Comments

Good for you DiverCity. Maybe you could explain to the millions of Christian creationists (and to me) how you can accept both science and Christianity. I sure couldn't answer that question. If a person accepts evolution and understands it, then he must know humans are an ape species, and that we are just one branch on a vast tree of life. If a person really understands evolution, then he has to know humans are just animals, and not some big deal that a god would single out for special treatment. I'm really interested in how a christian who accepts evolution, I mean really accepts it and doesn't invoke god to help it or invent it, could remain a christian. If you or anyone else would like to answer this question I would appreciate it.

I know about Miller and I admire him. As a biologist he really understands evolution and he knows god had nothing to do with it. Why he remains a Catholic I don't understand. I strongly doubt he believes the Resurrection miracle. I doubt he believes in anything supernatural. He's too intelligent to believe that nonsense. He's an honest person so if he says he's a Christian then I believe him, but it's a big mystery to me why he would bother with it.

BobC,
You should read Dr. Francis Collins' recent book, "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief." He is a Christian and believes in evolution, so should be able to answer the questions you pose. He is also the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, so his scientific credentials are very solid. Collins is a former atheist who came to faith after conversations with ill patients and reading "Mere Christianity" by CS Lewis.

Thanks Jeff. I also know about Collins. A few months ago I was talking to a creationist I work with. He told me Collins is a creationist and I knew my friend was wrong, so I showed him a quote from Collins that proved he completely accepted evolution. The creationist I work with read it and still insisted Collins was a creationist. I don't understand how creationists think. They are sure giving your religion a bad reputation. Just like the Muslims should be speaking out against the terrorists, I think the Christians should be speaking out against the creationists. The creationists are destroying your religion. There's a very large number of them in America, about half our population. When you count the number of people who accept evolution without invoking god at all, the numbers are even worse. In a poll only 13% of Americans agreed with the statement "Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process." That means 87% of Americans either completely reject evolution, or they think god guided evolution. Evolution is guided by natural selection, not god. There is big problem with knowledge of science in this country and of course the reason is Christianity. You Jeff and DiverCity and others like you, might want to work on those creationists. The most powerful country in the world unfortunately has one of the dumbest populations in the world. Only 13% of Americans accepting evolution without supernatural intervention is disgraceful.

Much has been said about 'facts'. For those who are so sure of theirs I would suggest the following texts:

Who Was Adam? - Rana with Ross, NAVPRESS

Origins of Life - Rana and Ross, NAVPRESS

Creation as Science - Ross, NAVPRESS

The Genesis Question - Ross, NAVPRESS

The Creator and the Cosmos - Ross, NAVPRESS

Beyond the Cosmos - Ross, NAVPRESS

All of the above are available at Reasons To Believe, (reasons.org) and can be ordered online.

There are others but this is a start. The site is a great resource.

How come young-Earth creationists don't put their money where their mouths are?

Finding oil is a high-stakes issue for oil companies; literally trillions of dollars are riding on it. Exxon's oil exploration budget alone is close to $20 billion per year. When the chips are down and they need to find the most likely spots to drill - what kind of geology do they use? Flood geology, or mainstream? Which one actually delivers the goods?

Let's assume the Earth is only a few thousand years old. Where did the oil come from? Was it created in the ground with the rest of the Earth? If so, is there a way to predict where it might be found? Or perhaps it really did form from plants and dinosaurs, but about 10,000 times faster than any chemist believes it could? Any way you look at it, a young Earth and a Flood would imply some very interesting scientific questions to ask, some interesting (and potentially extremely valuable) research programs to start. How come nobody's actually pursuing such research programs?

Why don't young-Earth creationists put together an investment fund, where people pay in and the stake is used as venture capital for things like oil and mineral rights? If "Flood geology" is really a better theory, then it should make better predictions about where raw materials are than standard geology does. The profits from such a venture could pay for a lot of evangelism, and the demonstrated proof that the theories work would be a powerful argument in favor of creationism. Why isn't anyone doing this?

Good article Rob – and nice finish. Key point is this:

“Many of us at Christian colleges really grieve at what a problem this young-earth creationism makes for the Christian witness. It’s almost like they’re adding another thing you have to believe to become a Christian. It’s like saying, You have to believe the world is flat to be a Christian, and that’s absolutely unreasonable”

And that is the real danger: the version of creation taught by YEC is damaging the Gospel. In the 1st century, one part of the church tried to shackle the gospel of Christ with circumcision – and threatened the gospel in the process. In the 21st century YEC threatens the gospel in a very similar way by shackling the message of redemption with a specific human interpretation of the scriptures.

BobC: I think both Miller and Collins are creationists – evolutionary creationists. I am as well. And yes I believe in the resurrection – so do Miller and Collins. Please don’t paint all creationists with the same broad brush.

BobC, as Steve points out, and as Rob clearly implied, young earth creationism is a problem for Christianity. I was once a young earth creationist -- perhaps as recently as 5 years ago, despite the fact I have a (non-science) doctoral degree. However, once I focused on the evidence, I came to the conclusion that the clear weight of the proof is on the side of evolution.

For one to be an evolutionist does not mean, however, that one must accept all the tenets and the world-view of materialistic, reductionist Darwinism. As you would probably agree, every culture has had its creation myth. Just so with anti-religious Enlightenment liberalism, which has Darwinism to explain how things came to be. There are even splits within the Darwinist camp, some of which resemble religion. For example, Neo-Darwinian Universalists, like Dawkins, depart considerably from classical Darwinism, believing in some kind of Zeitgeist of human progress, which is a substitute for religion (really, it is a religion). Of course, classical Darwinist evolution isn't "going" anywhere: it isn't headed towards "better" forms necessarily. It may well, according to its own terms, move to what we would consider simpler, more primitive forms. Therefore, unlike Dawkins, Gould and other neo-Darwinists, classic Darwinist evolution posits that there aren't any moral truths. But all Darwinists, being necessarily materialistic and reductionist, agree that there was no supernatural force that began or guided evolution, because it is a theory of change that excludes an intelligent agent.

So, I would agree with you that Darwinism is incompatible with any kind of theism. But not all evolutionists are Darwinists. This is how folks such as Miller and Collins can be evolutionists and theists at the same time.

It is enlightening to see the breadth of comments noted above. Apparently it is not only YEC teachings but also any and all creationist teachings are "destroying" Christianity. And, for that matter, Christianity is apparently "destroying" humanity.

Truth claims never satisfy those who have virulently opposing viewpoints. It is not just facts that convince anyone of the truth of the gospel. It even goes beyond the interpretation of facts. There must also be a change of heart. For the Bible tells us that the devils believe also . . . and tremble.

Those who proceed consistently on a naturalistic framework will inevitably interpret all empirical observations as completely materialistic. Christianity, however, claims that there is much more. This claim ought to be reflected in the work of scientists who wish to consistently proceed on a Christian framework. I fear that many are either inconsistent or keep silent for fear of academic shunning.

Not sure why Moll wants to give the impression that Young Creationists are the only ones who deal with the Genesis text seriously and with integrity. The 45% of the population who are creationists are certainly not all Young Creationists. The affirmation of faith in the Creator takes many more forms than this particular approach. Again, the press seems to wish to brush the whole movement with the tar of the extremists.

Dave, Rosin's article talks about the nearly half of Americans who are young earth creationists, which, she says, are "the 45 percent of Americans who, for 25 years, have consistently agreed with the statement in a Gallup poll that 'God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.'"

That sounds to me like 45 percent of Americans are young earth creationists.

Rosin got some facts wrong, I think, about creationism and the historical use of the Flood to explain aspects of geology. She was dismissive and unkind toward a large percentage of the American people. But I think the article is well-written and a good look at this movement. It is proof that squabbles over young earth creationism, within Christianity and outside it, will only increase over time.

Rob, Thanks for your prompt response.

For me, evolution vs. young-earth creationism is irrelevant -- they are both flawed humans' theories that attempt to explain in more detail how God did the inexplicable, as described so beautifully in Genesis 1. Instead of spending my time arguing so that I offend both my brothers and sisters in Christ, as well as people I hope will come to know Christ, I think it best to stick to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. Love God, love others, make disciples of Christ.

Young Earth Creationism is certainly not the only interpretation of Scripture that takes the Bible at face value, contra the assertions of BC, Ray, and SC above. One example of an alternative that takes the Bible completely at face value is the Framework Theory, which is completely based on Scripture, but argues that the first two chapters of Genesis do not present Creation in a chronological order, but rather in a logical order. In other words, the "days" of creation are a logical framework, not a chronological device. This interpretation is advanced by Lee Irons and Meredith G. Kline in _The_Genesis_Debate_ (edited by David G. Hagopian). That book presents three views on the days of creation, one of which is the 24-hour view, another of which is the Day-Age view held by Hugh Ross. Unfortunately, neither the 24-hour guys nor the Day-Age guys do a good job of responding to each others' arguments, so the framework argument kind of rules the book by default, but the framework interpretation has a lot to commend it, and is utterly Biblical.

Sirs:

I am not sure who Rob Moll is.

I am, however, quite sure who the late Arthur E.Wilder-Smith was: 3 earned doctorates in the sciences, world-reknown lecturer, and a proponent of the young earth viewpoint, based upon Scripture, upon the amount of helium in the air, upon the depth of dust on the moon, upon the circular thinking involved in dating methods, upon the total lack of evidence for the 20+ theories of evolution, etc.

Thank you for reading this.

Sincerely in Christ,

Paul Griffin

So Rob, do you believe that young earth creationism is outside of orthodox Christianity? Because in your final statement, you say that the movement is causing chagrin to "Christians and atheist evolutionists alike." Perhaps you should have qualified that -- "some Christians." I'm a Christian, and it's not causing any chagrin to me.

As it is, it sounds like you're saying that youth earth creationism is contrary to Christianity. Surely you don't believe that.

My previous charge still stands. It's too bad that CT can't provide a balanced treatment to this topic.

I am amazed at the people who keep insisting that the evidence points to evolution. As a former atheist who left atheism because of the obvious flaws in evolution, I'd like to see what "evidence" caused one to leave Christianity.

What is the evidence for life coming from non-life? It violates the Law of Biogenesis, proudly taught as a foundational principle in beginning biology. What evidence is there for transitional life forms? Every missing link candidate proves to fall far short. Darwin predicted that thousands of examples would emerge from the fossil layers. How do you explain thousands of feet of sedimetary material with thousands of fossilized creatures buried within with normal erosive processes?

And Ray Ingles, how do you explain vast resevoirs of fossilized fuels, whether oil, gas or coal, without flood geology? Without some kind of cataclysmic event that caused massive rapid burial, you have no fossil fuels whatsoever. By the way, check your research, millions of years are not needed to produce oil. Thousands of years will suffice nicely.

YEC are not the ones with their heads buried in the sand. Those who have chosen some other compromise are the ones buried in the sands of evolutionary propaganda.

There are only 2 explanations for the sedimentary rock layers we observe. They were either deposited over millions of years or in the Flood recorded in the Bible. If they were deposited over millions of years then Noah's Flood was a local flood, not global, or never happened.

But the New Testament writers refer to the Flood as factual. ‘…in the last days scoffers will come…they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.’2 Peter 3:3-6

Scoffers do not 'deliberately forget' a 'localized' flood. They reject a global one. This argument is about Biblical authority. If you can minimize or mythologize the account of the Flood then why can't you do the same to the account of the ressurection?

Jesus said;‘If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?’ Bottom line? If you believe what Moses wrote you won't have a problem believing Christs words. Moses wrote Genesis, and it contains the account of a Global flood with no evolution...

Thanks Rob. Brave of you to publish this article. I believe in creation. A purposeful beginning for the universe. I believe God created man in his own image. No evolution there, because this is foundational to our salvation. Young earth? Old earth? No problem. Evolution of life forms? No reason. Illogical.

To me "young earth creationism" is a foundation of sand. It requires you to ignore what you see in favor of what you have been taught to believe. One day, you may open your eyes. My favorite nomination for a place for this to happen is along the interstate highway coming up across Arkansas from Texas. There are several miles of road that are cut down into the hills. You see the same very old layers of rock again and again, folded and cracked but obviously the same and obviously laid down flat and then jammed together. That did not happen in only 8K years. You can see this sort of geological arrangement in many places while driving and you usually see it during times when you don't have much else to do except observe and think.

Unfortunately if you teach something that is obviously not right, when the realization of that wrongness occurs, it can shake the whole foundation of your belief structure. Teaching "young earth" is so wrong, so unnecessary, and so stupid in so many ways.

But if you want to see what erosion the flood might have made, visit the "scab lands" of eastern Washington State. Here the land was washed away by “500 foot high flash floods” that resulted from the water from Montana (when glaciers blocked river flow through the mountains in Idaho) breaking through—an estimated 10 times depending on which marks you think are the good ones.

Bennett Willis

Interesting discussion here. Apparently almost everyone here is a Christian, and not an atheist like myself, which should be no surprise on a website called Christianity Today. I'm pleased to see at least some of you accept evolution. I'm not surprised many people here reject evolution, and I'm not surprised their reasons I have heard before. There's a lot of misconceptions about evolution, partly because science education in America is terrible, and partly because there is a big business in America that spreads lies about evolution. Another reason for many people not accepting the massive evidence for evolution might be they think the idea they are closely related to other primates is repugnant. Personally I am very pleased to be related to the other ape species. I especially admire the chimpanzees. I recently read about a memory test done on both chimpanzees and humans. Guess who won? It was the chimps. I watched 3 different videos of a chimp being tested and I was amazed at his ability. It's obvious humans don't have a monopoly on intelligence. I encourage others who are interested in this to google "Chimps beat humans in memory test" and look at the videos.

Another reason many millions of people reject evolution is god. A belief in god gets in the way of understanding how the world really works. As some here pointed out, god does not have to get in the way. Some people choose to accept science and still be Christians. Unfortunately a large number of Christians, perhaps the majority of Christians, do let god get in their way of understanding science. It's unfortunate for them and unfortunate for their religion.

Interesting article.
I am amazed at how easily Americans speak about "what Christians believe", based on an almost purely domestic phenomenon. More than half Christians in the world are Catholics, and the Catholic Church not only never rejected evolutionism, but regards it as a mostly proven scientific theory.
I am also amazed at how non-believers without any knowledge of Christian faith nor Bible scholarship (no background on Biblical literary genres, philology, history of culture, etc) keep telling us believers how to interpret the Bible.
More open minds would mean a more cordial exchange.

Christopher - if you are indeed correct that young-Earth creationism explains the data better, then how do you account for the fact that no one actually uses it for a practical, non-evangelical purpose?

For an example of standard geology being used (successfully) to find oil, see here: http://www.jsg.utexas.edu/news/feats/2007/location_location.html
As a bonus, it describes how oil reservoirs actually form, which does not involve catastrophic burial events.

I'm not aware of any comparable results from young-Earth geologists. Can you point out some?

Clear evidence for evolution, at least on a micro-scale, exists in the fossil record. Darwinist theory does indeed contain some holes, as Christopher points out. IMO, the reason young earth creationists insist so dogmatically on a young earth is because of the thread of redemption that flows from the Old through the New Testataments. They fear that if there were no literal Adam and Eve, this necessarily vitiates the reason for Jesus's life, death and resurrection. I don't think it does, so long as one accepts a flawed (sinful, if you will) view of human nature.

Bear in mind that the fossil/geological record is not the only or even strongest evidence for evolution. With the burgeoning study of the biological discipline of genetics has come mountains of evidence in favor of modern behaviorally distinct humans having existed for somewhere around 75,000 years. Francis Collins can obviously explain this better than I, but suffice it to say that my amateur interest in genetics was what caused me to abandon YEC in favor of an evolutionary framework.

Interesting comments, Bennett. Perhaps you should take a look at the Toutle River in Washington state. After the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, a canyon formed with 110 foot high walls within 90 days! Some of the things we gaze at and attach millions of years to could well have formed much quicker. The Washington state scablands are a great case in point. Much argument was generated over the scablands, the Grand Coulee, Dry Falls and Palouse Falls. Geologists were locked into a battle over this and finally concluded that it was all formed through catastrophic processes over a relatively short period of time rather than through Uniformitarian processes over millions of years.

Our assumptive foundation determines what we can discover, the lenses we will view life through. Christianity starts with the assumption that there are two co-existing realities--the natural world and the supernatural. And, its adherents believe that those two realms interact--that the supernatural created the natural, entered into it in a pivotal historical moment, and will one day redeem the decaying natural world. Because of this worldview, Christians are able to investigate the truth value of issues related to both realms--the supernatural and the natural.

Materialists, by assuming that there is only one reality, rule out at the starting gate the possibility of investigating any other possibility; and so, they are limited to exploring that which can be empirically investigated. This is all that the human mind, and senses, apart from faith can imagine to be real. This then becomes Ultimate Truth--all that there is.

But what if there is more to reality than my senses can register? And, furthermore, what if the invisible--the spiritual and the supernatural--are actually the most important reality? What are the risks to each position--supernaturalists and naturalistic materialists--if that is the case? I suggest it boils down to this: The supernaturalists may be viewed as fools in this life; the naturalists, in the next.

Both are faith-based views. I know which risk I'd rather take.

And where are these mounds of assumed evolutionary evidences? The interspecial transition forms? Or the evolutionary improvement of human beings, morally, or otherwise? Or where are the convincing disproofs of creationism, or young earth claims in particular.

We have in this discussion a small sample of representatives of the two points of view (including some mixed perspectives). If we compare the attitudinal tone reflected by representatives on each side of the naturalist/supernaturalist debate here, I see emotionally strident, haughty dismissiveness from the hard-core materialistic naturalists, on the one hand, and efforts at reasoned debate by the supernaturalists, on the other. If this is any indication of the impact of our beliefs on our treatment of persons, I know which world I would rather live in.

BobC, is that a basis for Chimp Supremacist Theory? Next thing you know science will be telling us that human bio-diversity exists. We must suppress this.

YECs do not ignore what they see. Observation is the basis of the scientific method. Creationists and evolutionist both observe the exact same facts. There isn't a single observation that they disagree with.

Creationists and evolutionists disagree with each others interpretations of the 'facts', by saying their interpretation offers a superior explanation of what is observed.

Mr. Willis points to the observation that there are rock layers that are folded and cracked. fine, those are the facts. But stating that they are 'old' and 'did not happen in only 8k years' is an interpretation, not 'fact' because no one observed it happen, so there can be no plea to the scientific method.

However, if we are to apply what has been observed to the facts we can try to bolster one theory over another. Ask the question; 'Has anyone observed rock layers form slowly over millions of years?' No, obviously not.

'Has anyone observed rock layers form quickly during flood conditions?' Yes. (Mt. St. Helens eruption 1980+)

So based on observation, which hypothesis is better supported, flood geology or 'millions of years' of uniformitarian slow deposition?

BTW, comments on how 'stupid' your opponents viewpoints are because they disagree with your own is indicative of an emotional commitment, not an intellectual assesment.

Many people think Christians simply believe what they believe because each week they go to a big room where an authority figure stands up at the front and reads from a book and everyone just believes what they say as fact.

Sounds like science class to me...

DiverCity, I share your amateur interest in genetics. It was when I read what Ken Miller said at the Dover trial I realized how powerful DNA evidence is. I'm now reading "The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution" By Sean B. Carroll. It would be impossible to understand this evidence and still reject evolution.

Pastor GL, You said "I believe God created man in his own image." I wonder how you know what god looks like. Do you think it's possible god was made in man's image? You also said "Evolution of life forms? No reason. Illogical." Why would that be illogical? Virtually every biologist in the world agrees with this quote from a famous scientist: "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution." Should we listen to what the biologists say about biology, or what a pastor says about biology?

Thanks for the reference, Ray. Interesting article. However, it did not speak to the issue of oil formation, only discussed types of geological contexts that would keep the oil reservoirs from dissipating. The discussion seemed to focus on likely places to find resevoirs, not on the essentiality of millions of years to produce oil. In fact, several times in the article it pointed out that there were times when the supposed age of the rock layers had to be ignored and were irrelevant to finding oil therein. Rather, it was the circumstances of continental drift and similar dynamics that were more key factors in predicting the discovery of "giant" oil reservoir.

I'll have to do a little work regarding your question on YEC research. I have not kept on that and will look into it.

By the way, I should have clarified myself. DiverCity is right when saying that ample evidence exists for evolution within species, also called microevolution. I apologize if my comments seemed to deny such variations within kinds. Generally, when we speak of capital E, Evolution, we are referring to the concept of evolution from one lower life form into a more "complex" or higher life form, that is from amoeba to reptile, from reptile to mammal, from mammal to humans.

That is the type of Evolution that I think is wanting in regards to evidence. And that lack of evidence forced me to abandon it as a science and abandon its cousin, atheism, as a religion.

cary said "Christianity starts with the assumption that there are two co-existing realities--the natural world and the supernatural."

A big problem with supernatural is anything becomes possible. If anything is possible, then we might as well throw out all of science because scientists would be wasting their time. For example, why try to figure out how a species evolved if it's possible it was magically created? It's important to understand supernatural is just another word for magic. Also, god is another word for magician. Theists usually deny supernatural means magic, but if a god can create something out of nothing, I would call him a magician and I would call what he does magic.

Cary - I think there are tonal issues on both sides, what with those who accept evolution being called 'illogical' and so forth. But, as to transitions... here's one you can partially check on your own body:

Lay your fingers on the side of your jaw. Now, trace along the edge up to the very top of the jawbone. Notice how close your fingers are to your ear canal. Inside the inner ear are three bones, the ossicles: malleus, incus, and stapes. They are carefully arranged to transfer sound energy from the eardrum to the cochlea as efficiently as possible. How could such an amazing mechanism arise? (One that's been cited, even, as 'irreducibly complex' - just Google around a bit.)

It turns out that a classification of dinosaur called the therapsids had two jaw joints. The therapsids are known (by several independent lines of evidence) to be ancestral to modern mammals... and we have a basically complete fossil record of the gradual transition of one of those jaw joints into the modern bones of the inner ear. Note that intermediate steps were all advantageous, though not as efficient or optimized. Some transitional forms did help amplify sound energy but didn't work while the animal was chewing. We still have problems with that under some circumstances (try to listen to someone while eating celery) but the separation is far more developed now.

Oh, forgot to add to DiverCity... Interesting that DNA is a turning point for you towards Evolutionism. DNA is a critical turning point for me toward Creationism. Evolutionism has no way to explain ever increasing levels of information as life forms supposedly evolve into more complex animals. The level of information in a single strand of DNA and its precise ordering are arguments against chance, random processes to explain the origins of such life forms. And, please, son't give me the illustrations of 100s of chimps pounding on a typewriter for millions of years could produce Shakespeare. Shakespeare's most complex play pales in comparison to a single strand of DNA.

Scriptural authority doesn't really cut it as an explanation for belief in "Young Earth Creationism" (YEC). That just seems to be an excuse to feel self-righteous and superior, to my jaundiced eye anyway. Moll's comment on "compartmentalized minds" is probably closer to the mark.

There is no reason to think that the YEC activists are stupid and lazy. They seem adequately intelligent, and far from lazy to me. They're just not right in the main thrust of their arguments. They just don't come up with interesting questions, I think, just uninteresting answers to leading questions rather than using predictive questions to explore the edges of the unknown. However, maybe someone will get lucky, and stumble across something interesting, someday. I'm not likely to trust that person's explanation, without reading another's report in a magazine/journal that I do trust, like "Nature."

Judging from Christian television, YEC popularizers, which shouldn't necessarily be confused with the YEC's at the conference, don't have a lot of intellectual integrity going on. That's often a criticism of most popularizers of most everything, I think. And, what should I know of intellectual integrity? ...Well, I do work in the Stygian mines of academia, but not as an academic. So, dismiss that criticism if you wish.

I've often wondered why people believe in YEC. It's doesn't really tie all that closely with the opening of Genesis, in my observation anyway. I mean, plants probably didn't exist before the sun and the moon were created to rule the skies. It was good sense, however, that they had started to grow before people needed them.

It's uncontroversial that there are seven days in the opening of Genesis because the area's polytheists believed in Seven Planetary Gods. The days of the week, Nordicized in English, still bear the ancient gods' names. Today is Woden's day. I see no reason to believe that God had some superstition about the number seven, or any other number in the Bible.

Genesis assures the reader that pagan gods, of what any number, have no powers, no domain sthat they rule, no reason to try to appease them, as they don't exist. What are today's equivalents? What are we falsely worshiping today? What falsely is ruling our lives, that we can simply reject, and it goes away?

Naming those false gods in Genesis would have perpetuated their names as rivals to the One God. Merely numbering them is to dismiss them. That's great writing, if nothing else.

I wonder if YEC, seeming to be most popular in the US, South Africa and Australia, all English speaking countries that have had extremely racist governments, has something to more do with racism? In some sublimated way, for most people today, of course. YEC is the science of God's supernatural, born again race, as I think Kenneth Copeland once put it. YEC is the science of God's royal race, God's regents...as in Regent University. Literal interpretation of the Bible was the main weapon of choice by pro-slavery and Jim Crow apologists, after all, and it seems to be the main weapon of choice for YEC popularizers.

However, there is an Islamic variant of YEC as well, which might suggest something else...or something else in addition to my hypothesis.

In any case, there isn't a lot of physical evidence of a universal flood in the Iron Age, which is where Genesis places Noah's flood. Tubal Cain was pounding away on iron before the flood. Genesis 4:24.

Personal experience should always be discounted, of course, but it can illustrate. My father was a surveyor; he would have found evidence of that sort of recent thing most everywhere, I think. He saw plenty evidence of flooding, people farm flood plains after all, but not evidence of a one time, universal flood, everywhere he surveyed. By the way, keep up on your flood insurance, Global warming is probably going to make for extremes in weather.

You might be interested in Asa Gray, devout Presbyterian and "America's Darwin," who even way back when, had formulated an evolutionary teleology. I wasn't convinced by him, but it's fun. As far as racism goes, however, he was a "white" man of his times, and that was a disgraceful age on matters of "race," even by today's too low standards.

If memory serves, one old rabbinic interpretation of Noah's Flood read that the waters from below and above thing as a metaphor for literacy and writing coming from above, merging with the oral tradition coming from below (or vice versa), flooding the world with an unprecedented new age, sweeping out old the evils and the old traditions, and creating new opportunities...for new evils and traditions. The world's first age of information overload?

On the other hand, experiencing some sort of non-metaphoric flooding is a near universal experience. People had to live near water, like rivers and lakes, that all flood sometimes. Most any historical society has pictures of a flood(s), I bet. Even an oasis can be flooded by sand and destroyed. If one survives the flood, one is both comforted by the Noachian story of survival and new beginnings, and be warned that a new beginning isn't necessarily going to be without it's own new stresses and evils.

I really enjoyed reading "The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis" by Leon R. Kass. However, Evangelicals were warned against it by CT, if memory serves.

Science, I don't think, deals in truths. I see science dealing in predictive power in exploring the edges of the unknown. Fruitful science is a question manufacturing machine. It's not really that a theory is proved wrong, but that the theory doesn't keep coming up with reliably predictive questions. The theory then floats off into history, though some aspect of it can always be looked at again, with fresh eyes, and maybe start a new thread of questions...like the theory of continental drift's history. Plate tectonics is now a question manufacturing machine like few others.

I always look forward to reading posts on the creation/evolution debate. However, I must admit that I am disappointed at some of the responses to Rob Moll's article.

Some of the posters seem to be interested more in self-promotion than in knowledge. What is the point in name calling and verbal abuse when learning is what we are supposed to be about. Some of the persons posting succeeded only in being grossly unmannerly.

Is it heat or light that we are after? If it is "science" we want to advance then why not stop referring to others as stupid, ignorant, foolish, stubborn, "not human" etc., and advance some real arguments.

One poster says that there is "a massive amount of evidence to support evolution". However, he did not put forward even a single piece of that "massive" evidence. I don't get it! Maybe he thinks everyone already knows and accepts this "massive" evidence. Or maybe he is saying if you are so uneducated, or ignorant about this evidence, shame on you!

It seems to me that there are many "debaters" whose only desire is to villify and embarrass their opponent, and this is supposed to how how smatrt and superior they are.

There are many like me who want to be enlightened. That is one of the reasons I read CT. After reading these posting though I can"t honestly say I have learned much about the position of either creation or evolution apart from what I came in with.

Some may say this is neither the time nor place to deal with the issues. I beg to respectfully disagree. How much time would it take to name one or two pieces of the "massive amount of evidence" in favour of evolution" and explain these in simply terms? Why take up space ridiculing an idea when you can use that same space to be positive and constructive?

How are we going to move persons from one position to another if we keep beating them with the big stick of our overly inflated egos?

I wouldn't think that there would be any materialists left after Einstein. E=mc squared means something. Stop fighting Victorian straw men, and join the 21st century.

What is material, anyway? If you get really close and really tiny to the edges of material things, you fall into empty space, as empty as space gets, I guess. You can't tell where the edge of something, the surface of something, actually begins and ends.

The Victorian materialist dialectic simply disappears. Marx is dead (though you should read him anyway. The Communist Manifesto is funny, and as the man who put the "ism" in capitalism, you shouldn't discount him unless you actually like wild business cycles.)

It's only when you stand back, and get a big enough perspective, only then can you approximate where the edge, the surface, of a material thing exists. You can't, however, locate that with perfect precision. Edges and surfaces become metaphysical, social constructs, rather than material reality. Yet, edges and surfaces of materials are quite useful in everyday life, don't you think?

Christopher said: "Interesting that DNA is a turning point for you towards Evolutionism. DNA is a critical turning point for me toward Creationism. Evolutionism has no way to explain ever increasing levels of information as life forms supposedly evolve into more complex animals."

Thou dost assume too much.: ) I'm not materialist - reductionist - Darwinist, in the sense that I don't foreclose the possibility of an intelligent agent (writ, God) causing/guiding the process of evolution. You and I likely agree on many things. As Antony Flew recently stated in "There Is A God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind," :

"Moving on now from the parable, it's time for me to lay my cards on the table, to set out my own views and the reasons that support them. I now believe that the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence. I believe that this universe's intricate laws manifest what scientists have called the Mind of God. I believe that life and reproduction originate in a divine Source.

Why do I believe this, given that I expounded and defended atheism for more than half a century? The short answer is this: this is the world picture, as I see it, that has emerged from modern science. Science spotlights three dimensions that point to God. The first is the fact that nature obeys laws. The second is the dimension of life, of intelligently organized and purpose-driven beings, which arose from matter. The third is the very existence of nature."

It seems to me that if one is a born-again believer, the issue of creation is self evident if one defines the act of creation as God's manufacture of of all that exists whatever process He may have used. The evolutionists represented in the article are as lazy as the creationists they criticize. There are scores of interpretations of the Genesis passages by believers who belive that the Scriptures are accurate and authortative, whether they believe in 6 literal 24 hour periods, the day/age theories, some other variations thereof,or theistic evolution. The tone of the article is indeed shocking and troubling and not at all an honest treatment of an extremely complex subject. Do more homework!!

Ray Ingles, thanks for that lesson about the evolution of the bones in the inner ear.

Steve Skeete said "However, he did not put forward even a single piece of that 'massive' evidence."

That would be me. If I did spend all day writing about that massive evidence, what good would it do? Would you read it, understand it, and agree with it? Probably if you bothered to read it, you would come up with some way to lie about it, or repeat the lies you have been told about it. That's my experience when talking to creationists, so now I tell them if they want to see the evidence for evolution, they should look it up themselves instead of wasting my time, being careful to avoid the "Liars for Jesus". Do they bother to look it up, and if they do look it up, do they try to ignore the "Liars for Jesus"? No, they either don't bother with it, or they get their information from professional liars (Discovery Institute, Answers In Genesis, etc.).

For the people here who say things like "Evolutionism has no way to explain..." or other anti-science nonsense, here's a quote from a very famous 19th Century scientist whose picture appears on the British 10 pound note.

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." [Charles Darwin]

One of the remarkable things about Genesis is that it describes an intelligent being manipulating energy and matter to form something. The creation myths of non-Israelite cultures play out like a soap opera of ambitious and warring gods. What Genesis affirms is that all of the elements of the world we see, including plants, animals and humans, are placed here by God. The mechanism is not described, other than God directing things to happen, and confirmation that they did occur as God directed. There is no exposition of God's methods and the kinds of plants and animals listed are not a complete taxonomy but simply representative examples. The notion that "day" can only represent a 24-hour period conflicts with the alternate notion that it might represent a thousand year period (based on a passage in Peter's epistles that was not explaining Genesis). "Day" in ordinary English usage can also represent an indefinite era made up of many 24-hour days. We use it to mean both 24 hours and the shorter period that is not night.

The assumption that Genesis is describing the creation of the entire universe, rather than of the earth and its immediate environs, is in conflict with what the author, presumably Moses, and most of his readers knew of as the "universe" for most of history. It is one thing to claim that God created the Big Bang; it is another to assert that the story told in Genesis was meant to refer to areas not within the comprehension of mankind until the 19th Century.

Most of Genesis 1 is clearly referring to the earth, its seas and mountains, its plants, fish, insects, animals, and people. The entire creation of other stars and galaxies is claimed to be contained in the words "Let there be light". But this does not even describe the varieties of objects in the distant heavens invisible to the naked eye. When we claim that Genesis is a complete description of all creation, we are reading a lot of assumptions into the few words.

Once we accept Genesis as the story of the earth only, the events are actually a decent table of contents for the detailed history of our planet that has been filled in by astronomy, geology, and paleontology. The correlation is remarkable, the kind of summary one might compose who had seen a time-compressed movie of the process described by scientists. Understood in this fashion, Moses is showing a remarkable prescience about what science will discover thousands of years later.

Rather than trying to defy cosmology, astrophysics, geology, paleontology and biology, to support an idiosyncratic interpretation of Genesis, we should be pointing to the intelligence of the text and challenging materialists to explain how a so-called ignorant primitve tribesman knew so much science. The scientific verification of Moses' outline of the earth's creation should cause us to take seriously the thesis of the text: that these things were all accomplished under the direction of God, even though we are definitely NOT told the mechanisms he used.

What is the scientific evidence for an intelligence being involved in creation? On this earth, the origin of LIFE has NO coherent scientific theory. All the National Academy of Sciences can come up with is a reference to various competing (and incompatible) hypotheses, none of which has been confirmed to work by any experiment. Darwin thought that living cells were no more complex than lime jello with mandarin oranges thrown in. Only in the last 50 years have we understood that the cell is a complex nanomachine, the creation of which we can only aspire to. Each cell has not only a complex mechanism of protein machinery, it also has a complete bluprint (in duplicate) for all that machinery, as well as the ability to duplicate both machinery and blueprints via cell division and sexual reproduction. The "GAP" between inanimate matter and a living cell is too full of non-life for there to be some gradual staircase moving from dirt to living entity. We know all too well that the removal or disabling of a single one of the mechanisms or blueprints can halt life or reproduction, so how did a cell ever exist that was less than a cell is now?

Knowing what we know now about computers, the fact that even the simplest DNA has the potential to have more variations than there are atoms in the known universe, tells us that no random process could create a DNA string that can describe and create and reproduce a living cell within the known (14 billion year) age of the universe. What machine was making all sorts of random DNA strings? To hypothesize such an unknown mechanism, never observed in nature, you might as well take the next logical step and hypothesize a biologist to create and power and feed and maintain the machine. If you are a materialist, you might as well call this biologist God, since you are not using that term for anything else. And how did the DNA accomplish anything without a cell membrance, separating the cell from its randomizing and diluting environment, and enclosing the raw materials and protein mechanisms necessary to read the DNA memory banks.

Materialists place boundless confidence in the creative power of randomness. But out in the real world of medicine, we know that randomizing a person's DNA is the source of cancer and all sorts of debilitating diseases. Since every existing mechanism presumably contributes to survival, the loss of any one is liable to de-survivalize (kill) the host. So the trick is to find a random change that is a rare one that does NOT destroy a needed capacity, and then within that very small set find one that actually improves survival chances. Contrary to "Godzilla", "Them", "The Incredible Hulk" and other SciFi movies, radiation and randomization tends to kill, not improve. The small genetic variations that are pointed to as examples of productive random mutation are the disabling of a capability that also was a disability (such as sickle cell anemia). The hypothesis of Michael Behe's newest book is that the creative ability of random mutation is extremely limited, so that evolutionary development appears to operate at the level of very small changes. There is no evidence that the evolutionary pressures that created sickle cell anemia have had any luck creating positive, complex mechanisms without dire side effects.

DNA analysis provides so much information that scientists are able to describe in great detail how each species evolved and which species are most closely related to each other. For example (and if I don't get all my facts right, I welcome corrections), about 6 million years ago the ancestors of modern humans and the ancestors of modern chimpanzees were the same species. These animals split up and began evolving differently. For the first few hundred thousand years, when they would encounter each other they were still almost the same and they were able to and did mate with each other. Eventually they completely separated, an event which occurred about 5 million years ago. Scientists know all this stuff because they can see strong evidence for it when they compare our DNA to the chimps' DNA. They have evidence we split apart a few million years ago, and they also have evidence it was a sloppy split which took a very long time. The people who deny all this powerful evidence don't understand it.

Tim, You're right, saying YEC is causing chagrin to "some" Christians would have been more accurate.

Thanks for that acknowledgment, Rob.

Evolutionism has no way to explain ever increasing levels of information as life forms supposedly evolve into more complex animals."...

I can think of two ways...

One is called The Theory of Natural Selection. It's quite good, and it's been around since 1859, much, much refined, of course, and still generating seemingly endless research, as good theory does.

Go visit any good science research library, and see if I'm lying. You'll be literally buried deep under material, if you're rash enough to try and drag it all to one spot...and more will be piled up on you, everyday.

Most any science index will back me up here. The theory of natural selection is still cutting edge, after all this time. Extraordinary.

That's why Darwin is deservedly famous, though of course, it was independently observed by Alfred Russel Wallace, who should get more recognition for his stupendous achievement, I think.

Don't forget the second law of thermodynamics, which isn't only about increasing entropy, but also about open systems with a constant source of energy coming in...like Earth. Sure, increasing entropy will catch up with the Sun, someday, but in the meantime, enjoy the ride.

Increasing entropy isn't an instant process, it takes time, and Earth has had plenty of time for it's state of both simultaneously decreasing and increasing entropy to work up some really interestingly complex patterns. At sometime in the distant future, this state will go cold and possibly shred apart even after that, so any quantum particle is just too far apart from any other particle to accidentally interact in any meaningful way, but it's great fun while it lasts.

As a former evolutionary ethologists and carnivore zookeeper at the Audubon Zoological Gardens in New Orleans, Rob Moll's anti-young earth creationism blog and the many one-sided responses reminded me of when I once bashed the young earth creation interpretation of geological evidences. Like my own past methods of "argumentation", the above blog article selectively censors crucial details about young earth scientists, their numbers, their qualifications, their research (RATE Project), and the scientific evidences that have caused hundreds of respected PhD men and women to reject hypotheses regarding millions/billions of years (along with the unreliable dating methods that are claimed to "support" them). If the evidence against a young earth model is so strong, then why is it so common to see similar articles like this one that refuse to address the young earth model's details with scientific specifics. Avoiding a real debate by merely proclaiming young earth creationism to be unworthy of debate is one of the poorest and weakest forms of argumentum ad hominem. Actually, I had thought such a tactic was unworthy of Christianity Today. At least it once was, years ago, but the world and the modern church have apparently changed dramatically.

Materialists proclaim that, since science has explained all that we know, the people who believe in a being outside nature to explain anything are reduced to using that mechanism only in the "gaps" of human knowledge. The second assertion of the materialists is that the "gaps" are inexorably closing, so that eventually there will be no room for a "God explanation" within the universe of materialist explanations.

The materialists who make this argument (without any actual thought) are offering mankind a very poor model of science. They assert that there is a finite body of knowledge, and that we, puny mankind, are ever so close to comprehending ALL of that finite amount.

(One of the odd things about this is that their attitude completely contradicts their other favorite assertion that science has progressively dethroned mankind from the central and most important place in the universe, beginning with Copernicus, and that the "principle of mediocrity" requires us to assume that mankind and its place in the solar system, galaxy and universe are nothing special. Yet the same materialists proclaim that, unlike everything else in the universe, mankind is able to comprehend everything else and understand the mechanisms of how it came into existence and evolved over time. That makes humans--at least human materialists--pretty damn special and non-mediocre!)

The actual experience of science has been that, as mankind has understood the mechanisms and character of the natural world, it has opened up the ability to ask new questions, the answer to which raise geometrically more questions, ad infinitum. Look at the scientific business. Ask the scientists if they are afraid they are going to lose their jobs soon because they will have answered all the questions about nature. They will laugh and assure you (along with their grant committee) that there are deep and complex mysteries still waiting to be plumbed, with enough time and PhD candidates and grant money. And every one of the millions of scientists say the same thing!

Thus, even as we know more and more about nature, we find more and more questions, a term meaning "things we DON'T know." Science in its reality as a part of the modern economy is built on the premise that there is an infinite progression of new questions behind every answer. The fact we are compiling more answers has no relationship to the number of questions. Scientific knowledge is not a zero sum game. It is a progressive tree of knowledge, ever expanding, with no end in sight.

An analogy can be made to fractal geometry. When we focus on the boundary between knowledge and the unknown, we find it to have a fractal geometry, and as we focus closer in, we find more and more complexity. The real world tends to be fractal in nature.

Let's consider some of the big questions. As scientists in the early part of the 20th Century examined the movement of galaxies, they found that they were rapidly expanding as space expanded, leading to the conclusion that the galaxy had originated a finite time in the past in the Big Bang. This, instead of ending inquiry, has raised more and more questions.

In recent decades, we have realized that the sum of all ordinary matter in a galaxy is far short of what is needed to make it coalesce, and spin as a single object rather than a bunch of orbiting stars with speeds of revolution slowing greatly as they distance themselves from the center. Scientists have concluded that 80% of matter is "dark matter" which we cannot detect by electromagnetic radiation, which has graviational mass that created and coheres the galaxies.

Ten years ago, we discovered that the expansion was speeding up! We are only hypothesizing about the cause, but the theories offered are that there is a Dark Energy, that is several times the size of all matter (dark and light) in the universe. We don't know what it is or why. But we know it is there.

So in cosmology, all our learning has led us to the conclusion that we do NOT know what 90% of the universe is made of! That is one damn big GAP. We didn't know this gap was there 20 years ago! The claim that we knew what the universe was made of was a hollow boast, based on pride in our (mediocre) intelligence.

Our own ignorance has the peculiar feature of being invisible to us. By definition, we cannot measure the volume of what we do not know. So the assertion that the volume of things we do not know is diminishing, and will some day approach zero, is the most ignorant statement of all.

The one thing we can inductively conclude, based on experience, is that the more we know, the more we will realize and appreciate our ignorance. The statement from Darwin about the confidence that ignorance has is true. However, scientists need to admit that they are ignorant as well. If they deny their ignorance, then they are more ignorant than the rest of mankind, who admit there are things we don't know.

One of the remarkable things about Genesis is that it describes an intelligent being manipulating energy and matter to form something."

I don't read manipulation, I read proclamation. I manipulate energy and matter, God proclaims and it is as it is. The universe is empowered, not manipulated by quirky, egotistical gods that need to be appeased, and suspiciously look like me, but by the One God. The God that is unknowable, unlike gods that look suspiciously like me.

Raymond Takashi Swenson, You are correct, there are things we don't know. There is more than enough gaps in our knowledge to keep scientists happily employed forever. That's a good thing. How boring it would be if we ever knew everything. However this is no reason to invoke god to explain anything. If scientists ever said let's just give up and invoke god to explain what we don't know yet, what would that accomplish? It would accomplish nothing. Invoking god because of our ignorance would make human progress come to a complete stop. This is why Intelligent Design is called the philosophy of ignorance, and science is called the philosophy of discovery.

At the risk of being frowned out of the discussion by such an erudite, scholarly group (and, lest we take ourselves too seriously) I share this story: A group of brilliant scientists approached God one day with the bold challenge, "We have found the secret of life and we wish to challenge you to a contest to see who is able to create a human being the fastest." Never one to flee a challenge, God replied, "OK, you're on." And so, at the appointed time for the contest to begin, God reached down and scooped up a handful of dirt; as did the scientist. But God interrupted saying, "No, no. You create your own dirt!" . . .

And then, too, there's the age-old question, "I wonder if ants believe in humans?"

Wow..I had not realized this discussion would inspire this many posts! However, might I convey congrats to you all for doing just that, responding to that which you obviously disagree, or support. I am a believer in a young earth, Jesus as my savior, the Bible as ultimate truth, and atheists as fools. How anybody could reject a Creator God is beyond comprehension. However....Let's just settle with this -> There is by no means an evolutionary creationist, as Steve wrote. These 2 ideologies are mutually exclusive. One is true (Obviously creation science) and the other (evolution ) is a terrible lie, based on evidence. Can't be both Steve-O. Truth is an absolute concept. It's either fully true, or it is not true at all.

Oh.......and Bob C, please try to shed your atheistic dogma. When you face God on judgement Day, you won't like the fact you rejected Him.

JJ Reynolds

To Rob:

Thanks for the good article and courage to say what you really believe. If you were too harsh (which I don't think), it's clear that young earth creationists are both aware of the challenges they face and willing/able to stand up for themselves (though not factually in my observation).

To Everyone:

Responses have covered many of the directly-related issues and offered references for further reading. I will add one that comes from a bit different angle, and introduces yet another, little-considered realm of data that we overlook to our peril. If evolution is threatening, this area is panic-inducing to many. The book MAY become a critical turning point, and at the least, the subject of it certainly WILL become significant very soon. I refer to "Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA" by Hoagland and Bara. (Related also is "The Momuments of Mars" by Hoagland).

One of the sad developments in Christian higher education, IMHO, is that there are a shrinking number of schools teaching creationism, and an even smaller group teaching young earth creationism; theistic evolution is becoming the popular position. I see this as (1) a sad commentary on the quality of christian scholarship in the scientific arena, and (2) a reflection of the Church buying into the wisdom of this world. To borrow the title of J.B. Phillips' little book of decades ago and apply it to today's Church in America: Our God is too small.

Raymond Takashi Swenson: You said this but I got the impression you don't agree with it: "...science has progressively dethroned mankind from the central and most important place in the universe, beginning with Copernicus, and that the 'principle of mediocrity' requires us to assume that mankind and its place in the solar system, galaxy and universe are nothing special."

I sure agree with it. We are just one species of animal on one insignificant planet in a vast universe. We most certainly are nothing special.

I highly recommend this 3 minute YouTube video: "Carl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M

Cary, I agree it's a sad development that theistic evolution is becoming the popular position in Christian higher education. The word evolution does not need any adjectives, especially not the adjective theistic. Nobody ever talks about theistic gravity. There's no reason to attach this useless adjective to evolution. Theology has absolutely nothing to do with evolution. I think even Ken Miller and Francis Collins would agree with me. Neither of these Christians invoke god to explain evolution. I wish people would stop calling evolution theistic. Evolution is the cornerstone of biology and it's insulting to biologists to call it theistic.

JJ Reynolds...do as I say or God will smite you? Why is this not a tawdry protection racket?

Kenneth Miller is a Bible-mocker whose profession of faith should not be trusted. And he is demonstrably unreliable in science, as shown in my co-authored review of his book http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/1826/. This includes his ideas about the alleged evolution of the bacterial flagellum that contradict even evolutionary experts in the field http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/5213/#flagellum It should worry Christians that the leading misotheist Clinton R. Dawkins recommends Miller's book to Christians.

But I've already explained about Miller's sheep-clothed lupine nature to CT in a response to a glowing article about him, but of course the letter was not published. See http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/3239/

Why does a belief in 'Theistic Design' necessarily have to be linked with 'Young Earth' assertions anyway? I'm not stupid I far as I know, but as a doctor I see enough evidence of theistic design to be convinced of its validity. I'm also humble enough to know that there exists a great many things in this universe that can't be explained or conceived by our pathetic finite minds. And yet, I don't need to believe in a young earth and literal creation timelines. To me, the universe can be old and created. No problem for me. Those who hold to 'theistic evolution' (including alister McGrath and co)are kidding themselves and trying to save face with their evolutionist mates. Evolution is, by definition, driven by chance and natural selection. This immediately disqualifies God as being part of it. Secular evolutionists who believe evolution is 'fact' are also kidding themselves and are the worst culprits for swallowing something by 'blind faith' that has more holes in it than Swiss cheese.

Roger - Australia, I have always wanted to visit Australia. Maybe some day. You said evolution "has more holes in it than Swiss cheese." That would be a big surprise to several dozen scientific organizations, including the Australian Academy of Science.

Statements from Scientific and Scholarly Organizations

http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/8408_statements_from_scientific_and_12_19_2002.asp

Since as Roger says, "evolution is, by definition, driven by chance and natural selection," the Christian, also by definition, cannot reconcile the essentials of his faith to it regardless of the length of time that might be ascribed to creation. A more fundamental consideration is the crucial notion of the Heavenly Father and his Son Jesus Christ.

According to Darwinian evolutionists, our understanding of father and son are derived from the random emergence of surviving life forms that have a "father" and "son" relationship to one another.There is no other way these biological modes could have arisen by their theory.

Yet as Christians we believe that the Father and Son have existed eternally, outside of our understanding of space and time much less outside the constructs of evolution. In other words, we believe that the Father and Son preceded any possible randomly construed evolutionary development of that kind of relationship among life forms.

A Christian can't have it both ways. It would be absurd to suggest that God's son only came into being after evolution delivered such a life form and that God then accomodated Himself to this process (in which He was never engaged) by sending down Christ as an embodiment of that randomly created life form.

Seeing things this way makes the most fundamental premise of our faith, a heavenly Father and his begotten Son, incompatible with a theory of evolution driven by chance and natural selection.

According to our faith, the notion of father and son preceded evolution and not the other way around. Louis

My faith is not based on what a bunch of creationists or evolutionists tell me but upon both natural and special revelation.
The Bible is God's infallible and inerrant revelation. But it isn't a science textbook either and I would like to see much more insightful comparison of facts to allow me to critically evaluate the evidence rather than ideological wars and finger pointing. I've seen plenty of that kind of thing from both the young earth creationists and the evolutionists.
From my point of view:
-The consensus of Scientists in and of itself means nothing to me. The consensus has been wrong before.
-Acceptance of the Bible as both inerrant and infallible does not require me to also accept young earth creationism.(YEC) Those who use YEC as a sort of litmus test for whether someone is a true believer do a great disservice to Christianity.

JDM has it right. The Bible, as an infallible and inerrant source of divine revelation, is a book about theology and theological anthropology. The mistake is treating it as a literal 21st Century science text - a role for which it was never intended. I agree with JDM - consensus of atheistic scientists doesn't convince me any more than a consensus of theologians would convince someone like BobC. This whole debate has no use in apologetics as all three sides of the argument (atheistic evolutionists, theistic evolutionists and theistic design advocates) will never be convinced by the others, no matter how well put togather the arguments are. This comes down to worldviews and that is hard to change. Those without the Spirit are never able to discern spiritual things and the things of the Spirit to them are foolishness. BobC will no doubt agree.

I provided some links to websites that explain evolution and the evidence for it. Perhaps because of the large number of links I provided, it was held up to be reviewed. Hopefully it will all appear here later. I think people should study evidence on their own. What I provided, if it ever shows up here, is where to look for it. Nobody should be trusted, not even scientists. People should look at evidence for evolution and decide for themselves if the evidence is powerful enough to call evolution a fact. It's best to study it carefully before making any decision for or against it.

I'm very disturbed with Christianity Today's blatant ridicule of young earth creationists. Who is running this website anyways? This article is ridiculous. Hey, Christianity Today! Have you read your Bible lately and not that watered down version either... your 1611 King James Bible! The Bible clearly teaches a young earth! Only a retarded god would use evolution which relies completely on death, suffering and misfits to be succesfull. Seriously. Is this a liberal Christian website? Are they doing more harm to Christians than good?

Either the universe was designed, or it came about by random chance. These are the only options. Let's take a look at what evolutionists believe. Lot's of them (is Christianity Today in this camp?) are telling people that if you move up your family tree far enough great great great great great grandpa was a monkey swinging from a tree, but ask them where is the proof? Out of the millions of fossils in the world, not one transitional form has been found. All known species show up abruptly in the fossil record, without intermediate forms, thus contributing to the fact of special creation. Evolution teaches that in the beginning there was nothing then it exploded. Think about this for a minute. Everyone knows that that matter could not come from nothing exploding. Yet, they put this in your science book. This is what they believe. It is ridiculous! They do not have another choice except, "God created the heaven and the earth."

They have are little stories about how a bear fell into the ocean and became a whale. But we don't have the actual bear and the whale. They use their imagination to imagine evolution took place, like you know, Elton John looks like Janet Reno. Therefore Elton John gave birth to Janet Reno. All they can do is find an odd-looking duck that looks like another duck. They can't prove the descendant relationship. What you ought to have under the theory of random mutation and natural selection is a whole lot of transitional species or animals, far more than you have of the final product. In fact, there really never is a final product because we're always moving on to something better. You know, humans ought to be sprouting new wings and tails as we speak.

Oh, by the way, how many are aware Charles Darwin was a racist? They call his book, The Origin of Species. That's not correct. When someone says that, raise your hand immediately and say, "Excuse me, what is the rest of the title, please? I would like to hear the whole title of the book." Back in those days, they had long titles on their books. Here is the whole title of the book, "The Origin Of Species By Means Of Natural Selection Or The Preservation Of Favored Races In The Struggle For Life." Favored races? Ok, Charlie...we get the picture. So did Hitler. We could spend all day on that one, but I am too tired.

After weighing all the evidence and reviewing the creation/evolution subject thousands of times, I believe and can say with all certainty that the Bible is the infallible, inspired, inerrant Word of the living God. The universe was created in six literal, 24 hour days about 6,000 years ago as revealed in the creation verses of the Bible (see Mathew 19:4; Exodus 20:11; Genesis 1 & 5 etc……)

I believe that if any rational person hears the truth about the controversy between the creation and evolution, the conclusion will be overwhelmingly obvious that God created the world, just like the Bible says. To me this is one of the most fantastic ministries possible because so many people have their faith renewed by understanding the science and applying it to the evidence.

The earth is not billions of years old. No animal has ever been observed changing into any fundamentally different kind of animal. No one has ever observed life spontaneously arising from nonliving matter. Matter cannot make itself out of nothing. Evolutionism is a religious worldview that is not supported by science, Scripture, popular opinion, or common sense. And I'm running out of space. I'll just stop writing now.

apacallyps, you got a lot of misconceptions about science and about the science of evolution. I was going to completely ignore your comments until I noticed you called Darwin a racist. In his book, "The Origin Of Species By Means Of Natural Selection Or The Preservation Of Favored Races In The Struggle For Life" he was not talking about the different races of humans. He was talking about different animal species. Darwin was most definitely NOT a racist. For example, when he lived there were slaves in America and Darwin was very much against slavery. It's unfortunate there have been lies spread about Darwin here in America. In England they thought so highly of Darwin he was buried at Westminster Abbey close to Sir Isaac Newton, and today his picture is on the British 10 pound note.

apacallyps, here is the definition of RACE as used in biology and as used in Darwin's book: "An interbreeding, usually geographically isolated population of organisms differing from other populations of the same species in the frequency of hereditary traits. A race that has been given formal taxonomic recognition is known as a subspecies."

As you can see, Darwin was not talking about the different human races in his book. I just want you to understand any information you were given about Darwin being a racist is not correct.

apacallyps, sorry to bother you again, but I just wanted to say you are pretty much wrong about everything. For example, your estimated age for the universe is quite a bit off. It's not 6,000 years old. All the scientific evidence shows the universe to be more than 13,000,000,000 years old. Somebody did the math and figured out your 6,000 year estimate for the age of the universe would be equivalent to saying New York City is 24 feet from San Francisco. That's how terribly wrong you are. I suppose you think the Bible is more accurate than all of our 21st century scientific knowledge, but it's terrible to think that way.

Here's a quote you should consider:

"The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false."
-- Thomas Aquinas

I don't think we should forget the views of Jesus and the New Testament writers. According to Mark 10:6 God created man "at the beginning of creation" and not millions of years after the beginning. I believe that "beginning" here means - beginning. There are plenty of scientific facts that support the young earth position, such as the discovery of blood cells in a T-rex bone, the rapid formation on canyons, the discovery of carbon 14 in diamonds and the very existence of short-term comets.
I don't think Christians should a priori reject a position that after all is biblical and supported by solid evidence.
http://joelkontinen.blogspot.com/

BobC wrote: "If I did spend all day writing about that "massive evidence" (in support of evolution), what good would it do? Would you read it, understand it, and agree with it? Probably if you bothered to read it, you would come up with some way to lie about it, or repeat the lies you have been told about it. That's my experience when talking to creationists, so now I tell them if they want to see the evidence for evolution, they should look it up themselves instead of wasting my time..."

With all due respect it does not make a lot of sense in my opinion joining the debate on creation/evolution if that is going to be your position from the outset.

There is this perception that people are not changed by arguments or differing opinions. That view is totally incorrect since several persons have publicly acknowledged changing their minds and their views when faced with irrefutable information.Former Atheist Anthony Flew is just one most recent example.

I like something that Flew once said: "one should follow the evidence whereever it leads".

I read recently of one scientist, an atheist, who said that his debates with a Christian scientist who also happens to be his friend, had had a profound effect on his thinking in relation to the existence of God. And although his views has not changed, he was impressed with the evidence his friend had put forward. The Christian said too that he had found his atheist friend's reasoning to be quite compelling.

None of this amazed me, since I believe that people on both sides of the isssue can be and should be friends, and should discuss and listen to each other with out animosity. In fact, I believe this would do more for the debate than the rancour that seeks to pass itself off as reason.

This idea held by some that people are somehow irreversibly stuck in their opinions and cannot change is as false as people believing that they have the only "truth" and everybody else is an idiot. Facts are more stubborn that people, and when confronted by them honest men will often give heed.

So I would again respectfully request that BobC put aside the seeming arrogance and humbly share a little of that "massive amount of evidence in support of evolution" in his next posting.

You never know, Bob, what your disclosure will mean to some unenlightened soul.

If the theatre of creation is not a field of science, who knows of any other?
A careful reading and analysis of the account of creation (Genesis 1) is not at all hostile to the science of evolution. The two seem to complement each other. Look at the record. PRE-CREATION (verses 1-3) is simply characterized by a total chaos of formless and desolate earth,undelineated ocean and total darkness. Order steps in with creation by stages in the following order:
1. Light and darkness (named "day" and "night" verses 3-4);
2. Dome (named "sky" verses 6-8);
3. Water below the sky coming together in one place (named "sea"),
appearance of the land (named "earth")and
growth of grain and fruit-bearing plants
(verses 9-13);
4. Appearance of lights in the sky, i.e., the suns, the moon, the
stars
+ to separate day from night and
+ to show the time of day, years and seasons
(verses 14-19)
5. Appearance of water and air-borne life (verses 20-25); and
6. Making of 2 types of human beings in stages:
+ out of the soil of the ground (like all the other animals
before them) and
+ in God's own image (Spirit), i.e., reclassification or being
born again of the Spirit
(verses 26-31)
The stages of scientific evolution seem to be in line with the
account of creation! So, where is the problem?

Mr. Swenson - it's quite true that aboiogenesis is a very young field and no good, testable theory has come out of it. At the current point, it's certainly not possible to disprove the notion that the first life was placed on Earth by a God or aliens or whatever.

However, I'd suggest being wary of laying too much store by that. Many things have been confidently asserted to be impossible for science to explain that have later turned out be perfectly comprehensible. Any 'mechanical' theory of cellular reproduction was once categorically dismissed by the famous physician J.S. Haldane in the early part of the 20th century; indeed he insisted it had to be fundamentally spiritual in nature. But a scant few decades later, the structure of DNA was elucidated.

Of course, even if abiogenesis is shown to be impossible, that would not affect the solid evidence we have for evolution after the first life appeared. One of the most impressive is the fact that life fits into a nested hierarchy. Why are there no lizards with hair and nipples? Why no fish with feathers?

When we find such a pattern among books, we have no trouble deciding that this shows a history of descent with modification. "This typo was introduced at such-and-such a point, and appears in so-and-so family of copies, some of which have other typos introduced later, etc." This is not at all controversial when used to follow the branching history of copies of the Gospel, for example.

And then, a century after Darwin, a separate tree was discovered, that of DNA. It, too, showed a nested hierarchy of inheritance with modification... and it was, almost without exception, the same tree that had been deduced from physical traits.

Note that it didn't have to be that way. A fundamental molecule of biology, cytochrome C, has a few different forms. Mice have one form, wheat has another... and the pattern of inheritance of these forms matches up with the 'tree of life' as biologists have determined it. But it didn't have to be that way. Wheat engineered to use the mouse form of cytochrome C grows just fine. If we had found that in nature - no tree at all, or a tree of neutral mutations that directly contradicted the 'phylogenetic' tree - it would have been powerful evidence against evolution. (Imagine if a tree based on bookbinding technology (this glue was used here, this type of cover was used there) contradicted a tree deduced from typos in the text...)

But, instead, the 'tree' from DNA (utterly unimagined in Darwin's time) backs up the 'cladistic' tree developed from the hierarchy of traits in the natural world. Creationism cannot account for that, except to say that either it was a staggering coincidence or that the 'intelligent designer' wanted it to look like evolution for some unknown reason.

Mr. Swenson - it's true that science will almost certainly never know everything, and indeed it's effectively certain that many things currently widely believed by scientists will turn out to be false. But science ultimately isn't about truth - it's about testing ideas and rejecting the ones that turn out to be false.

If I may quote Isaac Asimov on this one, in his essay "The Relativity of Wrong" (well worth reading): "[W]hen people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was [perfectly] spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

The theory of a young Earth simply doesn't match up with the evidence that we find. Radioactive dating using isochrons (look them up, they're quite interesting) show clearly an Earth on the close order of 4.5 billion years old. (Note: carbon 14 is very, very, very far from the only radioactive dating method, though it seems to be the only one many creationists have investigated.) The fact that these dates match up with other lines of evidence (e.g. coral shows both daily and yearly growth patterns. Ancient coral shows that there were more days in the year when they grew (the Earth's rotation is slowing as the Moon moves further away) and radioactive dates agree with the calculations from orbital mechanics.)

Then there are other problems - like the number of annual layers of snow found in ice cores around the world, some of which go back over 100,000 years. Dendochronology (using tree rings to date forests) have discovered some forests that go back 10,000 years.

What I find the most depressing is the implication (and sometimes actually voiced accusation) that millions of biologists, geologists, and physicists around the world accept standard geology simply out of malice in their hearts. On the contrary, the evidence points that way. In an earlier post I indicated a "fruitful academic-industry partnership" using standard geology to find oil - standard geology actually works. As I said, I'm not familiar with any comparable results from the young-Earth side.

Wow. Kudos to the Rob Moll. But I can only shake my head at lot of the comments by Young Earth Creationists here.

Quote from Steve Skeete: So I would again respectfully request that BobC put aside the seeming arrogance and humbly share a little of that "massive amount of evidence in support of evolution" in his next posting.

Actually I tried to do that last night, but my comments were so massive they exceeded the 1500 characters limit allowed here and they didn't go thru. After that I don't want to waste any more time on it. The flat-earthers here who deny evolution is a fact will just have to look up the evidence on their own. Most likely they will do nothing because they are happy in their fantasy world of supernatural magic and the 6,000 year old universe.

Another quote from Steve Skeete: This idea held by some that people are somehow irreversibly stuck in their opinions and cannot change is as false as people believing that they have the only "truth" and everybody else is an idiot.

Most people and all scientists will change their minds when new discoveries disprove old ideas. The creationists could care less about new discoveries. When they study evidence, if they bother to do that, they are not interested in educating themselves. They are not interested in finding out how wrong they are. They are only interested in finding problems that prove they have always been right. When they don't find problems with new evidence, they invent problems. According to the creationists, the Bible was written by god, god is smarter than all 21st century scientists, so any new scientific discoveries are meaningless if they conflict with the word of god. This is why I'm convinced creationists are a total waste of time. I'm also convinced the world will be a better place when the world is rid of all creationists. This will take time, maybe centuries, because of the problem called "religious brainwashing of 5 year olds".

Consider: Of the hundreds of prophecies in the Bible, other than those relating to time beyond the present, every single one of them have been accurately fulfilled. That goes a bit beyond the standard .05 (or even .01) level of probability. The chance of such accuracy happening by chance has been compared (as I recall the example) to having a span of silver dollars spread over an area the size of Texas to a depth of one foot; and one of those coins has a red mark on its underside. The probability of someone walking blindfolded through that terrain and randomly picking up one coin and having it be the one with the red mark is equivalent to the probability of all these prophecies--made over a few thousand years by a variety of believers--being accurately fulfilled.

Unless one proposes (1) fraud, i.e., "prophecies" written after the fact, or (2) that there must have been a number of clairvoyants in the family tree of believers, this unlikely accuracy would seem to support the idea of an all-knowing "Revealer" of future events communicating to and through these prophets.

Then, to follow this latter option up, perhaps there is such a thing as "revealed" Truth; not only truths discovered through finite human senses. And because empirically discovered (or proposed) "facts" have often had to be revised or rejected throughout the history of science, it would seem that when revealed Truth conflicts with discovered truths, the former must be the trusted standard.

The evolutionary position, on the other hand, (the secular kind, not that fuzzy hybrid type suggesting that God used random chance processes as His means of creating) is based on the premise that events NEVER observed throughout history--something arising out of nothing, order randomly emerging out of chaos, evolution ("better living through chemistry"?) rather than devolution or entrophy as the process describing development--somehow are the rational explanation of all that is. Now that's Faith with a capital "F."

And, while the Revealer hasn't elected to inform us mere mortals how He did it, He does say that He simply spoke all things into existence. (I wouldn't claim to know what that implies--whether a dramatic moment or a process--but until proven otherwise, I'll go with childlike faith and believe that it was a miraculous, instantaneous series of events; though I won't be disappointed if He tells me someday when I'm in His presence that it was a process of some sort, or that His work was spread over more than 6 days.)

In short, creationism is a faith perspective on why things are, and how; faith in a Revealer. But, belief in evolution is also a faith perspective; faith in a "theory"; not "proven" Facts. I choose to have faith in the Revealer (rather than in the "wisdom" of us little human beings), given His faithful trustworthiness to all who have believed on Him throughout history, as well as in my own life--100% of the time; not 99.9%.

HOWEVER, I am not optimistic that non-believers in the Revealer can be convinced by data or "facts" alone that theier is a supernatural realm or that a Supernatural Being created this world--through any process. It is my understanding that in order to have "eyes to see" one must have a heart and mind that are receptive to the revealing of Truth by the Spirit of God, the Great Revealer.

Cary - if your (apparent) picture of entropy were correct, snowflakes could never form. Order can and does arise out of chaos; indeed, in some circumstances it must. If chaos could not give rise to order, it would not truly be chaos, would it?

Ray Ingles, excellent post on how the DNA "tree" backs up the cladistic tree. IMO, genetics is the 800 pound gorilla that the YEC's haven't yet begun to attempt to tackle. It will be a very tall order.

Cary said: But, belief in evolution is also a faith perspective; faith in a "theory"; not "proven" Facts.

What if he said this: But, belief in gravity is also a faith perspective; faith in a "theory"; not "proven" Facts.

Why is it only evolution the creationists have a problem with? Maybe there is no gravity. Instead maybe there's invisible angels holding people down so they don't drift off into space. Creationists have a problem with evolution because it takes away god's most important job, making animals and plants out of nothing.

Cary also said: The evolutionary position, on the other hand, (the secular kind, not that fuzzy hybrid type suggesting that God used random chance processes as His means of creating) is based on the premise that events NEVER observed throughout history--something arising out of nothing, order randomly emerging out of chaos...

"events NEVER observed" is a misconception. Scientists can see the history of life with their own eyes in the DNA of humans and other animals. From DNA analysis, scientists can determine evolutionary relationships and can determine in great detail how species evolved. People who don't understand this new genetic evidence should read "The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution" by the biologist Sean B. Carroll.

"order randomly emerging out of chaos" is a misconception. Natural selection is not random. Animals who have what it takes to become parents pass on their genes to the next generation. There is nothing random about it.

BobC, I never did apologize for my knee-jerk reaction in calling you a stupid moron, so let me do that now. You remained calm, dispassionate and gracious even in the face of my tirade, and for that you are to be commended.

Now, let me criticize your comment about brainwashing a 5 year old. When I knee-jerked earlier it was because I had detected a Dawkinsian Universalist tilt to your comments. That viewpoint does indeed permeate your postings, especially the comments on brainwashing, your belief that the world will be better off without creationists, etc. Taken to its philosophical and political conclusion, Dawkins's Universalist beliefs will result in severe losses of freedom in service of the Universalist notion of the greater good. Indeed, in Europe where this outlook is embedded in the EU, the MEP's have lately pontificated from on high that creationism is a threat to human rights!

Science in itself of course is not the problem; rather, it's the use of science to serve the ends of non-scientific viewpoints such as radical egalitarianism and hyper-nondiscrimination that are worrisome. You seem to be a person who looks

(Hit post button too quickly) --

You seem to be a person who looks at the evidence, so I would encourage you to do so on this issue as well.

Ray, I'm not saying there is no order. I am saying it doesn't rise out of chaos, or randomly, but points to a Designer. (i.e., I'll bet the farm you could shake a box of "stuff" for a millennium and never have the symmetry and beauty of a single snowflake emerge; or a box of raw materials and have a completed watch emerge--even one that tells poor time; or a million monkeys typing and War and Peace emerge--shucks, I'd settle for a meaningful paragraph.)

BobC: No, no, no. Don't change the example on me. Gravity can be examined, tested, and demonstrated to be a consistent,lawful process; evolution cannot. Evolutionists make observations, see corrolations, and then make leaps of interpretation to fill in the gaps. Let's be honest about this, no one has EVER observed a transitional form or interspecies evolution. The genetic similarities observed between monkies and humans do not prove cause and effect, or one being the precursor of the other. It is, at least, an equally plausible inference (if you don't rule out the possibility of a common Creator behind it all and force everyone who considers themselves to be a scientist to wear only the Procustean lenses of evolutionary theory) that a Creator chose to create variety in combination with similarities. Who says the DNA of each kind has to be totally different or it proves that they share a common ancestry.

You make a logical slip or leap when you say, " Scientists can see the history of life with their own eyes in the DNA of humans and other animals. From DNA analysis, scientists can determine evolutionary relationships and can determine in great detail how species evolved." No, they don't "see" the history of life, they (who wish to) hypothesize it; they don't "determine" evolutionary relationships, they hypothesize them; and they don't "determine" ("in great detail"), they hypothesize. Guesses, hypotheses, myths, stories, call them what you will, but don't call it scientific "proof," "evidence," "data," etc., etc. They (and we all) observe things (imperfectly and with bias--always, all of us) and then we create meaning out of what we see. But the meaning we create is based on some assumptive foundation, some faith system, that we choose to believe and base our lives on. If I'm wrong, I go to my grave a fool in this life and never knowing that I was. If those who don't believe in a Creator (whether they're evolutionists or not) are wrong and there is a Creator to be faced after this life, then . . .

Cary - how is "shaking a box of stuff for a millenium" like the process that forms snowflakes? More to the point, how does it resemble the proposed process of evolution?

What a shame that a respected magazine has apparently succumbed to the ways of the world and is no longer interested in contending for/defending the faith. I, at one time, viewed the earth as being old; I was also a theistic evolutionist. I used to get mad at those Christians who couldn't see what science had clearly shown. After receiving my Ph.D. in Biochemistry, I decided to take a hard look at the whole issues of old earth v. young earth and evolution v. creation. Much to my surprise the closer I looked the more convinced I became that, contrary to what we all have been taught, the scientific data is much better explained from a young- earth and creation perspective. Consequently, I've had to change my tune.

Sorry, I did not read all of the comments before posting my own.

As both a micropaleontologist and a conservative/evangelical, I would like to point out that God NEVER lies and Satan can never create, only decieve. God created (in whatever manner) this universe. Therefore, the story presented to us in the rocks (and stars) has to be considered part of God's TRUTH, equal to God's Word as revealed in the scriptures. God will never decieve us, we must trust ALL God's revelations.
Many Christian paleontologist believe both: the data/facts presented to us in the rocks, and the scriptures (properly interpreted).

DiverCity, If this world could be without creationists there would be a huge improvement in human progress. There would be improved science education, more scientists, and better scientists. Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting hunting down and shooting creationists. I work with these people and some of them are my friends. The solution is more education. The reason I was complaining about the religious brainwashing of young gullible children is the preacher gets to these kids long before their first science class. When they are in their first biology class, they have already been trained to distrust their science teacher. This is why I think creationism will not be eradicated for several centuries.

Cary, I strongly recommend you read this book, or at least read the very educational customer reviews on amazon.com - "The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution" by the biologist Sean B. Carroll.

Here's the customer reviews on amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0393061639/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt/103-2230059-1796624?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

Why do creationists think that forensic debating tricks and semantic slights of hand will disprove evolution? Science isn't an adversarial court system. Scientists aren't trial lawyers, though both have codes of conduct about a certain sort of integrity.

As near as I can tell, science is a conversation about the predictability and reliability of scientific theory. You play by the rules, or you're not a legitimate part of the conversation. Richard Feynman is probably a good place for the interested layman to learn the rules.

As near as I can figure out, if want to displace evolution, you don't disprove it, you have to come up with extraordinary evidence for a theory that explains diversity and change, inferred and observed, in a way that is more exciting in coming up with new questions to be used in refining the body of theory. Evolution research dwindles into a page in science history, and the new theory inspires new questions for much fruitful research..which inspires more questions to research.

Evolution, as a body of theory, not A theory, did that, and still does that. Just go to any science research library and nose around. You'll have to move in if you want to read everything, as you'll be piled with more stuff, every day it's open...not to mention interlibrary loan for material that the library doesn't have, and the licensed internet sites.

Remember, "young" Earth Creationisn had already been pushed to a scientific backwater, mostly by geologists, a good while before Darwin and Wallace presented their "Theory of Natural Selection." If memory serves, Darwin said that they hadn't "proved" evolution, they didn't need to, that had already been done. What he and Wallace had set out to do was explain the main engines of biological diversity, which they did brilliantly.

An analogy might be aspirin. Nobody had much of an idea, until pretty recently, how aspirin worked, just that it did. Evolution was the same, until the theory of natural selection.

I'm an intelligent designer. I manipulate energy and matter. Why would I expect God to be like I am?

In any case, teleology has it's roots in pagan Greece, and I think it works far better in a polytheistic frame than a monotheistic view. You think about it.

I have a genetic time bomb in me that science stopped from exploding and killing me in a most horrible way. I"d have been dead ten years without Nobel prize winning research. Evolution explains it well, but ID only makes me wonder where I can go to sue my Intelligent Designer for sloppy work, pain, suffering and punitive damages.

After all, if one of my designs had so pernicious an effect, that's what would happen to me.

God proclaimed the universe in some incomprehensible way. God is probably not the God of gaps but the unknowable, period. (On the other hand, how would I know that?) If one is all knowing, all powerful and omnipresent, everything possible is inevitable, right? How can we comprehend that? However, since I'm not any of the above, I get to enjoy a few nice surprises and be challenged by the unexpected.

Evolution makes everything possible to become as it is, I guess. It's also fun. Young Earth creationism looks to be just a wish, by people afraid of the dark, instead of challenged by it.

Evolution may explain the evolution of altruism in humans and my genetic disease, but, it doesn't tell me how to love my enemies.

I'm not a doctor, but I am a graphics designer...an intelligent designer so to speak. I don't see evidence of theistic design. I see patterns, interacting with patterns.