G'day EZMoade,
Before we start, I should point out that your comments are noted by italicised orange text and my responses follow.
I am curious to see the argument you create against the following topics ...
If you are truly interested in gaining an informed creationist position on the following issues, then I suggest that you look at Creation Ministries International (formerly Answers In Genesis for non-American and United Kingdom countries) <creationontheweb.org>.
However, the following are my responses based on my knowledge, so I may be mistaken at parts. As I said above, search out Creation Ministries International's website if you are truly interested in gaining an accurate picture in what most Christian creationary scientists believe. This response is intended to be at a layman's level in simplicity and not a detailed scientific post, instead focusing on the underlying debate issue.
Missing Links.
Over the last years several fossils have been discovered showlin links from each animals.
There has never been an alleged missing link that has been proven to actually be an intermediate form. That said, there are a few candidates for the missing link titles, but creationists and even evolutionists have found problems with them and have discarded so many, including homo-erectus, Neanderthals, and so on.
You see, the battle isn't over whether or not the skeleton or fossil exists. Rather, the debates occur about interpretations or stories that explain the skeleton or fossils, for example, whether or not a certain fossil is an intermediate form. It isn't religion vs science, rather one view of the specimen vs a different view of the same specimen. In the case of homo-erectus, for example, creationists have long used scientific principles to show that the specimen walked up-right and moved just as we do today - not slouched like the evolutionary view of early man. This has been shown by examinations of erectus' ear and the three semi-circular ear canals.
Natural Selection
Over one generation the beaks of African birds have increased, this is due to a massive shortage of water over several years. The birds with smaller beaks could not properly eat resulting in death, where as the ones with larger beaks survived passing on his trait to their off spring.
No creationist that I know of, particularly not the respectable creationists, disagree with natural selection. Why not? Because we see it at work in the environment today, that is, we observe it occurring. What is debated is whether or not natural selection (in addition to mutations and other natural processes) can create new previously unseen information into the genome such as to put feathers on a reptile, for example. As an aside, it was a Christian creationist, Edward Blyth (1810-1873) who actually wrote about and proposed the idea of natural selection before Darwin in 1835-1837. He, apart from Darwin, suspected that it was a way of slowing down the negative effects of the Curse which God had placed on His creation since man's sin. Darwin very likely borrowed the idea from the work of Blyth.
Why is this important? Well, running with the traditional view of the general theory of evolution, all life has evolved from a single cell. Now, even the most simplest cell, such as e-coli, have about 1 book of 500 pages fine print of highly complex genetic information. If we are to change - over time - this single cell into a human being (which has about 1000 books of 500 pages fine print), it obviously requires a lot of new previously unseen information to be added into the genome. The debate is whether natural processes, such as natural selection, can achieve this.
In observation today, we have never seen a mutation or any natural selection process which has added new previously unseen information to the genome. So, the creationist position is not at odds with science at this issue. It is the evolutionist who must exercise their faith by holding to the belief that natural selection, mutations, and other processes can add 999 books of 500 pages of highly complex previously unseen information to change a single cell into a human being, even though all evidence and observation today suggests that it is next to impossible.
Even your example shows a reduction in genetic variety and information within the genome of the bird population. How so? Before this event, we presumably had birds with a variety of beak sizes, but through circumstances, only the birds with large beak sizes survived due to some advantage that having this sized brought. We had a variety before, but after we have only the large beak size. It is just the same thing as taking a variety of dogs with different hair sizes down to Antarctica. Obviously, because of the cold conditions, eventually there will be a dog population with only long fur. This isn't evolution, just common sense. This isn't the type of evolution that will change a single cell into a human being as it is heading in the opposite direction. This isn't opposed to creationary theory.
It is interesting, however, to note that when the infamous evolutionist, Richard Dawkins, was questioned on the documentary From A Frog To A Prince as to whether or not he could give an example of where the information in the genome has been seen to increase because of natural means, he couldn't answer the question. After several seconds of silence (he infact asked to have the camera turned off while he though), he finally gave an answer that evaded the question. Then, because of the Australian Skeptics Association claiming that he was misrepresented, they gave him several pages in which to defend himself and answer the question that he was asked on the documentary. In those several pages, he still never answered the question! I say this not to put him down, but to illustrate that even the "big-guns" of evolution are stumped when they are asked some questions that reveal the true basis of their belief in evolution: faith.
Early Universe?
Carbon-14. Accurate to .1%.
No one disputes the accuracy of carbon-14 radio-metric dating, but all of the dates that we see published assume what is known as the geological principle, that is, the unprovable belief that everything has been going on forever as it has now. As a result, they take the rates, assumptions, and so on that work today and apply them to the past. BUT, what if everything was not always as it is now? What IF the global flood of Noah's day really happened? What kind of effects would this have on the accuracy of the carbon-14 dating method? The global flood would have shaken up the Earth's atmosphere and the carbon/nitrogen balance would have been changed with more carbon in the Earth's atmosphere that would have altered the rates of decay and so on.
By ignoring this event by blindly assuming that things going on now have always done so, is it no wonder why they get older dates than what they should?
Even so, the carbon-14 dating method is not one that most evolutionists usually point to in an attempt to prove an old Earth as it has a maximum age of 50 000 years before all radio-carbon would be undetectable. Perhaps the most commonly used example is the potassium/argon radio-metric dating method. Even these methods have underlying assumptions (such as a constant radio-decay rate, daughter/parent elements starting amounts known, that no daughter/parent elements have been added or subtracted) that can not be proven. These methods also fail when being tested against rocks of known ages, often being out 99.9% and in some instances, radio-carbon has been found in rocks dated by these methods as millions of years old, which of course presents a paradox for the evolutionist as any rock with radio-carbon can't be older than 50 000 years old.
Animals on Australia.
Scientific evidence (and common knowledge) will show that when looking at a picture of the world, all continents use to fit. These massive islands would not have time to separate in tke 100k early universe theory.
This once again assumes that everything has been going on as they are today. BUT, if the global flood really happened as the Bible suggests, then there would have been massive tectonic movements ... fill in the blanks. Further more, the debate is not science vs. religion but rather one view of how the world we know came to be the way it is against another view. Both accept the reality of plate tectonics, but they disagree on how they came to be in their present form. Science has little to tell us on this issue as we cannot observe, directly experiment on, or repeat history.
In closing as a thought to leave you with, in 1872, an attempt was made to elect Charles Darwin to the prestigious Zoological Section of the French Institute, but this failed because he received only 15 out of 48 votes. A prominent member of the Academy gave the reason as follows: "What has closed the doors of the Academy to Mr. Darwin is that the science of those of his books which have made his chief title to fame–the Origin Of Species, and still more the Descent Of Man, is not science, but a mass of assertions and absolutely gratuitous hypotheses, often evidently fallacious. This kind of publication and these theories are a bad example, which a body that respects itself cannot encourage." (From Muddy Waters by Carl Wieland).
As you can hopefully see by now, the debate isn't over science vs religion, but rather one view (with its underlying bias and preconceived views of truth) vs a different view (with its different underlying bias and preconceived views of truth) of how the evidence of the present came to be both with their different prepositions.
Bye for now,
Thrawn.
References:
I got some of the information herein from Answers In Genesis' Image Of God and From A Frog To A Prince documentaries and the article from Creation Ministries International called Muddy Waters by Carl Wieland available from their website.
