when the antibiotics first appeared? Why did it take such a long long time for them to show up if they already existed? Maybe because there is something wrong with the logic of the people you are quoting from here?

"And a science writer commented: 'Rose bushes always blossom into roses, never into camellias. And goats give birth to kids, never to lambs.'"

Funny. That is the same thing that evolution says. Evolution says that roses have always remained roses and goats have always remained goats. When a lifeform speciates, it is only when an isolated group of individuals are gradually and steadily being overtaken by mutations that are being caused by constantly changing environmental demands.

"Currently it is taught in schools and on many TV science shows that living things arose from a dead puddle of goo. You see, first this inanimate matter must come alive..."

Evolution doesn't teach that because that has nothing to do with evolution but of abiogenesis.

"...then it must learn somehow to be self replicating and then slowly evolve into another life form, which slowly evolves into a fish, which grows legs, then climbs out of the lake, grows fur and starts to stand up, becomes fond of bananas, loses it's tail and presto!...a man is evolved!"

Fish never grew legs (which is why fish still don't have legs today), never climbed out of a lake (or ocean), never grew fur, never stood up, and so on. What is actually taught is that certain species of fish became isolated from the mainstream fishes. In this isolated environment they spawned yet another species of fish which had a peculiar ability to walk (albeit not very well). What is responsible for the evolution of new species is to have isolated individuals evolving according to the SAID principle, genetic drifting, natural selection, and so on.

"In the beginning the were no organisms to exploit anything. They came into being. How?"

I don't know and you don't know, so let's talk about something we both do know. Why waste bandwidth on something that neither one of us is qualified to discuss?

ROCK SOLID EVIDENCE AND THE MISSING LINK

"If a man is walking through a forest and happens upon a watch, would it be logical for that man to assume that the watch appeared there by accident with no design or purpose behind the making of such an intricate assembly? How about the man himself? Would it also be logical to assume that such a complicated organism like man is got here by accident and not by design?"

And if that man walks along a little further through that forest and happens upon a squirrel, would it be "logical" for that man to assume that the squirrel came from a squirrelmaker or would that man assume that the squirrel came from other squirrels? As that man continued through the forest, discovering one thing after another, he would eventually come to either the conclusion that there were an uncountable billions of _____makers or none at all.

If that watch needs a watchmaker and that watchmaker needs a watchmakermaker, wouldn't that also logically imply that the watchmakermaker needs a watchmakermakermaker, and so on and so on, ad infinitum? If man, by virtue of his complicated and designed nature needs a maker, then a God, by it's very complicated and apparently designed nature would clearly need the same exact thing in order to exist.

"If you start with no assumption (no bias toward evolution or creation), then the fossil records are not rock solid evidence toward either. I'm still very much "on the fence" over the creation and/or evolution problem and have not seen sufficient proof of either in exclusion of the other."

Then let's see what happens if we start with no assumptions...

Anywhere you dig for fossils in the world, you will always find that the deeper you go (ie -- the further back in time you go), the simpler the fossils become. What does this tell us? It tells us that animals have become more complex with time. Creationism tells us in a storytale that all animals, simple and complex, came into being all at once. Obviously one of these accounts doesn't fit the facts.

In keeping with this simple-to-complex rule, the genes of the more complex animals in one layer of sediment reflect the genetics of the more simpler animals in the layer below it. For example, amphibians have many genes in common with fish, yet much of the fish genes are deactivated. Reptiles have many (deactivated) genes in common with the amphibians but they have fewer (yet still deactivated) genes in common with fish. What does this tell us? The same exact story that the fossils tell us: that animals have changed in time from simple to more complex by "borrowing" genetic code from a common ancestor, adding just enough material to make it work differently and then deactivating the rest of the useless parts of the borrowed genes. As time goes on, the useless parts of the genes are discarded. Creationism tells us in a storytale that God created everything brand new, from scratch, perfect in every way. Creationism tells us that nothing was useless or hodgepodge or kludged together. Again, one of these accounts obviously doesn't fit the facts.

The layers of fossil evidence also point out something else: that the change from simple to complex comes in very small steps over a very long time. Nothing ever happened in one day. Creationists dishonestly misrepresent evolution with statements like "and then fish grew legs", as if fins and legs were directly related instead of being distantly related. So the odds of watching a fish grow legs in one day are zero.

All it takes is proof that just one species has changed into another species to prove that evolution takes place and not only do we have the millions of fossils and mtDNA sequencing as evidence, we have even had the extremely rare opportunity of observing speciation take place in modern times.

So from beginning to end, with creationism we have nothing to explain and nothing to observe, only just pure deaf, dumb, and blind faith to act as our guide, whereas with evolution, we at least have the rock solid facts of fossils as our reference point. And unlike creationism, there are no hidden agendas in evolution. If you don't feel like believing in evolution, then go ahead and doubt it all you want because there will be no so-called loving scientists to send you to Hell for not believing, unlike what storytale of creationism ultimately leads to.

WHAT DESIGN?

"If you would just open your eyes and look at the universe all around you, you will see why that the existence of God from the argument of design of the universe is so effective at proving that God must exist."

The evidence of the existence of God from the argument of design is a circular argument that goes nowhere when you sit down and really look at what is being said...

Take, for example, the Rorschach test. When a psychologist asks his client to interpret what they think they see in a random blotch of smeared ink, it isn't that there is any design in the random blotch of smeared ink, but rather it is their interpretation of whatever design they think they see in it. It is a subjective test and has no meaning outside of what the person thinks they see in the inkblot. So when Christians look up at that big inkblot called the sky and think they see design in it, what they are really doing is interpreting what they imagine they see in it (or what they want to see in it).

That isn't to say that things cannot be designed. The pillars on my front porch were designed. How do I know this? It isn't through interpretation or belief, but because I know the authors of the pillars. I can trace the history of the pillars. I have the history behind many other pillars that were created by many other authors to give evidence and credibility to back up the statement that the pillars on my front porch (or front porch for that matter) were designed. This brings up a curious point though, and that is the design I see in the pillars is not the design the authors of the pillar had in mind. The design I see is aesthetics while the authors claim only mechanical stability. In other words, the aesthetics was an accidental design. Speaking of accidents, the design of the pillars was poor, since one pillar cracked and started to erode at an alarming rate at the base and had to be reworked.

So this brings up many bad points about the argument of design. For one thing, to say we think we can see any design in the universe does not prove that it is designed. Another thing is that although we might see design in it, that would not prove purpose or intelligence behind the design since it might be an accidental design and not an intentional design. The only way to prove that the universe was purposely designed is to prove authorship of the universe, and no one has been able to even come close to doing that yet, despite christians (and other religious types) having over 5,000 years of written history to prove that it has been. Even if Christians could finally prove that God exists from argument by design, they would then have to explain why the most intelligent being in all the universe was such a poor designer.

"Everything designed requires a designer, wouldn't you agree?"

Yes. Now all you have to do is prove the Universe was designed. Remember, a design is a pattern and some patterns do not require a designer but only a perceiver.

Creationists are constantly on the attack against evolution. I often see nothing but one list of arguments after another of "what is wrong with evolution". They tirelessly try to pick apart every little thing they can find in evidence for evolution. But their whole charade and never ending lists are irrelevant. That's because most of their argument is based on nothing but attacking evolution, rather than proving the existence of an intelligent designer. It is an example of the logical fallacy of ad hominem. It appears that they are naively hoping that if they destroy evolution, the only thing left to do then would be for all of us to accept creationism.

But let us humor the creationists for a moment and pretend evolution doesn't exist. What would be left then? Thousands of religions, many of them with even more thousands of different variations of their theme. We can't pretend all of them are true because many of them are mutually contradictory. The Christian version of God alone has over one thousand versions of God. How many of them are credible? None. They are require numerous blind faith belief in things not even remotely known to exist, things like supernatural beings, paranormal phenomenon, extraordinary experiences, and implausible events.

So the biggest problem for creationists is that their whole entire argument for creationism is based on one very flawed precept: a belief in a supernatural being who created the Universe and everything in it. There is absolutely no evidence that a Creator exists outside of the imagination of the believers. For example, let's look at the matter of evidence. Do they have evidence of a God? I am not talking about the hearsay of a book or the testimony of a biased witness, I am talking about actual evidence. Of course not, they aren't even close to being able to offer physical evidence of any kind whatsoever. While evolution has (in some but not all places) incomplete, partial, and even downright inconclusive evidence, that is far more convincing and logically acceptable then the complete lack of evidence that creationists present. Do they have so much as a strand of hair from God, a bone fragment from an angel, or how about even a footprint from when Jesus used to walk about teaching in the synagogues? All they have is a contradictory book and an empty grave. Every piece of evidence they could ever hope for, seems to only come up empty handed for them. Even at this very moment, I have a fossil paperweight sitting on my desktop is rock solid evidence that evolution is real and it does happen. Clearly God is the creationist's missing link.

If creationists want an airtight argument, prove a designer exists. If they are completely unable to directly prove a designer exists, why do they even bother pursuing the issue?

INCOMPETENT SCIENCE

This section was taken from a newsgroup discussion I took part in some time ago. While it is not exhaustive, it is typical. It is designed to give you a feel for the type of mentality that creationists often resort to.

"Chance mutations are the driving force behind evolution. If it weren't for the occasional, random mistake a cell makes when copying and/or repairing its DNA, there would be no mechanism for change. The cell would always make identical copies of its DNA in the presence of proper raw materials. In the absence of the same, the cell would die. No chance=no evolution."

Chance mutations have never been the driving force behind evolution. That is why there are no examples of random mutations in the fossil record. None. It doesn't ever happen, except in birth defects. Even if there was one random chance mutation, which by definition is the only kind of random mutation that could exist, the law of averages tells us that this one solitary mutation would be absorbed by the numerous herd, instead of being selectively singled out like humans do with dogs.

"Meteoritic dust falls on the earth continuously, adding up to thousands, if not millions, of tons of dust per year. Meteoritic material contributes nickel to the oceans. Taking the amount of nickel in the oceans and the supply from meteoritic dust yields an age figure for the earth of just several thousand years, not the millions (or billions) expressed by evolutionists. This, and the lack of meteoritic dust piles on the earth, lend to the belief in a young earth."

If you don't know, don't guess -- 40 kilotons of meteoritic dust falls on the Earth in one year, plus or minus 20 kilotons. Since the dust can only be created when a meteorite enters an atmosphere of a planet, like the Earth has, the Moon would not be expected to have anywhere near the dust the Earth would have since the Moon has no atmosphere to speak of. Furthermore, at this rate the Nickel precipitates from sea water faster than it is replenished. Nickel does not dissolve in seawater very well, so it's residence time is 80,000 years .

"The earth's magnetic field is decaying rapidly, at a constant (if not decreasing) rate. At this rate, 8000 years ago the earth's magnetism would have equaled that of a magnetic star, a highly unlikely occurrence. Also, if electric currents in the earth's core are responsible for the earth's magnetism, the heat generated by these currents 20,000 years ago would have dissolved the earth."

You are assuming without evidence that the magnetic field of the Earth wouldn't peak out long before it reached the level of a magnetar. This presumes you know the mechanism that creates the Earth's magnetic field, even though the rest of the scientific world finds it a mystery. Evidence recorded in the Earth's crust indicates that, like the Sun, the Earth's magnetic field reverses about once every 200,000 years. That means the magnetic field "weakens" to zero and then increases back up again to a certain maximum

No current actually "flows" in the Earth's core. While it is true that when a current flows through a wire, it will heat up that wire due to resistance to the current, the current in the core isn't created by anything flowing through the core, but by charged particles hitching a ride on the core as it rotates. This is more than sufficient to create the Earth's magnetic field.

"Charles Darwin stated, in his Origin of Species, "The geological record is extremely imperfect and this fact will to a large extent explain why we do not find intermediate varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps. He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my whole theory". Now, 130 years and billions of fossils later, we can rightly reject the view of an incomplete fossil record or of one "connecting together all...forms of life by the finest graduated steps". Out of the millions of fossils in the world, not one transitional form has been found. The transitional fossil for birds, the Archaeopteryx, is discussed in evolutionist Francis Hitching's book, The Neck of the Giraffe, where Darwin Went Wrong. Hitching speaks on six aspects of Archaeopteryx, following here:

It had a long bony tail, like a reptile's.
It had claws on its feet and on its feathered forelimbs.
It had teeth.
It had a shallow breastbone.
Its bones were solid, not hollow, like a bird's.
It predates the general arrival of birds by millions of years.

Furthermore, in 1977, a geologist from Brigham Young University, James A. Jensen, discovered in the Dry Mesa quarry of the Morrison formation in western Colorado a fossil of an unequivocal bird in Lower Jurassic rock.

And so it goes with the fossils that many textbooks set forth as the best example of a transitional form. No true intermediate fossils have been found. In a letter to Luther Sunderland, dated April 10, 1979, Dr. Colin Patterson, of the British Museum of Natural History, wrote: "...I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic licence, would that not mislead the reader?". Just think of it! Here is a man sitting amidst one of the greatest fossil collections ever and he knows of absolutely NO transitional fossils. So convincing I believe this quote to be that it will sum up this discussion on fossil evidence."

I think what you have there is one of the most ignorant people in the world! All fossils are transitional fossils because every animal is in the process of evolving or going extinct. Yet here sits Dr. Patterson in plain sight amidst hundreds of transitional fossils and can't see a one. Since Darwin, millions, if not billions, of intermediate fossils have been documented. What James Jensen did in 1981 (not 1977), was mistakenly identify the bones discovered in the Dry Mesa quarry. This too is a well documented blunder."

As for the description of the Archaeopteryx, it clearly tells us that the Archaeopteryx is neither like a bird nor like a reptile, but like a cross between the two -- in other words, a transitional fossil from reptiles to birds. Darwin clearly got something wrong, it's just not what you blindly believe it to be. Darwin did not try to explain evolution, he tried to explain natural selection, which is but one very small subset of the many subsets of evolution that have been proven.

"What proof you have with fossils is that something died and nothing more."

What a wonderful career awaits you in field of forensic science or detective work! I can see it now: They bring in the homicide victim, you take one look at it and smugly proclaim, "What you have is proof that something died and nothing more". Some of the things that you fail to objectively observe about fossils are:

They just didn't simply die, they became fossilized,
Some of the lifeforms that fossilized don't even exist anymore as a species, and
The day some of those lifeforms died is also very interesting because there was nothing like it before it existed, but there was something similar (but somehow more...what shall I say here... evolved?) to it after it died.

"Darwin said that embryological evidence was "second to none in importance". The idea of embryonic recapitulation, or the theory that higher life forms go through the previous evolutionary chain before birth, was popularized by Ernst Haeckel in 1866. It was later found that Haeckel forged the diagrams which he used is evidence for the theory."

Embryonic recapitulation is not something taught by evolutionism.

"The science of probability has not been favorable to evolutionary theory, even with the theory's loose time restraints. Dr. James Coppedge, of the Center for Probability Research in Biology in California, made some amazing calculations. Dr. Coppedge "applied all the laws of probability studies to the possibility of a single cell coming into existence by chance"."

No process in the evolution of life was random. Random changes in the DNA of offspring is called birth defects, not mutations.

"The second law of thermodynamics states that although the total amount of energy remains constant, the amount of usable energy is constantly decreasing. This law can be seen in most everything. Where work is done, energy is expelled. That energy can never again be used. As usable energy decreases, decay increases. Herein lies the problem for evolution. If the natural trend is toward degeneration, then evolution is impossible, for it demands the betterment of organisms through mutation. Some try to sidestep this law by saying that it applies only to closed environments. They say the earth is an open environment, collecting energy from the sun. However, Dr. Duane Gish has put forth four conditions that must be met in order for complexity to be generated in an environment.

The system must be an open system.
An adequate external energy force must be available.
The system must possess energy conversion mechanisms.
A control mechanism must exist within the system for directing, maintaining and replicating these energy conversion mechanisms.

The second law clearly presents another insurmountable barrier to evolutionary idealism.

Like most armchair scientists, Dr Duane Gish is confusing complexity with probability. As my textbook on thermodynamics states, "A second point of view to be made regarding entropy is that frequently entropy is associated with probability. Furthermore, as usable energy decreases in a closed system, only the *thermodynamic* decay of system increases; the temperature of everything becomes the same. From this point of view an irreversible increase in entropy would be associated with a change of state from a less probable state to a more probable state". Take notice of the fact that it does not say anything about "going from more complex to less complex states" because isn't it obvious that everything around us is proceeding from less complex to more complex all the time? For example, hydrogen atoms are combining together to become the more complicated helium atom in stars all the time. Complex crystals are forming from their less ordered constituents deep within the earth's crust as we speak. And more complicated lifeforms constantly evolve from simpler lifeforms because the odds are that they will. All of these examples I mentioned happen because probability favors them happening and not because the second law of thermodynamics supposedly is being violated. Two hydrogen atoms are more likely to combine together than a helium atom is to split apart. Many minerals are more likely to form crystals under heat and pressure than become more amorphous. And life is more likely to develop and evolve than is not to. Everything is proceeding from less probable states to more probable states, without ever violating the second law of thermodynamics as creationists ignorantly proclaim. Organisms become more complex due to evolution, which cannot violate any law of nature, not even thermodynamics. Finally, entropy refers to thermodynamic disorder, not higher-level disorder.

"Vestigial organs are supposed organs in the body which are useless, left over from evolutionary development. The following arguments for vestigial organs are based on those taken from the "Bible Science Newsletter," August 1989, p. 16:

Just because we don't yet know the role of an organ does not mean it is useless and left over from previous stages of evolution.
In the 1800's, evolutionists listed 180 vestigial organs in the human body. The functions for all have now been found. Some of these were the pituitary gland (oversees skeletal growth), the thymus (an endocrine gland), the pineal gland (affects the development of the sex glands), the tonsils, and appendix (both now known to fight disease.)
The fact that an organ must sometimes be removed does not make it vestigial.
The fact that one can live without an organ (appendix, tonsils) does not make it vestigial. You can survive without an arm or a kidney but these are not considered vestigial.
Organs are not vestigial based upon your need or use of them.
According to evolution, if an organ has lost its value, it should, over time, vanish completely. There has been enough time to lose these "vestigial" organs, but we still have them.
If organs do become useless, this would back up the second law of thermodynamics and the degenerative process, not evolution, which requires adaptation of organs for new purposes.
Vestigial organs prove loss, not evolutionary progression. Evolution theory requires new organs forming for useful purposes, not "old ones" dying out.
Evolutionists have, for the most part, given up the argument over vestigial organs.

Vestigial organs do have role and it is a vestigial role. For example, the coccyx bone of humans. It is a stand alone structure that looks like a stunted tail. Sometimes the recessive gene for the expression for the tail is expressed in babies. These tails can even wag like a dog in response to emotional stimuli.
There are alleged vestigial organs and true vestigial organs. True vestigial organs have very clearly known functions that are vestigial.
This is not anything taught by evolutionism. This is a red herring and strawmen.
This is not anything taught by evolutionism. This is a red herring and strawmen.
This is not anything taught by evolutionism. This is a red herring and strawmen.
Everything in evolution either gradually appears or gradually disappears.
Evolution logically requires the loss of organs that are no longer required. An organ in the process of becoming extinct will become a rudimentary organ before it complete disappears.
Clearly you know nothing about evolution if you do not know about the theory of extinction and mass extinction.
An utter and complete lie.

"Evolutionists like to tell us that at least thousands of years are needed to form the fossils and fuels (such as coal and oil) that we find today. However, objects must be buried rapidly in order to fossilize. This, bearing also in mind the billions of fossils and fossil fuels buried around the world, seems to indicate a worldwide catastrophe. None other than, you guessed it, Noah's flood. Ken Ham, director of the Australia-based Creation Science Foundation, presents some interesting facts in seminars which he gives. Oil can now be made in a few minutes in a laboratory. Black coal can also be formed at an astonishing rate. Ham also has in his overlay presentation a photograph of a fossilized miner's hat, about fifty years old. All that is necessary for fossilization is quick burial and the right conditions, not thousands of years."

The internal environment of the Earth is not even remotely similar to those laboratory conditions, so the experiment is irrelevant."

The creation of coal and crude oil require millions of years, not thousands. And the conditions conducive to coal formation require hot humid swampland that is subjected to very slow changes in the rise and subsidence of the sea level -- which is the exact opposite of what Noah's flood was purported to be

"Seeing the problem of gradual evolution with the fossil record, and the obvious abrupt appearances of species, Drs. Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge have formed the theory of punctuated equilibria. Punctuated equilibria, is, by example, a bird giving birth to a mammal, thus leaving no transitional fossils in the geological record. Many top evolutionists disagree with this position. And punctuated equilibria has its problems, too. For instance, in the above case, of a bird bearing a mammal, another mammal of the same kind of the opposite sex must be born at the same approximate time in the same area in order for the new species to continue. The odds of just one organism appearing this way, let alone two fulfilling the circumstances above, are astronomical."

The odds are 100%, as evidenced by the fact that they have already happened again and again. Even though punctuated equilibrium is "sudden" by geologic time scales, it is agonizingly slow by human time scales. A species does not instantaneously appear out of nowhere, but rather small, subtle, inheritable variations appear in an isolated population of a particular species, over time enough changes occur that make the isolated population unable to reproduce with the original species it was derived from. When the small changes take place over millions or billions of years, it is called gradualism. If the small changes take place over ten of thousands of years, it is called punctuated equilibrium. Punctual equilibrium compliments, not replaces, gradualism.

"Homology is the similarity of structures between different types of organisms. Some have argued that these similarities are evidence of one common ancestor. However, as Sunderland points out, when the concentration of red blood cells is used, utilizing the ideas of homology, man is more closely related to frogs, fish, and birds than to sheep. But now, with the development of molecular biology we are able to make a comparison of the same cells in different species, which adds a whole new dimension to homology. Unfortunately, for the evolutionists, molecular biology does as all other evidences do: presents greater argument against evolution theory.

In molecular biology, proteins of the same type in different organisms can be tested for difference in amino acid makeup. The figure resulting is converted into a percentage. The lower the percentage, the less difference there is between the proteins. Dr. Michael Denton, in experiments with Cytochrome C, a protein that converts food into energy, and hemoglobin, found the follow"

Cytochrome C Differences Bacterium to Six Organisms		Cytochrome C Differences Silkmoth to Vertebrates
to yeast	69%	to lamprey	27%
to wheat	66%	to carp	25%
to silkmoth	65%	to pigeon	26%
to tuna	65%	to turtle	25%
to pigeon	64%	to horse	30%
to horse	64%

Cytochrome C Differences Carp to Terrestrial Vertebrates		Hemoglobin Differences Lamprey to Other Vertebrates
to bullfrog	13%	to human	73%
to turtle	13%	to kangaroo	76%
to chicken	14%	to chicken	78%
to rabbit	13%	to frog	76%
to horse	13%	to carp	75%

Dr. Denton states, "There is not a trace at a molecular level of the traditional evolutionary series: fish to amphibian to reptile to mammal. Incredibly man is closer to lamprey than are fish". The evidence is clear; evolution is struck another hard blow!

Cytochrome is irrelevant to genetic makeup, what is relevant are things like mtDNA. So then, why do apes share about 98% of the genes of humans, including shared DNA errors? Would a God make an error and independently create the same exact errors in other species? Ditto for the identical pseudogenes that exist between humans and apes. In this case, creation strikes out again!

"Many of the radiometric dating methods used for determining the age of fossils are quite unreliable. Carbon-14 dating is usually sound within a few hundred years span of time. But there are exceptions to this. For example, a living mollusk was dated using the carbon-14 method. The readings said it had been dead for 3000 years.

Lava rocks from a volcano in Hawaii which erupted in 1801 were tested, using the potassium-argon method. The readings showed them to be nearly 3 billion years old. Moon rocks were tested by various radiometric methods, yielding dates ranging from 700 million to 28 billion years.

Dating methods such as potassium-argon, uranium-lead, and rubidium-strontium, are based on assumptions. These methods are based on chemical change (uranium to lead, etc.) where the parent material (ie., uranium) is converted to the daughter material (ie., lead) at a known rate, called a half-life. These methods cannot be trusted on the basis that too little is known. In order to come up with a correct date, you must know:

How much of the parent material was in it at the start,
How much of the daughter material was in it at the start, and
If there has been some type of contamination since.

In obtaining dates now, scientists assume the answers to or ignore these questions. The fact is that we cannot know how old a specimen is unless we were there when it was formed."

There is not one verifiable fact there but all are blatant fakes or falsehoods. In the case of C-14, the age can be determined within a few years -- a fact not disputed by Creationists when it comes to dating their religious textbooks. The critical thing left out of every single argument given like this one is the range of uncertainty or standard deviation of the measurement. No dating method gives an exact age, but an age �X amount of years of uncertainty or error. Due to deviations of probability for samples of material that have very little conversion or very great conversion of material, the uncertainty dramatically increases in those cases, making the method unreliable for making those measurements. Take C-14 for example. The lower limit of C-14 is 100 years and the upper limit is 40,000 years. Above and below those limits the range of error becomes infinite. Another example is the limit of the potassium-argon method, which is between 10,000 to 3,000,000,000 years

"Evolutionists insist that dinosaurs died out millions of years before man appeared. However, there are many reasons to disbelieve this. There are the stories of animals much like dinosaurs in the legends of many lands. These creatures were called dragons."

Using one fairytale to support another fairytale is illogical. If you want to speculate, the reasonable thing to assume is that ancient humans accidentally uncovered some dinosaurs bones and, not knowing what they were or if they represented something still alive or not, got carried away with their imagination.

"Many times in the recent past, explorers have recorded sightings of flying reptiles much like the pterodactyl. Human footprints were found along with those of a dinosaur in limestone near the Paluxy River in Texas.

Also not to be tossed aside is the possibility of dinosaurs living today. Consider the stories such as the Loch Ness monster (of which many convincing photographs have been taken). Some have claimed to see dinosaur-like creatures in isolated areas of the world.

Recently, a Japanese fishing boat pulled up a carcass of a huge animal that intensely resembled a dinosaur. A group of scientists on an expedition into a jungle looking for dinosaur evidence claims that they witnessed one, but their camera was damaged.

These are all examples of grocery store tabloidism and not the pursuit of truth.

"However, they tape recorded the roar of the beast. This recording was checked. The voice patterns on it did not resemble those of any other roaring. You decide. At any rate, the evidence that man and dinosaur did live together at one time poses another problem for the evolutionists."

There is a tape recording of what appears to sound like a giant animal living in the Pacific Ocean, but the source has not been located and it wouldn't be the first time an "organic sounding" vocalization turned out to be something natural like underwater volcanic gas escaping into the ocean. There is no need to jump to conclusions until the source has been located

""But if the dinosaurs lived at the same time as man, they would have had to have been on the Ark, and that's impossible!" Is it? The ark was about one and one-half football fields long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet tall. It had a cubic footage of 1,518,750."

Noah's Ark is nonsense, not fact.

"There would have been plenty of room on the Ark for the dinosaurs especially considering that only a few were of the enormous size of Tyrannosaurus or "Brontosaurus.") Also, the Bible states that Noah was to take two of every kind onto the Ark. Many dinosaurs and reptiles were of the same kind, but much smaller. Dinosaurs pose no problem for creation science."

The Bible also states to take seven of every kind of "clean animal", thousands of years before God defined what "clean animals" would be to Moses. Some of those "unclean animals" that have never even existed would be four-legged insects, cud-chewing rabbits, and Camels with split hooves.

"The sun's diameter is shrinking at the rate of five feet per hour. At this rate, life could not have existed on the earth 100,000 years ago."

Nonsense. The Sun's diameter is actually increasing.

"Measurements of the sediment deposited as a result of Nile's flooding each year leads to the conclusion of an earth under 30,000 years old. Considering a few larger than normal overflows would place the age of the earth close to the biblical account."

If true, what it would actually mean is only the Nile River is under 30,000 years old.

"The spin rate of the earth is slowing .00002 second per year. If the earth were the billions of years old that the evolutionists say it is, the centrifugal force would have notably deformed the earth."

That assumes that the rate of slowing has been constant, an assumption which is not substantiated by any facts.

"The 22nd edition of Robert Young's concordance lists thirty-seven ancient written accounts which all place the date for creation at no earlier than 7000 B.C."

None of the written accounts are historical accountings, but rather mythical accountings.

Creationists claim that since no one has directly witnessed evolution as it is occurring, therefore evolution has never occurred. Let's take a look at that logic: Has anybody ever witnessed an animal being fossilized? No, therefore according to the "logic" of Creationists, fossilization has never occurred either. So in order to believe the Creationists claim that evolution has never occurred, we also have to believe that fossils don't really exist. Clearly the kind of logic Creationists use doesn't work in real life.

"Given the amount of time required for an evolutionary change to occur, if a particular mutation is successful, then it would have to be propagated through a large portion of a species for many millennia to be included with the next successful evolutionary change. The probability against that happening by chance is very very high. It's like giving a chimpanzee a typewriter and letting him hit the keys at random. The probability against his being able to type a small library full of books by hitting keys at random is so high that for all practical purposes you can consider it impossible."

No you can't. You can only consider it impossible if the odds are zero. No matter how small the odds, as long as it isn't zero, it could happen. And in an infinite Universe with an infinite amount of time, the most infitesimally small odds can become an utmost certainty.

"Because of this, there are some scientists and mathematicians who are forced to believe in the existence of God by logic alone. In order for a single cell to live, all of the parts of the cell must be assembled before life starts. This involves 60,000 proteins that are assembled in roughly 100 different combinations. The probability that these complex groupings of proteins could have happened just by chance is extremely small. It is about 1 chance in 10 to the 4,478,296 power."

That still isn't zero.

"The probability of a living cell being assembled just by chance is so small, that you may as well consider it to be impossible. This means that the probability that the living cell is created by an intelligent creator, that designed it, is extremely large. The probability that God created the living cell is 10 to the 4,478,296 power to 1."

Did you know that 47.6% of all statistics are made up on the spot?

"The probability of this was calculated by Fred Hoyle, famous astronomer and mathematician."

That explains why Fred Hoyle never become famous for being a mathematician but for being an astronomer.

"The laws concerning entropy are well established in physics. Entropy is the measure of the randomness or disorder in a system. Entropy is always observed to increase in natural physical processes. Natural processes in science always tend toward more disorder. The idea that the universe could develop the ordered complexity that it has, by natural processes violates the law of entropy, that says disorder must increase in natural processes. Therefore, one must conclude that the complex order that we see in the universe did not come about by chance scientific processes. It was developed on purpose by an intelligent creator. God created it. There are no existing physical rules, that have been observed by science, that indicate that ordered complexity can evolve by random chance occurences. In Science there is an observed law of entropy. In all natural occurences in science, the amount of disorder increases. In other words, the physical laws that are observed in nature lead to more disorder; they do not lead to ordered complexity. The only thing observed to cause more complexity is an intelligence, of some sort deliberately assembling something together. Example: A pile of building materials stacked in a pile is hit by a tornado. When the pieces come down, they do not assemble themselves into a house. They just fall into a more disordered pile of building materials. An intelligence must deliberately assemble the materials into a house to get ordered complexity. God created the ordered complexity in the universe. There are no observed scientific processes that can account for it happening by itself."

Your logical fallacy is that your assume without evidence that:

The Universe was created.
If something could not come into existence by chance, it therefore must have come into existence by design.

How so?

The Universe could have always existed.
The opposite of design is not random, but unplanned. New Orleans flooded as a result of the damage caused by a hurricane in 2005. That was not by chance nor was it by design.

"Natural selection will weed out inferior members of a species according to environmental requirements. But, this only leads to a species changing to another variety of the same species known as a subspecies; that is all that is observed in nature. [Crickets in dark caves become white with no eyes; also fish in caves.] But natural selection has not been observed to cause one species to change into another new species. Fish do not change into amphibians; amphibians do not change into reptiles; reptiles do not change into mammals. Natural selection cannot account for the origin of the different species. There are a million missing links in the fossil record as it has been found. The intermediate stages that would be necessary for fish to become amphibians, and reptiles to become mammals, have not been found in the fossils. The fossils show evidence that all of the species were originally created by God and they did not evolve into one another. "Biochemical systems are exceedingly complex, so much so that the chance of their being formed through random shufflings of simple organic molecules is exceedingly minute, to a point indeed where it is insensibly different from zero" -- Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, p.3

No one has ever observed fossils as they are being formed, but that does not prove that fossils don't form. Likewise, no one has ever been around long enough to witness evolution as it is occurring, but that does not prove it doesn't occur. In fact, fossils are rock solid proof that evolution occurs. So is mtDNA, genetics, and comparative anatomy.

"No matter how large the environment one considers, life cannot have had a random beginning. Troops of monkeys thundering away at random on typewriters could not produce the works of Shakespeare, for the practical reason that the whole observable universe is not large enough to contain the necessary monkey hordes, the necessary typewriters, and certainly the waste paper baskets required for the deposition of wrong attempts. The same is true for living material" Ibid., p.148"

"Almost zero" does not mean "exactly zero", therefore, even if evolution where random, then the chance (not to be confused with the odds) of it happening are 100%.

"The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is one one part in (10^20)^2000 = 10^40000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. If one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by a scientific training into the conviction that life originated on the Earth [by chance or natural processes], this simple calculation wipes the idea entirely out of court" Ibid., p.24"

Enzymes did not evolve by chance, they evolved by specifically adapting to their environment.

"'Any theory with a probability of being correct that is larger than one part in 10^40000 must be judged superior to random shuffling. The theory that life was assembled by an intelligence has, we believe, a probability vastly higher than one part in 10^40000 of being the correct explanation of the many curious facts discussed in previous chapters. Indeed, such a theory is so obvious that one wonders why it is not widely accepted as being self-evident. The reasons are psychological rather than scientific.'' Ibid., p.130"

Did you know that, theoretically speaking, 49.7% of all probability calculations are made up on the spot?

"'All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn out to reduce the genetic information and not to increase it.' -- Lee Spetner, Not by Chance (Brooklyn, New York: The Judaica Press,Inc.) p.138"

Correction: All point mutations studied so far...

"It appears that the neo-darwinism hypothesis is insufficient to explain some of the observations that were not available at the time the paradigm took shape. ...One might ask why the neo-darwinian paradigm does not weaken or disappear if it is at odds with critical factual information. The reasons are not necessarily scientific ones but rather may be rooted in human nat - Christian Schwabe "On the Validity of Molecular Evolution", Trends in Biochemical Sciences, July 1986, p.282

Translation: "Not necessarily" means "maybe or maybe not". This is all talk and no facts.

"The really significant finding that comes to light from comparing the proteins' amino acid sequences is that it is impossible to arrange them in any sort of evolutionary series" - Ibid. p.289"

Proteins don't normally leave fossils so of course there would be no record of their evolution.

"Thousands of different sequences, protein, and nucleic acid, have now been compared in hundreds of different species but never has any sequences been found to be in any sense the lineal descendant or ancestor of any other sequence." - Ibid. pp. 289-290"

Humans have been proven to share 98% of the genetic material of Chimpanzees -- including the same pseudogenes and genetic defects.

"Each class at a molecular level is unique, isolated and unlinked by intermediates. Thus molecules, like fossils, have failed to provide the elusive intermediates so long sought by evolutionary biology." - Ibid p.290"

Again, molecules don't leave fossils. Evolution is not about the origin of life, but what happened to that life once it appeared.

"There is little doubt that if this molecular evidence had been available one century ago it would have been seized upon with devastating effect by the opponents of evolution theory like Agassiz and Owen, and the idea of organic evolution might never have been accepted." - Ibid pp.290-291"

What is stopping them from seizing on it now? If it can be proven to be true now, it would have the same devastating effect now as it would have then.

"In terms of their biochemistry, none of the species deemed 'intermediate', 'ancestral' or 'primitive' by generations of evolutionary biologists, and alluded to as evidence of sequence in nature, show any sign of their supposed intermediate status" - Ibid p.293"

But in terms of mtDNA, genetics, and comparative anatomy, all of the species deemed 'intermediate', 'ancestral' or 'primitive' by generations of evolutionary biologists, and demonstrated as evidence of sequence in nature, show plenty of signs of their intermediate status.

"Duane T. Gish, The Origin of Mammals : If this view of evolution is true, the fossil record should produce an enormous number of transitional forms. Natural history museums should be overflowing with undoubted intermediate forms. About 250,000 fossil species have been collected and classified?Applying evolution theory and the laws of probability, most of these 250,000 species should represent transitional forms."

Clearly fossilization is a very rare phenomenon, therefore we wouldn't expect every single animal that has ever existed to become fossilized. Despite it's rarity, the Earth is so incredibly old that fossilization has occurred numerous times, enough times to demonstrate thousands of transitional fossils, of which a very *small* listing of just the vertebrate animals can be found at: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html

"Dr. Walt Brown, In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, page 10: Fossil links are missing between numerous plants, between single-celled forms of life and invertebrates, between invertebrates and vertebrates, between fish and amphibians, between amphibians and reptiles, between reptiles and mammals, between reptiles and birds, between primates and other mammals, and between apes and other primates. The fossil record has been studied so thoroughly that it is safe to conclude that these gaps are real; they will never be filled."

The Transitional FAQ alone proves what a bunch of BS that assertion is.

"Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species: the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed [must] truly be enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory [of evolution]."

Obviously because fossilization is a very rare phenomenon.

"Dr. Niles Eldredge, paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, "Missing, Believed Nonexistent", Manchester Guardian, 26 November 1978, "The search for 'missing links' between various living creatures, like humans and apes, is probably fruitless because they probably never existed as distinct transitional types...But no one has yet found any evidence of such transitional creatures. If it is not the fossil record which is incomplete then it must be the theory." Lyall Watson, "The Water People", Science Digest, May 1982: "Modern apes, for instance, seem to have sprung out of nowhere. They have no yesterday, no fossil record. And the true origin of modern humans of upright, naked, toolmaking, big-brained beings is, if we are to be honest with ourselves, an equally mysterious matter."

There are no missing links between humans and primates. The information in that article only goes back five million years, but if you like you can research the following lineage:

Eosimias ⇐ Proto monkey
Propliopithecidae Catopithecus
Pliopithecidae
Proconsulidae
Morotopithecus
Dryopithecidae
Sivapithecus ⇐ Orangutan split off from here
Ouranopithecus ⇐ Gorilla split off from here
Catopithecus browni
Aegyptopithecus zeuxis
Sahelanthropus tchadensis
Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba
Australopithecus anamensis
Australopithecus afarensis
Australopithecus bahrelghazali
Homo georgicus
Homo rudolfensis
Homo erectus
Homo sapiens sapiens

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in the organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution." S.J.Gould. "Evolution Now: A Century After Darwin", 1982, p. 140"

Again, "organic design" does not leave fossils.

"They�ve also found human and dinosaur footprints in the same rock strata, in places like Turkmenia, in Nicaragua and near the palaxi river in the US."

Those aren't human footprints, they are tridactyl dinosaur footprints. That is why they are so much bigger than a human footprint. Try finding a human skeleton alongside a dinosaur -- it won't happen because they never co-existed together.

EXPLAINING EVOLUTION

"If everything just happens more or less randomly, then how can something so incredibly complex as humans ever come about, let alone the earth's entire biosystem? It seems to many people that the odds against all of this happening randomly are astronomically large."

The problem with this thinking is that events aren't observed to "happen more or less randomly". All natural processes behave in a predictable fashion. The natural evolutionary process is no exception to this observation and, in fact, it has been observed to be very specific. Evolution is about the Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands or the SAID principle...life specifically adapts to new demands imposed upon it

"I don't suppose you caught the news stories about the mutant frogs in Minnesota. Quite a few frogs were born with extra, misproportioned, or lack of certain body parts. There have been cases of snakes born with two heads. Siamese twins occur naturally among humans. Evolution is not as controlled as you seem to think it is."

What you really read about was birth defects and not mutations. Unless those birth defects can be passed along genetically, which is not happening there in Minnesota for example, they cannot be considered mutations. If they are not mutations, then they are not examples of evolution because evolution means that new traits appear that can be genetically passed on from one generation to the next. The fossil record demonstrates for us that Evolution is always specific and never accidental. Birth defects are always accidental therefore they will never be considered a part of evolution.

"Well, if animals evolve according to the specific demands placed on them, why do we have species that are extinct?"

Just because new demands are imposed upon a species doesn't imply that the species will be able to evolve fast enough to meet the new demand. Natural Selection will then ensure that those species which are not able to keep up with the changes in their new environment, won't survive. The SAID principle is a principle and not a law. Species that don't follow that principle will suffer the consequences of the law that only the fittest survive.

"Well, if animals sometimes evolve according to the specific demands placed on them, why haven't ants, dragon flies, and sharks evolved for 100s of millions of years then?"

Animals only adapt to the specific demands imposed upon them. The environmental niche that ants and sharks are in, hasn't changed enough to cause them to spawn any new species. Now the horse is another matter...

When the last Ice Age struck, did all animals evolve the same way? No, some animals developed thicker coats and a fatty layer of skin. Some animals developed new behavior such as huddling or migration. But the important thing here to note is that evolution is not just the evolution of physical traits but of behavioral traits as well. What is unknown to scientists right now is if ants and sharks evolved new behaviours or not during this long stretch of time when they apparently didn't do any physical evolving.

"How do animals adapt to new imposed demands then? What mechanism can explain what seems to have purpose, design, and uniformity behind it...just as if it were being planned out ahead of time by some unknown intelligence?"

There is no 'force' that is behind evolution and it is not uniform.

Evolution is not a synonym for progress. The end-result of evolution, in its simplest form, is the change or mutation, over time, of a gene pool of a species (in response to the SAID principle). There is no law that says that all life forms will always adapt to newly imposed demands. Most will but some of these will not evolve fast enough. These will become extinct while the others will survive just as paleontology has shown it to be. Evolution is the story about the survival of the fittest...not the strongest...not the fastest...not even the smartest, but the fittest!

"Just look at the evolution of the eye. Each structure of the eye had to have a corresponding structure to support it in the brain or nervous system. One structure could not evolve without the other or it wouldn't work. Such sudden massive parallel changes needed to develop the first eye could only be explained by a sudden creation."

If you follow the actual evolution of the retina, you will see that it started with light-sensitive bacteria, got passed on to the jellyfish, then got developed further by the horseshoe crab, and so on. You will then see that there never was a massive parallel change in the nerve structures (neither anatomically or functionally). It was a logical progression of events...just like one would expect if evolution were responsible and not creationism.

Worse yet, the eye is a perfect example of the lack of an intelligent creator's helping hand. If the creator is so intelligent, why does the creator kludge things together, by piling one design on top of another, instead of redesigning them to work right when necessary? For example, the retina of the eye: The optic nerves are routed in front of the rods and cones instead of behind them like any beginning engineer would have enough common logical sense to do. Why would anyone want to believe in a God who is incompetent enough to make blunders like these?

"Now consider this: It would literally take millions of billions of mutations (new chemicals for new nerve types; new nerves for each new muscle etc.) for each new species...of which there are billions! Also considering that there has not been one single beneficial mutation in man or any other recorded species in all of recorded history, it would appear that evolution is statistically impossible!"

The animal kingdom (or any other kingdom) has not had any new demands imposed upon them for the last 11,000 years, much less the last 5,000. If the new demands imposed upon the life forms are slow in coming, then correspondingly the evolution will be slower in coming forth. If the new demands imposed upon the life forms are drastic and quick, then correspondingly the evolution be more drastic and quicker in coming forth. No new demands have been placed upon life forms in the last 11,000 years so evolution has not taken place for the majority of the animal kingdom (although it has taken place in some species with extreme slowness).

You see, evolution is a relatively newborn science that has only been around for about 200 years now, and all during that time it has had to endure the suppression and the ridicule of creationists and other anti-science/anti-reason types. It has only been in these last few years that humankind has finally started to crawl out of their superstitious caves of religion and discover evolution even happened! Yet despite all that persecution, evolution has still has made progress while creationism has remained at a standstill and has remained at a standstill for over 6000 years now. 6000 years is barely enough time for a superstitious civilization to even begin to notice that evolution is even happening at all!

If you make the artificial jump from one species to another, there would be radical differences for many of them, but if you observe it the way nature presents it to us, you would see all of the thousands of changes or mutations that took place between one species to another. There are many animals (and plants) which fall into grey areas as a result and it sometimes takes painstaking research to finally decide which species they will be eventually classified under. If scientists were to classify the "grey areas" into separate subspecies, then job of naming and cataloging them would become impossible. Instead, they have chosen to have a list of qualifying criteria which the animal is catalogued under, greatly simplifying the task for scientists.

"Then why aren't there more "grey areas" to be found then? Why are there so many missing pieces?"

This is due to what is called Punctuated Equilibrium. The evolution of a species has long periods of equilibrium, punctuated by periods of relvatively "rapid" change. It isn't that there are any missing pieces, only that the missing pieces weren't around long enough to be fossilized in great numbers.

"Then isn't punctuated equilibrium evidence in favor of creationism and against evolution, and not the other way around? Why does paleontology show us so many sudden transitions instead of the gradual ones like one would expect from evolutionary theory?"

While slow and gradual morphing does take place, as a rule, a species can remain in equilibrium for many millions of years before being punctuated by a "sudden" transition to another species. This "sudden" transition may be anywhere from a few thousand to a few million years, so this is only considered "sudden" on a geological time scale.

"The reproduction process is so accurate in duplicating offspring from the parents, no man-made machine or process can come close to it's accuracy. How can animals speciate then?"

Nature is never 100% perfect and errors do creep in from time to time (birth defects), but even so, mainstream populations very rarely encourage the propagation of deviants or undesirables, due to the law of averages and Natural Selection. Because of this, any one of the not so rare deviations will either quickly become absorbed by the large mass of individuals within the mainstream population or abandoned by it's peers. Since Natural Selection never creates mutations, it helps provide a constant, non-random "weeding out" process for eliminating deviants as well. Sex is one notable form of Natural Selection, in the sense that undesirable individuals are not as likely to find mates as desirable individuals are able to. It is only until a small group becomes isolated from the mainstream, for whatever reason, does the law of averages and Natural Selection lose it's grip and the deviants are allowed to propagate unchecked.

"And you still haven't explained to me the lack of so many transitional fossils"

All fossils are transitional fossils. The reason for the lack of a few certain transition fossils, is related to the fact that fossilization is a very rare event to begin with. Just look around world today and tell me how many animals or plant lives do you see in the process of being fossilized. Can't find any, huh? Small, isolated groups therefore have less of a chance to be fossilized than the more numerous mainstream population, when in the rare event that fossilization does take place. If one wishes to find transitional fossils for a particular species, one must find the small area of isolation where it speciated from it's predecessor and hope to find a fossil (...good luck!). What appears to be a "sudden transition" from one species to another is the result of the replacement by migration of the mainstream group by these isolated deviants (when they happen to be more fit for their environment then their predecessors) and not by evolution.

"The hereditary code, the DNA, has a remarkable ability to repair genetic damage (read: mutations) to itself, so how could mutations be responsible for evolution?"

...which is further proof why scientists don't believe the mutations are responsible for evolution, but instead, evolution is responsible for mutations. Why do you continually misunderstand the concept that only evolution can cause mutations instead of the other way around?

"If you were to study the genetic code of DNA, you would conclude beyond a shadow of a doubt that a "creator" was involved. That kind of code just doesn't happen!"

I have studied the genetic code of DNA and I have concluded beyond a shadow of a doubt that a "creator" wasn't involved. That kind of sloppy code writing just doesn't happen...it would take the incompetent work of a human committee to do it the same injustice. Unless of course, you are implying that God is as incompetent as a human committee.

"You are very ignorant, DNA is responsible for the most complex physiology in the universe. It makes a human being much more complex than ANY man made object, yet you still claim that it doesn't require a designer...go figure!"

Would you care to explain, using your logic of "if it is complex, it must be designed," why it must be a "designer" and not DESIGNERS? Your logic will fail at that point, won't it?

"Certain books state that the simplest conceivable form of life should have at least 600 different protein molecules. The mathematical probability that JUST ONE molecule could form by chance arrangement of the proper sequence of amino acids is far less than 1 in 1e50. Mathematicians generally agree that, statistically , any odds beyond 1 in 1e50 have a zero probability of ever happening."

For one thing, molecules never combine randomly but they combine only in very specific ways. If the proper starting materials and conditions are present, simple proteins have a 100% chance of forming as demonstrated by experimenters like S. Miller (1953). Starting with CH₄, NH₃, C₂H₆, H₂0, and prolonged ultraviolet radiation or electric discharge (ie -- lightning), scientists HAVE produced a wide range of proteins in the laboratory such as a-amino and b-amino acids.

And the simplest form of life contains far less than 600 protein molecules. Try viruses for example.

Just to play along with your game anyway, even if DNA or RNA formation was a purely "undirected" random process (which it is not), and even if the probability of them forming randomly was infinitesimally small, it would not mean that the probability so nearly approaches zero that it might as well be called zero. Einstein helped prove that time is a property of matter and energy, and since matter or energy can neither be created or destroyed (a well documented fact), that proves that time can neither be destroyed or created as well. Since time has always existed, we have had an infinite amount of time for an infinitesimally small probability (Note that is very small but NON ZERO!) to become a definite certainty.

"The book, Origins: Creation Or Evolution has calculated the odds this way: If you recall, all proteins (and enzymes) require left handed amino acids. Now..."

You are making the unspoken assumption that left-handed and right-handed molecules would have been present in equal amounts in the beginning. "Spontaneous symmetry breaking" and "chaos theory" are two topics that explain why this is a false belief. Even in simple chiral molecules like ethylene, the L-enantiomer has a lower energy than the D-enantiomer due to the influence of the weak Z force, therefore the L-enantiomer has a greater probability of forming than the D-enantiomer. Left-handed amino acids would be in similar situation as the predominant molecule present in earth's primordial past.

In a real life mixture, mixed left and right-handed amino acid chains would not have the spiral helix necessary to protect the molecule from the rest of the mixture like an all left or right-handed amino acid chain would. This will cause them to prematurely degrade since they will "unwind" and expose themselves to a more detrimental environment. Common sense would then tell us that an all L or D-amino acid chain would have a higher probability of becoming a dominant form of protein because of this.

Chirality appears at all levels of nature and not just for life forms. While most proteins and DNA have right-handed chirality, amino acids have both but with a predominance for left-handed chirality.

For further reference on the subject of chirality:

THE AMBIDEXTROUS UNIVERSE by Martin Gardner
WEAK NEUTRAL CURRENTS AND THE ORIGIN OF BIOMOLECULAR CHIRALITY by G W Nelson
PARITY VIOLATION AND THE ORIGIN OF BIOMOLECULAR CHIRALITY by Dilip Kondepudi
MAPPING THE WEAK CHIRALITY OF ATOMS by R A Hegstrom et al
THE HANDEDNESS OF THE UNIVERSE, Scientific American, Jan 1990

"What is the probability of forming one left handed (L), 400-amino-acid protein, from a normal 50% mixture of right handed (D) and left handed (L) forms?"

Assume the probability of each linking is 1/2 and that an L-L linkage has a 99% better chance at forming than an L-R

The probability of 380 (400-20 glycine) L - amino acids linking in succession is: .99 X .99 X .99 X ...380 times = 99³⁸⁰ = 10⁴⁵⁰ to one...

First, you are calculating the probability of a fully evolved, fully formed protein spontaneously forming from free amino acids. It took millions of years for nature to do this so your calculations are being based on a protein with a length typical of modern proteins while primordial proteins (the one's which actually DID form from free amino acids) were much shorter.

Second, the probability for a mixture of 380 D and L-amino acids forming a 380 molecule long chain of 380 L-amino acids is zero because your initial definition stated that the ratio of L-amino acids to D-amino acids was 50%. There is no known mechanism that will spontaneously transform your 190 D-amino acids into 190 L-amino acids so that a 380 molecule long chain of L only amino acids could form.

Third, the probability of any chain forming with a length less than 380 molecules is zero. The reason is because the amino acid chain forming mechanism is a polymeric reaction and will continue until ALL of the amino acids (L and D-types) are used up unless there are other molecules present to terminate the chain before then (terminating reactions). The "fact" that L-amino acids only have a 1% probability of mating with D-amino acids will mean that the L-amino acids will quickly mate up with most of all the other L-amino acids before hooking up to the D-amino acid chain that would be slowly building up in the meantime.

Fourth, many proteins have one very interesting property: they are catalysts for making more chains of proteins. In other words, there are many proteins that make each other. Once just one of these kinds of protein are made, millions of other proteins will automatically come into existence. There is no need to form these proteins one by one from free amino acids. It has been demonstrated that proteins with a length of only five amino acids has catalytic activity. The probability of forming (millions) of five molecule long proteins from free amino acids is 5*5*5*5*5 = 3125 to one.

Lastly, long before you've tried a fraction of those 10⁴⁵⁰ different protein sequences, you would have the right conditions to make most of the others. In other words, the whole process gets faster and faster and more and more likely the more complicated it becomes and you only have to satisfy a low level of complexity (less than 5⁵ for example) to get the ball rolling. Once that's happened there is almost no stopping it, the probability keeps getting larger and larger until it almost becomes 1 to 1. In fact, at this stage in the process, you almost have to invoke "divine" intervention to prevent life from evolving by chance!!

"When we consider the facts related to these numbers we can easily see that the random chance of evolutionary theory will not likely be useful."

The problem with this thinking is that events aren't observed to "happen more or less randomly". All natural processes behave in a predictable fashion. The evolutionary process is no exception to this observation and, in fact, it has been observed to be very specific. Like I said before, evolution is about the Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands or the SAID principle. Life specifically adapts to new demands imposed upon it.

DESTROYING THE CREATIONISTS ARGUMENT

Let's not fool around here and let's get right to the point. You claim that only God can explain the origin of life and the universe and that scientific discovery cannot, but I say that you haven't experienced or even know how objective and unbiased consideration of logical matters can be conducted because that is how scientific discovery is defined.

For example, let's look at the matter of evidence. Do you have evidence of a God? I am not talking about the hearsay of a book or the testimony of a biased witness, I am talking about actual evidence. Of course not, you aren't even close to being able to offer physical evidence of any kind whatsoever. While evolution has (in some but not all places) incomplete, partial, and even downright inconclusive evidence, that is far more convincing and logically acceptable then the complete lack of evidence that you present. Do you have so much as a strand of hair from God, a bone fragment from an angel, or how about even a footprint from when he used to walk about teaching in the synagogues? All you have is a contradictory book and an empty grave. Every piece of evidence you could ever hope for, seems to only come up empty handed for you. Even at this very moment, I have a fossil paperweight sitting on my desktop as just one small piece of proof that evolution does happen and that alone is a thousand times more evidence in favor of the evolutionary theory, then you could ever dream of having in support of your God theory.

Then there's the matter of knowledge. What you try and fail to understand is that while there is an overwhelming amount of fossilized evidence that evolution did take place, it is only the how of evolution took place that is still very much unknown. That isn't the same thing as saying that it is unknowable or that it can never be known, it just means that we only don't know at this time how evolution took place. Just give it some time and then we will know.

I am also willing to bet that the human back would make God look just as incompetent as any human!

"I know of quite a few former evolutionists who renounced all that they had ever said about evolution and afterwards became believers in God and creationism. Darwin is one genius that comes to mind and who are you to argue with a genius?"

There are many genius who don't believe in God, now what are we supposed to think? ALL of the many genius' before the Greek culture, knew the world was flat and they were ALL wrong.

And so what if one (or more) people sound unsure of themselves? Does that mean that all Evolutionists feel that way? Let's put this in a more mature perspective. Evolutionists don't pretend to be know-it-all's as Creationists do. The search for Truth is a never-ending story because the more you find Truth, the more you find that there is yet even more Truth waiting to be discovered. The real search for truth is always uncertain. Creationists stop their search for more truth the day they become Creationists because they will then automatically assume that they already have all the Truth they will ever need.

"Darwin loved Christ very much. If you get a chance to visit UK, please stop by his homestate and try to understand him. If you read evolution through the founder's view, I believe you will understand the argument is in vain."

Darwin, like most Western people of his time, was raised as a Christian. He didn't die one, in spite of the false claims still put forth by Christians that he did. I do not think you know the founder of the scientific method. It is the observer's report and NOT the observer's interpretation that is most important. It was Darwin's report and not Darwin's interpretation (or confessions) that are most important.

"'Even in scientific papers,' says the book Darwin: Before and After, 'writers felt no hesitation in speaking of God in a manner that was evidently natural and sincere."

What they were really doing was using science to sell God. That sounds about as natural and sincere as a politician giving an election speech

"Anyways, Darwin's _Origin of the Species_ has been shown to have many flaws and inaccurate assumptions to be taken seriously as anything but a false theory."

Origin of the Species? Why is it that you choose only to quote out dated material instead of choosing recent materials? I could debunk the most respected science in the world if I used outdated material. For example, Astronomy is based on Astrology so does that mean Astronomy must be a false theory according to your logic then too? Chemistry was based on Alchemy, is chemistry a fake also? Get real! Darwin was speculating on something that he didn't have complete knowledge about so naturally he would make mistakes. Our knowledge has increased on the subject in the last 100 years, or did you just assume that evolutionary theory would remain at a standstill like creationism has?

The theory of Evolution becomes stronger with each passing decade while the theory of Creationism has remained at a standstill and is losing ground. Evolution still remains sound, only there is much debate over the mechanisms of evolution (and not evolution itself) such as natural selection and punctuated equilibrium. Like all scientific approaches, it is undergoing changes, in response to healthy and proper appraisal.

"There is simply too much balance in nature for all of this to have happened AT RANDOM! There are literally thousands of examples of balance where if ONE thing did not 'evolve' nothing would exist! For example, if the mean temperature of the Earth was 7 degrees warmer or cooler - Nothing would exist!""

Absolutely not! Something would exist, just like it existed billions of years ago to exist when the temperature of the Earth was more than 7 degrees warmer than it is now. Life would have just taken a different turn then it has, to get us where we are today, if the temperatures had remained as they were in the beginning. If the mean temperature of the Earth was 7 degrees warmer or cooler than it is today, nothing would exist as we know it now. Life would still exist but it would have adapted differently due to the different demands of the environment imposed upon it.

"What if the % of oxygen was 5% higher or lower - nothing would exist!"

At the beginning of earth's history, there was no oxygen present and if there were, it would have been poisonous to the life forms that were developing then. There are bacteria that are still alive today that are very similar to the life forms that lived then at the bottom of the ocean floor near hot sulfur vents. They still metabolize sulfur AND, to these bacteria, oxygen is still just as lethal to them now as it was billions of years ago!

"So as you can see, Nature's balance is too delicate and the margin for error too thin for all that we see around us to depend on chance happenings."

Yes, Nature's "balance" is too delicate and the margin for error is too thin to depend on chance and that is why it doesn't depend on chance. You see, what you are calling "balance" is only just an illusion...just like the God that creationists pretend exists! What "balance" is really demonstrating is that all organisms have a natural (and logical) tendency to maximize the exploitation of the individual organism's environment. What this means is that organisms will maximize the use of resources; to take them to their fullest limit of utilization without any missed opportunities. What appears to be a "balance" among nature is just life filling in all the niches: Something gives off carbon dioxide? Something else will adapt to breathe it in (if and only if it becomes excessive and forces the SAID principle to come into action).

"It is my understanding that everything in the universe can be roughly divided into two classifications: the living and the non-living. Non-living things can only just blindly and mechanically obey the laws of physics...especially the second law of thermodynamics (which states that the total entropy [read: disorganizing principle] of a system increases with time). Then how is that living things can somehow transcend these laws of physics by decreasing entropy by becoming self-organizing, self-reproducing, and so on? Why call it a "law" then?"

What you are talking about is a local decrease in entropy and not a total decrease in entropy. Local decreases in entropy are not unique to living things and not contrary to the laws of thermodynamics. The second law says only that the total entropy of a system increases. For example, self-organization is a characteristic of non-living things as well as living things (ie -- crystals).

The laws of physics are not laws you obey or disobey but rather are a description of the behavior of the way living and non-living things are observed to behave.

"Which came first the chicken or the egg? Creationists believe that the chicken came first, what about you?"

Paleontologists and evolutionists have shown us that neither the chicken nor the egg came first but it was the sp

"So as you can see, the only explanation for life that makes sense is that God did it."

Oh really now? Why can't you offer one single piece of testable or provable evidence for the theory of creation:

A creation logically requires a Creator. Which one? There are over 2000 versions of the Christian God floating around the world here, how do you know which one is the right one?
What evidence do you have that God exists? How about even just one footprint from the Garden of Eden when God supposedly walked the Earth? At least evolution has this much evidence in it's favor.
Is God Christianity's missing link? The only evidence anyone has shown me of God is an ancient textbook filled with numerous contradictions, false prophecies, and inaccuracies.
Creation implies that whole species would suddenly appear and then suddenly stop appearing. Then why have we observed in the race history of species, stop and go, stop and go in their evolution?
Why did so many species become extinct during the creation period (and at separate times separated by millions of years)?
Why have species appeared out-of-order from that in given in the creation account?
Did the creation account also take into account fossils?

"If the evolution of mankind is supposed to be progressive then why are there more wars and hatred and inhumanity in the world today then there ever has been before? In short, why is mankind regressing instead of advancing as evolution would predict?"

Evolution is not a synonym for progress. Progress just happens to be a by-product of evolution and one that we can be thankful for because that is how we got here. While creationism implies that the world was created perfect, the facts tells us otherwise. There has always been "imperfection" in this world of ours and the numerous mass extinctions that have taken place throughout the history of life are ample proof of this. Disease and death have been a part of life for as long as life has been around and never was there a point in time where death and disease had to be re-introduced into the life-cycle as a punishment for anyone's misbehavior because it has always existed! Man was born with disease and death all around him.

All species, even the fittest ones, must face death eventually. There are two reasons for this. One is that death is a way to do away with the old and make room for the new. The other is that while a species may be fit for the environment it is in today, it may be unfit for the environment that it finds itself in tomorrow.

What I really wonder about is why anyone would want to believe in creation. I mean, isn't God finishing what he started? God created everything for his will and pleasure and what does God find pleasure in finishing? God's version of Hitler's ovens for one thing. God says that it is He who creates "vessels fit for destruction" and who are you or I to argue with our "creator" if He has created the majority of us for the special pleasure that He gets out of making us fit for eternal destruction in Hell? Science, on the other hand, has no place reserved for us in Hell. You are free to choose to believe or not to believe and there is no condemnation for those who refuse to believe.

"If we are all truly left to chance, and god is playing dice, then we all lead a pointless existence, and might as well spend the rest of our days eating cottage cheese, and drinking bacon fat while sunbathing without sunscreen."

How does a chance universe imply a pointless existence for you? As a confirmed Atheist, I still want to eat well, take care of my body and live a long life, and so on. My lust for life is unaffected by my lack of belief in God, but it makes me wonder why it would be different for others like you?