What is the point of creating trees that already bear fruit when they are created; of creating a man who can walk and talk at creation; at creating skies full of fowl and waters teeming with fish in one day; of creating an entire ecosystem in six days?
Because these things need those abilities to function. Birds need to fly and fish need to swim in order for the ecosystem to work the way it does. Trees need to produce fruit. It's how they spread seeds. They do NOT need to have rings. The rings serve no actual purpose to the trees growth, they're simply a byproduct. God, being omnipotent, is certainly capable of creating a tree without rings, so why didn't he? There's absolutely no reason for the tree to have rings that it didn't actually develop.
It would be like someone making a car, then deliberately cracking off the paint, inducing rust, and setting the mileage so that it had 120,000 on it. What would be the point of doing this to a car except to give someone the impression that it was older than it actually is? These are all things that happen to a car over time, but none of them are required for the car to function. It doesn't NEED to rust, it just does over time.
Counting tree rings may work for a tree that grew from seed, but how does one calculate the age of a mature tree bearing fruit that wasn't there an instant before?
So god created new trees after the flood?
By the way. Many trees can live a long time under water, including the olive tree
I would love to see a study that shows an olive tree can survive the better part of a year submerged under tons of water. Go ahead. Produce it. I'll even forget the fact that a flood which was supposedly strong enough to CARVE THE GRAND CANYON IN A MATTER OF MINUTES would probably reduce any tree it came into contact with to absolute mulch.
And we're not talking about olive trees, so what's your point? Even if that were true - and you've given no reason to believe it is - just because olive trees can survive underwater doesn't mean every tree can.
They are constantly saying that it's as reliable as the theory of gravity. Why they always choose gravity I don't know.
Because it is. I'd even say it's more reliable; there's still a great many things we don't understand about gravity.
No species ever "evolves" into anything other than a slightly modified version of itself.
Exactly. Slight modifications. A little change here, a little change there, and the longer this goes on, the more an organism changes. Congratulations, you finally understand how evolution works. You can now graduate to middle school.
That explains a lot, actually.
Everyone has mutations, genius. You have mutations. I have mutations. Your Mother does. Your Dad does. Basic biology.
We can split the atom and use its energy for power or destruction.
True, but that doesn't mean we can see it splitting. We can see the effects of it, but not the actual split. For all you know, magical, invisible pixies rush in and snap their fingers every time we think we're splitting an atom, and that's what causes the effect. I mean, you can't see the atom splitting, right? You can't 'observe' it? So any conclusion about what's actually happening is as valid as any other, despite all the evidence we have which supports that it is, in fact, caused by atoms splitting.
It has never been observed, and the mechanism for it does not exist in nature.
Natural selection doesn't exist in nature? Really? Animals with favored characteristics aren't more likely to pass on those characteristics to the next generation?
A theory which is constantly being modified is not "the strongest and most truthful explanations of how the universe, nature, and life came to be,"
If theory wasn't open to modification, it wouldn't be science. It would be dogma. Science has to be open to modification. It has to change as we learn new things and incorporate new data. As Mark Norrell put it:
When more evidence is garnered, whether through the analysis of additional characters, through the discovery of new specimens, or by pointing out errors and problems with the original data sets, new trees can be calculated. If these new trees better explain the data (taking fewer evolutionary transformations), they supplant the previous trees. You might not always like what comes out, but you have to accept it.
Any real systematist (or scientist in general) has to be ready to heave all that he or she has believed in, consider it crap, and move on, in the face of new evidence. That is how we differ from clerics.
regardless of what your source believes.
My source - and every scientific source out there - is right, and you are wrong. You do not get to change the definition of words simply because you don't like them. Sorry.
You really are amazing. You say theory is one thing. I show a source, an actual scientific source, that shows you're wrong. Do you admit that you're wrong? No. Do you produce a source that supports your stance? No. You simply continue to assert that you're right, in spite of the evidence to the contrary. That is some amazing arrogance.
Laws are absolute and true 100% of the time
No, they are NOT. Newton's Law was replaced by general relativity, and that's just one example. Did you even go to school? Laws are based on our observations. If our observations change, the law has to change. How could they ever be true 100% of the time?
If you think that a theory can supersede and invalidate natural law, you need to go back to school.
No, you do. Even the definitions you provided don't agree with you; nothing about the defintion of a law says that it's a higher form of theory. The definitions you provide say nothing about them being true '100% of the time' or being 'absolute'. Nothing. You just added that in.
And I never said theories supercede or invalidate laws. Theories and laws are different things that serve different purposes.
Evolution is an unprovable claim of universal origin
No, it's not. Evolution is not about universal origin, it is about the diversification of life after the origin, whatever that may be, be it God, abiogenesis, or the stomach waste of a mystical space Cthulu.
