For Rize - the evidence

fieldsofwind

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Here are some thoughts that may fit in, may not. See what you think

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- D. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D
Here are a dozen natural phenomena which conflict with the evolutionary idea that the universe is billions of years old. The numbers I list below in bold print (often millions of years) are maximum possible ages set by each process, not the actual ages. The numbers in italics are the ages required by evolutionary theory for each item. The point is that the maximum possible ages are always much less than the required evolutionary ages, while the biblical age (6,000 to 10,000 years) always fits comfortably within the maximum possible ages. Thus the following items are evidence against the evolutionary time scale and for the biblical time scale.
Much more young-world evidence exists, but I have chosen these items for brevity and simplicity. Some of the items on this list can be reconciled with an old universe only by making a series of improbable and unproven assumptions; others can fit in only with a young universe. The list starts with distant astronomic phenomena and works its way down to earth, ending with everyday facts.

1. Galaxies wind themselves up too fast.

The stars of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, rotate about the galactic center with different speeds, the inner ones rotating faster than the outer ones. The observed rotation speeds are so fast that if our galaxy were more than a few hundred million years old, it would be a featureless disc of stars instead of its present spiral shape.1
Yet our galaxy is supposed to be at least 10 billion years old. Evolutionists call this "the winding-up dilemma," which they have known about for fifty years. They have devised many theories to try to explain it, each one failing after a brief period of popularity. The same "winding-up" dilemma also applies to other galaxies.
For the last few decades the favored attempt to resolve the dilemma has been a complex theory called "density waves."1 The theory has conceptual problems, has to be arbitrarily and very finely tuned, and lately has been called into serious question by the Hubble Space Telescope's discovery of very detailed spiral structure in the central hub of the "Whirlpool" galaxy, M51.2

2. Comets disintegrate too quickly.
According to evolutionary theory, comets are supposed to be the same age as the solar system, about 5 billion years. Yet each time a comet orbits close to the sun, it loses so much of its material that it could not survive much longer than about 100,000 years. Many comets have typical ages of 10,000 years.3
Evolutionists explain this discrepancy by assuming that (a) comets come from an unobserved spherical "Oort cloud" well beyond the orbit of Pluto, (b) improbable gravitational interactions with infrequently passing stars often knock comets into the solar system, and (c) other improbable interactions with planets slow down the incoming comets often enough to account for the hundreds of comets observed.4 So far, none of these assumptions has been substantiated either by observations or realistic calculations.
Lately, there has been much talk of the "Kuiper Belt," a disc of supposed comet sources lying in the plane of the solar system just outside the orbit of Pluto. Even if some bodies of ice exist in that location, they would not really solve the evolutionists' problem, since according to evolutionary theory the Kuiper Belt would quickly become exhausted if there were no Oort cloud to supply it.

3. Not enough mud on the sea floor

Each year, water and winds erode about 25 billion tons of dirt and rock from the continents and deposit it in the ocean.5 This material accumulates as loose sediment (i.e., mud) on the hard basaltic (lava-formed) rock of the ocean floor. The average depth of the mud is less than 400 meters.6
The only way known to remove the mud from the ocean floor is by plate tectonic subduction. That is, sea floor slides slowly (a few cm/year) beneath the continents, taking some sediment with it. According to secular scientific literature, that process presently removes only 1billion tons per year.6
As far as anyone knows, the other 24 billion tons per year simply accumulate. At that rate, erosion would deposit the present amount of sediment in less than 12 million years.
Yet according to evolutionary theory, erosion and plate subduction have been going on as long as the oceans have existed, an alleged 3 billion years. If that were so, the rates above imply that the oceans would be massively choked with mud dozens of kilometers deep. An alternative (creationist) explanation is that erosion from the waters of the Genesis flood running off the continents deposited the present amount of mud within a short time about 5000 years ago.

4. Not enough sodium in the sea

Every year, rivers7 and other sources9 dump over 450 million tons of sodium into the ocean. Only 27% of this sodium manages to get back out of the sea each year.8,9 As far as anyone knows, the remainder simply accumulates in the ocean. If the sea had no sodium to start with, it would have accumulated its present amount in less than 42 million years at today's input and output rates.9 This is much less than the evolutionary age of the ocean, 3 billion years. The usual reply to this discrepancy is that past sodium inputs must have been less and outputs greater. However, calculations which are as generous as possible to evolutionary scenarios still give a maximum age of only 62 million years.9
Calculationsll for many other sea water elements give much younger ages for the ocean.

5. The earth's magnetic field is decaying too fast.

The total energy stored in the earth's magnetic field has steadily increased by a factor of 2.7 over the past 1000 years.11 Evolutionary theories explaining this rapid decrease, as well as how the earth could have maintained its magnetic field for billions of years, are very complex and inadequate. A much better creationist theory exists. It is straightforward, based on sound physics, and explains many features of the field: its creation, rapid reversals during the Genesis flood, surface intensity decreases and increases until the time of Christ, and a steady decay since then.12 This theory matches paleomagnetic, historic, and present data.13 The main result is that the field's total energy (not surface intensity) has always decayed at least as fast as now. At that rate the field could not be more than 10,000 years old.14

6. Many strata are too tightly bent.

In many mountainous areas, strata thousands of feet thick are bent and folded into hairpin shapes. The conventional geologic time scale says these formations were deeply buried and solidified for hundreds of millions of years before they were bent. Yet the folding occurred without cracking, with radii so small that the entire formation had to be still wet and unsolidified when the bending occurred. This implies that the folding occurred less than thousands of years after depositional

7. Injected sandstone shortens geologic "ages."

Strong geologic evidences exists that the Cambrian Sawatch sandstone - formed an alleged 500 million years ago - of the Ute Pass fault west of Colorado Springs was still unsolidified when it was extruded up to the surface during the uplift of the Rocky Mountains, allegedly 70 million years ago. It is very unlikely that the sandstone would not solidify during the supposed 430 million years it was underground. Instead, it is likely that the two geologic events were less than hundreds of years apart, thus greatly shortening the geologic time scale.

8. Fossil radioactivity shortens geologic "ages" to a few years.

Radiohalos are rings of color formed around microscopic bits of radioactive minerals in rock crystals. They are fossil evidence of radioactive decay.17 "Squashed" Polonium-210 radiohalos indicate that Jurassic, Triassic, and Eocene formations in the Colorado plateau were deposited within months of one another, not hundreds of millions of years apart as required by the conventional time scale18 "Orphan" Polonium-218 radiohalos, having no evidence of their mother elements, imply either instant creation or drastic changes in radioactivity decay rates. 19,20

9. Helium in the wrong places.

All naturally-occurring families of radioactive elements generate helium as they decay. If such decay took place for billions of years, as alleged by evolutionists, much helium should have found its way into the earth's atmosphere. The rate of loss of helium from the atmosphere into space is calculable and small. Taking that loss into account, the atmosphere today has only 0.05% of the amount of helium it would have accumulated in 5 billion years.21 This means the atmosphere is much younger than the alleged evolutionary age.
A study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research shows that helium produced by radioactive decay in deep, hot rocks has not had time to escape. Though the rocks are supposed to be over one billion years old, their large helium retention suggests an age of only thousands of years.22

10. Not enough stone age skeletons.

Evolutionary anthropologists say that the stone age lasted for at least 100,000 years, during which time the world population of Neanderthal and Cro-magnon men was roughly constant, between 1 and 10 million. All that time they were burying their dead with artifacts.23 By this scenario, they would have buried at least 4 billion bodies.24 If the evolutionary time scale is correct, buried bones should be able to last for much longer than 100,000 years, so many of the supposed 4 billion stone age skeletons should still be around (and certainly the buried artifacts). Yet only a few thousand have been found. This implies that the stone age was much shorter than evolutionists think, a few hundred years in many areas.

11. Agriculture is too recent.

The usual evolutionary picture has men existing as hunters and gatherers for 100,000 years during the stone age before discovering agriculture less than 10,000 years ago. 23 Yet the archaeological evidence shows that stone age men were as intelligent as we are. It is very improbable that none of the 4 billion people mentioned in item 10 should discover that plants grow from seeds. It is more likely that men were without agriculture less than a few hundred years after the flood, if at all.24

12. History is too short.

According to evolutionists, stone age man existed for 100,000 years before beginning to make written records about 4000 to 5000 years ago. Prehistoric man built megalithic monuments, made beautiful cave paintings, and kept records of lunar phases.25 Why would he wait a thousand centuries before using the same skills to record history? The biblical time scale is much more likely.24
References
 
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fieldsofwind

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1. Scheffler, H. and H. Elsasser, Physics of the Galaxy and Interstellar Matter, Springer-Verlag (1987) Berlin, pp. 352-353, 401-413.
2. D. Zaritsky et al, Nature, July 22, 1993. Sky & Telescope, December 1993, p. 10.
3. Steidl, P. F., "Planets, comets, and asteroids," Design and Origins in Astronomy, pp. 73-106, G. Mulfinger, ed., Creation Research Society Books (1983) 5093 Williamsport Dr., Norcross, GA 30092.
4 Whipple, F. L., "Background of modem comet theory," Nature M (2 Sept 1976) 15.
5. Gordeyev, V. V. et al , "The average chemical composition of suspensions in the world's rivers and the supply of sediments to the ocean by streams," Dockt. Akad. Nauk- SSSR DI (1980) 150.
6. Hay, W. W., et al, 'Mass/age distribution and composition of sediments on the ocean floor and the global rate of subduction,' Journal of Geophysical Research, 93, No B12 (10 December 1988) 14,993-14,940.
7. Maybeck, M., "Concentrations des eaux fluviales en elements majeurs et apports en solution aux oceans," Rev. de Geol. Dym Geogr. Phys. 21 (1979) 215.
8. Sayles, F. L. and P. C. Mangelsdorf, "Cation-exchange characteristics of Amazon River suspended sediment and its reaction with seawater," Geochitnica et Cosmochimica Acta 4-1 (1979) 767.
9. Austin, S. A. and D. R. Humphreys, "The sea's missing salt: a dilenuna for evolutionists," Proc. 2nd Internat. Conf. on Creationism, Vol. I[, Creation Science Fellowship (1991) in press. Address, ref. 12.
10. Austin, S. A., "Evolution: the oceans say no!," ICR Impact No. 8 (Oct. 1973) Institute for Creation Research, address in ref. 2.
11 . Merrill, R. T. and M. W. McElhinney, Ile Earth's Magnetic Field, Academic Press (1983) London, pp. 101 - 106.
12. Humphreys, D. R., "Reversals of the earth's magnetic field during the Genesis flood," Proc. lst Internat. Conf. on Creationism (Aug. 1986, Pittsburgh) Creation Science Fellowship (1987) 362 Ashland Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15228, Vol. 11, pp. 113-126.
13. Coe, R. S. and M. Pr6vot, "Evidence suggesting extremely rapid field variation during a geomagnetic reversal," Earth and Planetary Science Letters 92 (April 1989) pp. 292-8.
14. Humphreys, D. R., "Physical mechanism for reversals of the earth's magnetic field during the flood,"Proc. 2nd Intern. Conf. on Creationism, Vol. 11, Creation Science Fellowship (1991) in press (ref. 12).
15 Austin, S. A. and J. D. Morris, "Tight folds and elastic dikes as evidence for rapid deposition and deformation of two very thick stratigraphic sequences," Proc. Ist Internat. Conf. on Creationism Vol. 111, Creation Science Fellowship (1986) pp.3-15. Address in ref. 12.
16. Ibid, pp. 11- 12.
17. Gentry, R. V., "Radioactive halos," Annual Review of Nuclear Science 23 (1973) 347-362.
18. Gentry, R. V. et al, "Radiohalos in coalified wood: new evidence relating to time of uranium introduction and coalification," Science 194 (15 Oct. 1976) 315-318.
19. Gentry, R. V., "Radiohalos in a Radiochronological and cosmological perspective," Science 184 (5 Apr. 1974) 62-66.
20. Gentry, R. V., Creation's Tiny Mystery , Earth Science Associates (1986) P.O. Box 12067, Knoxville, TN 37912-0067, pp. 23-37, 51-59, 61-62.
21. Vardiman, L., The Age of the Earth's Atmosphere: a study of the helium flux through the atmosphere, Institute for Creation Research (1990) P.O.Box 2667, El Cajon, CA 92021.
22. Gentry, R. V. et al, "Differential helium retention in zircons: implications for nuclear waste management," Geophys. Res. Lett. 9 (Oct. 1982) 1129-1130. See also ref. 22, pp. 169-170.
23. Deevey, E. S., "The human population," Scientific American 203 (Sept. 1960) 194-204.
24. Marshak, A.. "Exploring the mind of Ice Age man," Nat. Geog. 147 (Jan. 1975) 64-89.
25. Dritt, J. 0.1 "Man's earliest beginnings: discrepancies in the evolutionary timetable," Proc. 2nd Internat. Conf. on Creat., Vol. I., Creation Science Fellowship (1990) pp. 73-78. Address, ref. 12.
 
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fow,

If you think it might "fit" with what's under discussion here, a good idea is to post a link and suggest we visit if we are interested in what that web-site has to say on matters that might be related. Copying and pasting multiple pages of material from a web-site with no discussion of the material is counterproductive here.

This article is only related in the most tangential way to the subject under discussion and really doesn't fit here anyway.

Please be considerate when posting.
 
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Rize

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Originally posted by Jerry Smith
GeoTheo was also converted by it. Bear in mind he remains a faithful conservative Christian. I avoid linking to infidels here - most Christians here don't care about reading an atheist forum.

It's compelling, but with incomplete knowledge, I see no reason to place my faith in it above my faith in God (which I have my own reasons for).

And yes I know that many Christians believe in evolution/long ages, but I'm not one of them.  Though it would be much easier for me to change my view of the Bible than it would for me to lose faith in Christianity.
 
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lucaspa

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Originally posted by Rize So you think special creation is questionable?  How exactly do you explain the existance of the universe then?  Or the original life that everything supposedly evolved from?

"Special creation" has several meanings. The original meaning is the accepted scientific theory in Darwin's time that a Creator made each and every species in their present form.  What you seem to be using special creation for is anything that God might have created out of nothing.

The existence of the universe is explained by several competing hypotheses.  One of those hypotheses is deity.  The others don't involve deity.  There is insufficient data to choose which hypotheses are wrong and which is correct.  Deity could have created the universe by supplying the matter/energy/spacetime at the Big Bang, but there are other ways that the universe could have started. That you believe deity caused the Big Bang is OK.  Lots of scientists share that belief, but it is not a certainty.

Darwin thought that life had been "breathed by a Creator into a few forms or just one".  He wasn't concerned with that.  Biological evolution is a process to get the diversity of life on the planet, not life itself.

Since then several experiments have been done to get life from non-life.  From the data, the experiments of Sidney Fox and colleagues succeeded.  Dry heating amino acids and then adding water gives you cells composed of proteins (protocells) that do all the activities we associate with life: metabolism, response to stimuli, growth, and reproduction.
http://www.siu.edu/~protocell/
http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html

Now, does that mean God didn't create?  No, of course not. It only means that God created life by chemistry, not by zapping cells into existence in their present form.

I'm not blind!  I can see quite clearly that there are great similarities between humans and apes (which explains the genetic similarities as well).

Good. Then how do you explain the similarities?  Descent with modification from a common ancestor does that. Special creation does not.

Throwing this extremely detailed scientific data at me is not going to help at all since I'm not qualified to judge the data. 

Then you had better get qualified, or else stop trying to object to science.  Rize, we are not going to mislead you.  Aside from the ethics, we can't. The data is there for all to see and if we fibbed to you about it, you could check it out for yourself.

Remember, for a Christian the argument between creationism and evolution is not whether God created, but how.  Most scientist are Christians and they are the ones who found the data.

Also, none of us are trying to change your faith or have you renounce it.  Please, stay Christian.  That some of us are not Christian does not mean we want you to give it up.  This is about protecting truth and science and not about promoting atheism.  If you go back through the threads, you will find that several of us have landed on atheists who have tried proselytizing. Also, some of the scientists and thinkers we admire most -- Darwin, Dobzhansky, Miller, Ayala, etc. -- were/are Christian.  No one wants to see them convert or sees any reason for them to do so. The same applies to you and FOW.

If I begin to comprehend it (quite possible), I'll be unable to judge whether or not things have been overlooked. 

If you think we have overlooked something, then ASK!!   This is NOT a debate where there is a "winner" and "loser".  This is an exploration of the truth and data and discussion about both.

In the old thread, I think that FoW summed up my biggest argument against evolution.  That is, with a gradual change from one life form to another, you would expect many more representations of the inbetween stages.  And yet there is no picture of a transition to any major structure (dinosaurs to winged birds for example).

This is based on an erroneous view of how evolution works and an erroneous view of about how "fine" the fossil record is. Darwin favored that entire large populations transformed to new species. If this happened, then the fossil record would be expected to look like you say.  However, thinking about this, it is apparent that speciation can't always work this way because, as species became extinct, we would run out of species.

Instead, most speciation is allopatric. A small population becomes geographically isolated from the large parent one, faces a new environment, and then transforms to a new species.  Once formed, it will increase in population and then migrate.  It is at this point that we find it in the fossil record -- already formed.

What Eldredge and Gould realized is that the fossil record looks exactly like it should if allopatric speciation were the way most speciation happened in the past.  Both Eldredge and Gould have separate papers where they did find the right geographical area and can show the "gradual" transition of one species to another.  There are hundreds of other examples. 

Now, most sedimentary "bedding planes" represent 60,000 years.  Stebbins calculated that, if you took a mouse-sized mammal and subjected it to directional selection such that it increased in size by 0.01% per generation (far too small for us to measure), that in 60,000 years you would have an elephant-sized animal.  So some of the transitions simply happen faster than the rocks can show.  It's only when the transition is exceedingly slow or when we find some very fine sediments that represent only 10-1000 years each that we can catch evolution in the act.

Does this help?

Btw, according to AiG, there is a growing movement in evolutionary circles that does not believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs 

As usual, AiG is wrong.  The original theory by Huxley was that birds evolved from dinos.  That was because Archeopteryx's skeleton is so much like a dino's.  From 1900 to 1950 the accepted theory was that both dinos and birds evolved from a common reptilian ancestor. Then in 1950 or so Ostrom revived the dino-bird theory. As the data comes in, nearly all paleontologists accepted that birds evolved from dinos.  The holdout has been Alan Feduccia and about 5 of his collaborators and students.  Feduccia is still holding out for reptile to bird.  For the most part, his arguments were a lot like creationists: no real supporting data but carping about the dino to bird data.  I don't think Feduccia is ever going to accept the data. Eventually he will die and that will be the end of it.  

And while we're on the subject of humans verses apes, I was curious as to what scientific study has been done on the evolution of human sexuality.  I'm talking yearly estrogen cycles verses monthly cycles in human females and whatnot.  If I'm not mistaken, our closest "relative", the chimp, is estrogen driven like every other animal. [/B][/QUOTE]
 
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It's compelling, but with incomplete knowledge, I see no reason to place my faith in it above my faith in God (which I have my own reasons for).

I think you missed the point. I can't speak for DNAunion, but GeoTheo didn't place it over his faith in God. He did accept evolution as a conclusively demonstrated scientific finding, but that had little or no impact on his theology and he did not demote God in his world view on account of it.

And yes I know that many Christians believe in evolution/long ages, but I'm not one of them. Though it would be much easier for me to change my view of the Bible than it would for me to lose faith in Christianity.

I'm glad to see you understand the issue. Maybe you will turn out to be one of those Christians who believs in evolution/long ages before long.
 
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lucaspa

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Originally posted by fieldsofwind Here are some thoughts that may fit in, may not. See what you think

In general, these all follow the fallacy of "evidence for".  They all ignore the vast amount of evidence that simply falsifies that the earth is young.
1. Galaxies wind themselves up too fast.

The stars of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, rotate about the galactic center with different speeds, the inner ones rotating faster than the outer ones. The observed rotation speeds are so fast that if our galaxy were more than a few hundred million years old
,

 The dilemma pretty much vanishes once you recognize that the spiral arms are not made up of a spiral pattern of moving stars, but rather a spiral pattern that moves through the stars, as a density wave. It is also evident that spiral galaxies do not in fact retain the spiral shape over billions of years, so that ruins Humphrey's argument. We just happen to be in the period when there are spiral arms.  


2. Comets disintegrate too quickly.

But new comets are always being generated by perterbations in the Oort cloud, thus sending a new comet into an orbit closer to the sun.  And the Oort cloud has been observed. 


3. Not enough mud on the sea floor

Each year, water and winds erode about 25 billion tons of dirt and rock from the continents and deposit it in the ocean.5 This material accumulates as loose sediment (i.e., mud) on the hard basaltic (lava-formed) rock of the ocean floor. The average depth of the mud is less than 400 meters.6
The only way known to remove the mud from the ocean floor is by plate tectonic subduction. That is, sea floor slides slowly (a few cm/year) beneath the continents, taking some sediment with it. According to secular scientific literature, that process presently removes only 1billion tons per year
.6

That's average depth. But in the Gulf of Mexico, the depth is several kilometers.  Subduction has nothing to do with tectonic drift, but rather sinking of that area of the plate as the weight of the mud piles up on it. 

4. Not enough sodium in the sea

This is a perfect example of 1) biased data and 2) refusal to acknowledge clearance rates. 

Calculationsll for many other sea water elements give much younger ages for the ocean.

Which means this method isn't a valid one for calculating ages.  That's part of 1) above.  If you use lead, the age of the earth is less than 2,000 years old, which means no Jesus.  The sodium doesn't accumulate in the ocean, but precipitates in a number of different insoluble salts. So does lead.

5. The earth's magnetic field is decaying too fast.

It has been documented that the earth's magnetic field reverses and has reversed several times in the past.  The decay is simply the reduction of the field preparatory to a reversal.  Also, the linear extrapolation into the past is invalid because it runs up against another reversal.


6. Many strata are too tightly bent.

In many mountainous areas, strata thousands of feet thick are bent and folded into hairpin shapes
.

Any substance, under heat and pressure, will enter a "plastic" mechanical phase where it can be bent.  Sedimentary rock is no different. 


7. Injected sandstone shortens geologic "ages."

Strong geologic evidences exists that the Cambrian Sawatch sandstone - formed an alleged 500 million years ago - of the Ute Pass fault west of Colorado Springs was still unsolidified when it was extruded up to the surface during the uplift of the Rocky Mountains, allegedly 70 million years ago. It is very unlikely that the sandstone would not solidify during the supposed 430 million years it was underground. Instead, it is likely that the two geologic events were less than hundreds of years apart, thus greatly shortening the geologic time scale.

8. Fossil radioactivity shortens geologic "ages" to a few years.

Radiohalos are rings of color formed around microscopic bits of radioactive minerals in rock crystals
.

This is Gentry's data.  It has been documented that Gentry 1) falsified some of his data (he admitted this under oath) and 2) the halos were not due to polonium. This is an example of out and out fabrication.  Evolution detected the Piltdown fraud.  But creationists perpetuate the Gentry fraud.

9. Helium in the wrong places.

All naturally-occurring families of radioactive elements generate helium as they decay. If such decay took place for billions of years, as alleged by evolutionists, much helium should have found its way into the earth's atmosphere. The rate of loss of helium from the atmosphere into space is calculable and small
.

Not that small.  Watch a helium balloon and tell us where the helium is going to go.  The calculations of helium loss combined with the production give a good correlation witht he helium into the atmosphere. 

A study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research shows that helium produced by radioactive decay in deep, hot rocks has not had time to escape. Though the rocks are supposed to be over one billion years old, their large helium retention suggests an age of only thousands of years.22

One of the papers Gentry fabricated data for.

10. Not enough stone age skeletons.

Evolutionary anthropologists say that the stone age lasted for at least 100,000 years, during which time the world population of ... so many of the supposed 4 billion stone age skeletons should still be around (and certainly the buried artifacts). Yet only a few thousand have been found. This implies that the stone age was much shorter than evolutionists think, a few hundred years in many areas
.

How many people are looking and how many places are there to look. Also, only a fraction of the number would have been buried: not all tribes bury, some burn their dead.  Some people would have been killed in circumstance where burial was not possible: by a predator on a lone hunt, by disease and the tribe fled, by a warring tribe that would not have buried the victims, etc. Humphrey shows the wisdom of the Wizard of Oz: "I can't give you a brain, but I can give you a degree."

11. Agriculture is too recent.

The usual evolutionary picture has men existing as hunters and gatherers for 100,000 years during the stone age before discovering agriculture less than 10,000 years ago
.

The evidence shows hunting and gathering.  As long as game is plentiful, there is no need for the lesser caloric intake of agriculture, or the greater effort it involves.  Agriculture on a large scale also involves clearance of the land, and this is also tough. 

12. History is too short.

According to evolutionists, stone age man existed for 100,000 years before beginning to make written records about 4000 to 5000 years ago
. Prehistoric man built megalithic monuments, made beautiful cave paintings, and kept records of lunar phases.25 Why would he wait a thousand centuries before using the same skills to record history?

Because the luxury of a literate class means waiting until you have the social structure and excess wealth to afford training people in literacy and necessity to develop written language.  The latter comes about mostly through trade, and the necessity of keeping track of who owes whom. 

All in all, FOW, pretty poor, been considered by scientists before, and refuted before.  Endless repitition of refuted arguments doesn't make them valid.
 
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lucaspa

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Originally posted by Rize
Though it would be much easier for me to change my view of the Bible than it would for me to lose faith in Christianity.

That's what your fellow Christians have always thought.

"If sound science appears to contradict the Bible, we may be sure that it is our interpretation of the Bible that is at fault."  Christian Observer, 1832, pg. 437; quoted by Stephen Neill in Anglicanism, Penguin Books, 1960, pg. 240.
 
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Rize, I promised some specific discussions of the evidence. I will start with the transitional fossil evidence for human evolution. Please bear in mind before you reply in this thread that this is a cumulative case. The transitional fossil evidence goes with the molecular evidence, the general observations about the laws of biogenesis, observed evolution, and the recent appearance of man in the fossil record. Alone, the evidence from transitional fossils may be incomplete. Together with the other, independent, lines of evidence, it is conclusive.

Anatomically speaking, our nearest relative is the chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes. The adult chimpanzee has an average cranial capacity of 350-420cc. If we have a common ancestor, it would have to be one that could reasonably have descendants with brains the size of chimpanzees, and others with brains our size. The simplest scenario is that the common ancestor had a brain size roughly the same as chimps, and that that characteristic has changed little in chimps and more in humans. The actual historical scenario is likely to be the same. Let us get started with the proposition that it is likely that no other vertebrates have brains as large as humans, and since there is no indication that they ever did, that we evolved from creatures with brains similar in size to or slightly smaller than the chimpanzee's brain.

We could look at all the more technical and detailed characteristics and get a much better view (teeth, leg joints, skull shape, etc.), and we would still find much the same pattern as I will show you with skull sizes. Bear in mind that not all of these transitional forms are direct ancestors of humans. Without question, Homo erectus is. Others may be direct ancestors, or they may be cousins of our direct ancestors, proto-human organisms that had diverged from the line that eventually would lead to us. Nevertheless, all are transitional in that all are in most ways representative of their genus, and their genera are absolutely transitional in morphology (the way their bodies were made) between humans and a more ape-like creature that would be the common ancestor of humans and other modern apes.

I will list them in roughly chronological order (oldest first), along with their brain-size. Note that the oldest australopithecines have chimp-sized brains. They are transitional because of the fact that they had begun to walk upright, and carry a few other characteristics of Homo.

Bear in mind, the chimp has a cranial capacity of 350-420cc.

Australopithecus afarensis:
cranial capacity: 400 - 500cc
Fossils found in age ranging from 3.5 - 3.0 million years old.

Australopithecus africanus:
cranial capacity: 400 - 500cc
Fossils found 2.8 - 2.3 million years old


Paranthropus boisei:
cranial capacity 450 - 550cc
Fossils found 2.3 - 1.4 million years old


Homo rudolfensis (closest to Homo habilis, which I omit from the list) :
cranial capacity: 750 - ca 800cc
Fossils found 2.4 - 1.9 million years old


Homo ergaster (close relative of homo erectus - species name reflects smaller cranial capacity and range of distribution limited to Africa):
800 - 850cc
1.8 - 1.5 million years old


Homo erectus:
1,043cc
500,000 - 300,000 years old


Homo heidelbergensis:
1,300cc
0.6 - 0.2 million years old


Homo neanderthalensis (or Homo sapiens neanderthaensis)
1200 - 1750cc
300,000 - 30,000 years old (not thought to be directly ancestral to modern humans)

This information is taken from the australian museum on-line human evolution exhibit

And finally, about 100,000 years ago, modern humans appear (Homo sapiens sapiens), sporting a cranial capacity of 1200 - 1700 cc.

Evolution strongly predicts that there were intermediates between the common ancestor of apes and humans and modern humans: evolution says that the differences between us and chimps are great enough that they should have taken several intermediate "steps." Finding several intermediate steps as fossils, that date (according to conventional methods) to the proper period (after the first great apes, before the first humans) is strong evidence in favor of evolution.

Special creationism has difficulty accounting for them. Creationists must maintain that any one of these must be either

1) a big-brained walking ape, specially created separately from humans, or
2) a human, specially created from any of the apes.

The problem is that those which are specially created apes can clearly "evolve within their kind", and there is little that separates them from the ones labelled human. Special creationism has another problem. Their theory is inconsistent. If you will follow this link:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/compare.html

And, if you will scroll just past the first group of photos, you will find a chart of creationist classifications of some of the fossil hominids. What better proof that they are transitional in morphology than when the same fossil is "100% human" in the eyes of one scientific creationist, and "100% ape" in the opinion of another scientific creationist?

I am leaving out quite a bit (including much that I had hoped to cobble together for this post. I meant for it to be more than just a stripped down list of ages and skull sizes.) I just cannot organize the vast amount of information (and the vast number of creationist criticisms) of the fossil evidence from the hominids. In fact, I did not list all of the fossil hominids that have been found. If you would like more detail on any particular issue, please ask & one of us will be glad to help you find it. If there is a creationist criticism of some part of this data that seems like it may be strong enough to counter the support this gives for human evolution, please post it and let us answer it.

Even though Lucaspa's post is too technical for easy digestion, it shows that even between these fossil transitionals, we find more intermediate steps!

Transitional hominid fossils are a kind of evidence we would never even think to look for should we take the creationist perspective, but we must consider the likelihood of finding if evolution is true. The fact that they exist, and bridge the "gap" between apes and humans so closely is powerful confirmation of evolution.

So now we have a recent arrival of humans, a law that says all complex life (humans for instance) comes from the reproduction of similar parents, the fact of "micro-evolution" (that the differences between parents and offspring introduces novelty that may give some of those differences enough of an advantage the characteristics of the species change), apes which preceded humans and are very similar, and several transitional fossils that are each similar to apes, but are more similar to humans than apes are! We see that the oldest of these is so similar to apes that they could easily have evolved from apes, and the most recent are so similar to humans that humans could easily evolved from them. Between, we find "stepping stones".

At this point, having very briefly reviewed the paleontological evidence, and having seen the difficulties creationism must face to explain it away, it would be easy to conclude that apes and humans are closely related with a fair degree of certainty, and dismiss the creationist position. We might chalk this up as a fluke, though, if we were not aware of all of the other paleontological evidence that seems to link so many groups of living and extinct organisms together. Instead of repeating this performance for all of the many, many, organisms known to be related, I will move on in my next post to the molecular data: to me, the most convincing.

Please allow two days for delivery of that post. It will actually cover several topics from the molecular evidence, and will be much more involved than this one!!
 
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fieldsofwind

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Rize, you are well for believing without seeing. It is what we must do. If all of the evidence in the world lined up against my God, I would and will still believe. If not, then my love is not for Him, but upon tangible things that taunt at real belief. Nontheless, playing the evidence game with an evolutionist can be humorous and fun--perhaps even convincing to the non-involved reader.

Below are some interesting common answers and then responding problems with many current ideas pertaining to evo. I'm sure some here will attempt at giving their 2 cents worth, (and probably another 98 as well.) Oh well--

http://www.whyevolution.com/nothing.html

http://www.whyevolution.com/life.html

http://www.whyevolution.com/life.html
 
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I would respond, but if I did I would either be speaking from ignorance or regurgitating what someone else has written.

I've come to realize that getting into a creation/evolution debate is entirely pointless for me since I believe in God regardless.

There is no requirement to respond, but if you are skeptical or uncertain about any of this (because of what someone else has written, or whatever), you are welcome to ask questions for clarification.

Your statement that debating evolution is "pointless" because you believe in God regardless is, on the one hand very wise. On the other hand, it isn't necessarily true. If you started out thinking that the debate over evolution had some real importance to theology, then you are correct to realize that it does not. But that doesn't mean it has no importance. Science is a worthwhile endeavor, and is interesting in its own right - apart from its impact on theology. For that reason, you might well have a motivation to continue discussing it. You may have other reasons as well: remember that creationism is a liability to Christianity. Creationists in the church, making it appear to many people that science and Christianity are irreconcilable, and therefore making Christianity more unattractive to potential converts.
 
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lucaspa

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Originally posted by Rize
I've come to realize that getting into a creation/evolution debate is entirely pointless for me since I believe in God regardless.

Once again, no one here is asking you to stop believing in  God.  EVOLUTION IS NOT ATHEISM!! 

These are just a few of the denominational statements you can find at http://www.natcenscied.org/article.asp?category=2

GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH - USA (2002) *

The 214th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA):

1. Reaffirms that God is Creator, in accordance with the witness of Scripture and the Reformed Confessions.

2. Reaffirms that there is no contradiction between an evolutionary theory of human origins and the doctrine of God as Creator.

THE GENERAL CONVENTION OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH

<I>Whereas</I>, the terms "Creationism" and "Creation-science" as understood in these laws do not refer simply to the affirmation that God created the Earth and Heavens and everything in them, but specify certain methods and timing of the creative acts, and impose limits on these acts which are neither scriptural nor accepted by many Christians; and

<I>Whereas</I>, the dogma of "Creationism" and "Creation-science" as understood in the above contexts has been discredited by scientific and theologic studies and rejected in the statements of many church leaders; and

<I>Whereas</I>, "Creationism" and "Creation-science" is not limited to just the origin of life, but intends to monitor public school courses, such as biology, life science, anthropology, sociology, and often also English, physics, chemistry, world history, philosophy, and social studies; therefore be it

<I>Resolved</I>, the House of Bishops concurring, That this 67th General Convention affirm its belief in the glorious ability of God to create in any manner, and in this affirmation reject the rigid dogmatism of the "Creationist" movement, and be it further

<I>Resolved</I>, That we affirm our support of the scientists, educators, and theologians in the search for truth in this creation that God has given and entrusted to us.

&nbsp;
 
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lucaspa

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Originally posted by fieldsofwind
Nontheless, playing the evidence game with an evolutionist can be humorous and fun--perhaps even convincing to the non-involved reader.

Below are some interesting common answers and then responding problems with many current ideas pertaining to evo. I'm sure some here will attempt at giving their 2 cents worth, (and probably another 98 as well.) Oh well--

http://www.whyevolution.com/nothing.html

http://www.whyevolution.com/life.html

http://www.whyevolution.com/life.html

FOW, your general approach is to believe any criticism of evolution.&nbsp; However, that is not valid either. Scientific skepticism requires that the critics don't get a free ride either. Their claims must be examined to see if theye are valid or not.

The "whyevolution.com" site simply repeats tired, worn out, refuted creationist arguments, such as the First Law of Thermodynamics forbid something from nothing.&nbsp; A little critical thought on your part would&nbsp;show that all the laws of physics apply only within the universe, not in how to get a universe for them to describe.

Also, I find that one of the reference websites http://www.rialian.com%20/rnboyd%20/ekpyrotic.htm&nbsp;not only doesn't work, but is trying to insert a virus into my computer.&nbsp;Not checkable data, is it?

"a) One law of quantum mechanics states that the smaller the time interval, the smaller the probability for a quantum event. At the moment of the beginning, the universe's time interval is zero. (Time starting at the beginning event.) With a zero time interval, the probability for a universe to pop into existence through some kind of quantum event would equal zero."

That is not a law of quantum mechanics. Notice that there is no reference to the scientific literature for it.&nbsp; It is just asserted on the site's own authority.&nbsp; Yet you believe it without checking.

While believing without proof is fine for your belief in God, believing without data is not fine for science.&nbsp;
 
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Lanakila

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So because they don't believe in evolution whatever they have to say is not true, huh? You might as well believe in the Great Pumkin then seesaw, because true science does question, and you are accepting it without question, it appears.
 
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