Creationists do not make sense

[Tiberius]

Quite true you did not say that. Please tell me how non-life becomes life in such a manner that it is not sudden. It seems to me that no matter how you look at it, at one point the material is non-life and the next it is life. But you can tell me what your view is.

I gave you two already: panspermia and abiogenesis. If you mean "sudden" as in one moment there wasn't life, then there was, then of course, technically that would be the case. What I took your words to mean was that I believed that one day, for no apparent reason, there was suddenly life. I highly doubt this is the case. I believe there are perfectly rational and natural reasons for life forming, slowly, over time.

Then there really is no need to regret informing me of something I already admit.

You don't admit it. You limit it because it defies your creationism story. You admit to small change, but as soon as those changes add up, you deny large change ever occurs.

Adrian, I do not even have a problem with speciation. One can certainly get new species by breeding/reproduction. Big deal. That is consistent with the variability provided in the first created kinds. However, even with the speciation we observe, a bacteria is still considered a bacteria and a dog is a dog. The kind of changes you need for molecules to man evolution is much more than that. Macroevolution requires the types of changes where, for example, a bacteria changes into something other than a bacteria or a dog into something other than a dog. Do we observe such things? Seems to me that the molecules to man evolution that you accept requires something we don't observe. Do you take this on faith?

Simply not the case I'm afraid. Remember the "transitional forms" I talked about earlier? They all represent a transition between what you creationists love to label "kinds". Tiktaalik is a transition between fish and reptile, Archaeopteryx is a transition between reptile and birds.

Those examples are really rather wonderful visualizations of evolution in action. It isn't often the case that you can see the transformation so clearly, due to the nature of evolution. For example, going back to my number example, let's say 1.0 is a organism.

It reproduces and gives birth to 1.01, which is a mutated form of 1.0. 1.01 isn't very different at all to 1.0 (it's still a "1.0" kind), but it *is* different. 1.01 gives birth to 1.02, which again isn't much different to 1.01, but it *is* different. The differences between 1.02 and 1.0 aren't very different either, but there are more than 1.01 and 1.0.

Continue this down the line and you get to organism 1.50, which isn't very different to it's recent ancestors (1.49, 1.48, 1.30, etc), but it strikingly different to 1.0 due to the sheer number of mutations that have taken place in between. However, 1.0 is long since extinct and only by looking at the fossils of 1.0 could we make a comparison.

By the time we get to 2.0, the organism is a completely different kind to it's early ancestor 1.0, and yet throughout the entire line of mutations, never did an organism produce something that wasn't *like* itself in some way. It's just that every time such organisms reproduced, they got further and further away from their ancestors.

Nobody (only creationists misinterpreting evolution) says that 1.0 gives birth to 2.0, or even 1.1 or 1.5. What evolution says is that small changes over time build up so larger changes, eventually reaching speciation, and even the change of a family group.

Someone here said in one of the other threads that it is not fair to require such observations because macroevolution takes so much time. I do not think it is unfair. There are large numbers of different living things. Surely the evolution of one is not tied to another such that every million years or so everything changes into something else. So in all these years of observation, I think it is reasonable to expect that one would have observed some form of macroevolution occurring.

The evidence and observation is there in the fossil record. As I've said before, macroevolution isn't a organism suddenly producing a different kind of organism, hence why you don't see it in day to day life, or even over the span of several years. What you do find though, is that looking back over the fossil record (many millions of years), this observation is true.

Of course, another reason why we haven't seen this kind of thing is that our own species has only been around for 200,000 years tops, and we haven't been communicating as civilizations or even as record keepers for that long at all. Indeed, the theory of evolution was only proposed 150 years ago. However, we have seen some forms of macroevolution, usually on a small scale, like Lenski's e-coli experiment. I suggest you look it up.

I know I have seen pictures in textbooks that show this and people say it. How sure are you that it is always true? Are you relying on the books or have you seen the evidence yourself? Anyway, if the bulk of the fossil record is due to a global catastrophe, the simpler creatures would have had less ability to avoid being buried in sediment and would have been buried first and the complex ones would have more ability to avoid being buried in sediment and would have been buried later. It may also have to do with where the various creatures lived at the time, i.e., land vs. sea. So the fact that we see this generally is not inconsistent with my world view.

You only need to visit a coastline to see the layers yourself. The grand canyon in America is also a great place to see it for yourself. However, it takes a great misunderstanding of the fossil record and the geologic column to say that it is the result of a flood. The geologic columns has many many layers, all formed one after the other. The layer builds up over time, solidifies, and then the next layer builds up and solidifies. Not only this, but different types of layers can be seen, indicated the environment at the time, and how the layer was formed. A flood doesn't leave multiple layers, it leaves one. It mixes everything up and leaves it in one layer. The only way one could argue that the geologic column was the result of a flood was if multiple floods happened over multiple times in history. However the different types of layer formed does not reflect this at all.

As for your complexity argument, it fails on two levels. Firstly that "simple" vs "complex" only holds for survival in an environment. Floods are anomalies to that environment, and thus it could be that relatively simple animals are faster at escaping from floods than "complex" animals. For instance, larger dinosaurs couldn't run very fast at all, and would be in all likelihood killed in a rapid flood. Smaller animals with the ability to climb trees and scurry off or cling to branches would be more likely to surive.

Secondly, assuming your argument is true, why are all the birds not in the very top layer? Why are there layers with large and small animals in them that are above bird fossils?

That whole statement is based on an evolutionary/naturalistic view. It is like you are saying: "This is how it is and it is inconsistent with Biblical creation so please explain." My explanation is that I think you are wrong in your interpretation to begin with. So your interpretation does not affect mine. Your interpretation is certainly inconsistent with mine but your interpretation is not something that makes my interpretation internally inconsistent.

My interpretation has all the evidence. There is no evidence that holds creationism over evolution; if there was, it would be creationism that was the scientific accepted norm. Science works by eliminating theories that don't hold to the evidence, and creationism was thrown out years ago.

All? I don't think so. Maybe all the ones accepted by evolutionary scientists. There are dating methods by scientists who accept creation where the dates are much less than this. But I would guess that you would dismiss such methods because those scientists are bias. In any event, all dating techniques require one to make unprovable assumptions, such as the original levels of parent and daughter isotopes. If you want to believe that the unprovable assumptions provide an accurate picture of the real time frames involved, go for it. I do not. If you want to believe and put all you trust in men, who weren't there, and their abilities and guesses and reject the revelation of the One who was, that is up to you. So while the time frames you are talking about would be inconsistent with my world view, since they are based on unprovable assumptions, I do not accept them.

Name a method that gives results of 6,000 years then. There will be papers out there debunking the claims, revealing the unreliable and dishonest tactics used to make the result. Kent Hovind has tried this multiple times, and each time he's been caught. Numerous creationists have either lied, misinterpreted, or ignored results to bolster their beliefs. It's the only thing they can do when all he evidence is against them and they don't want to admit they were wrong.

There is nothing unprovable concerning radiometric dating. It's a highly developed science, constantly under scrutiny, but confirmed through samples of known age, and also through other dating methods. The people who developed it have systems in place for detecting error brought forth by all the "problems" you outlined. If they didn't do this, it wouldn't be an example of science.

I'd also like to finally point out the hypocrisy of your position, that of claiming I believe in unprovable dating methods, when you believe in an unprovable "One who was". Prove to me that God was there, that the Bible outlines exactly how he did it, and when, and then you'll stop being a hypocrite. Your view is based on far more unprovable assumptions than mine.