I am a Christian with some Questions.

[curiosityandthecat]

Hmmm...  

I knows you wants to! A nice, juicy, 4 hours of writing post... I KNOWS you wants to! [evil voice whispering in the background] Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it![/voice]

Maybe I'll post some of my lit review whenever I get around to it. I could definitely post a bibliography, though.

[rlrose328]

Must... not... post... own... graduate... research...

Must... not... show... religious... belief... makes... people... bad...

Strength... give me strength!

 :|  

[Squid]

Understandably, you can't expect a person admitting to being a Christian to be taken seriously on an atheist website.  I didn't write anything in here in the hopes of converting or be converted or just to randomly argue.  Instead of interpreting or being opinionated, I'll just type out some of the facts from my research with a couple questions to think about. Feel free to judge me as you wish - but I would challenge you to try and actually focus on the information rather than attacking the person presenting it.  I've done this research not to prove/disprove evolution, but because I was tired of being spoonfed information without taking the time to find out for myself.  Whether you believe it is by chance, or granted by God, open-mindedness and the ability to think freely are a privilege.  Here is an opportunity to practice bot<snip>

If only I had more time to address these items you've posted...but alas I have to go out of town tomorrow and my advisor is pushing for my thesis revisions.  Even though it will be much later I may pop back in with these items you've listed as many are most likely the product of misunderstanding or someone feeding you bad information.  Just a quick example - CroMagnons are classified as Homo sapien sapiens - the same subspecies as us.  Also, evolution is referring to the biological theory of evolution which has a specific explanatory framework which doesn't include how life arose, the formation of the universe et cetera.  And one last one before I go, evolution doesn't violate the second law of thermodynamics as the Earth is not a closed system.  If only I had more free time...but sorry, thesis is a bit more important.

[Kyuuketsuki]

To my fellow science adherents in this forum ... I'm sorry but, even though he is largely hurling out the usual set of creationist assertions, some of this guy's points need to be dealt with at length, unfortunately that means this post will be very, very long.

Hunter,

In answering your post I have made extensive use of my own archived resources and of various internet ones ... I do not regard any of these as authoritative but some of them may reference sources generally regarded as authoritative.

Understandably, you can't expect a person admitting to being a Christian to be taken seriously on an atheist website.  I didn't write anything in here in the hopes of converting or be converted or just to randomly argue.  Instead of interpreting or being opinionated, I'll just type out some of the facts from my research with a couple questions to think about. Feel free to judge me as you wish - but I would challenge you to try and actually focus on the information rather than attacking the person presenting it.

You make the "challenge" for us to focus on the information [that you post] rather than attacking the person presenting it ... that's fine but it does lead me to the observation that your post DOES NOT appear to address any of the criticisms that have been put to you therefore you CANNOT reasonably expect others to treat you and your posts in the civil fashion you suggest ... that most here continue to do so is a tribute to their tolerance and intelligent outlook but I am forced to wonder if you know what a hypocrite is?

That you are Christian is generally neither here nor there ... everyone is entitled to believe as they wish regardless of whether that is supported by evidence or not and I am absolutely sure everyone here respects your right to do so. Respect for the belief itself is, of course, and entirely different matter.

I've done this research not to prove/disprove evolution, but because I was tired of being spoonfed information without taking the time to find out for myself.  Whether you believe it is by chance, or granted by God, open-mindedness and the ability to think freely are a privilege

I wont dispute most of your stuff about Sagan's view of science; glancing across it, it seems reasonable but I would like to point out that experiments are not key to science, observations are and experiments are simply an important means of generating observable data.

I would also take issue with your definition of a hypothesis as an educated guess ... as is usual in the English language the word "hypothesis" can have several levels of meaning but in science I would take it to mean a not fully supported explanation.  In other words a hypothesis is an explanation that is more tentative than a scientific theory might be ... as with a scientific theory it must still be both supported and falsifiable and an educated guess is significantly less complete an explanation than a hypothesis.

Scientific Theory: A scientific theory summarizes a hypothesis or group of hypotheses that have been supported with repeated testing. A theory is valid as long as there is no evidence to dispute it. Therefore, theories can be disproven. Basically, if evidence accumulates to support a hypothesis, then the hypothesis can become accepted as a good explanation of a phenomenon. One definition of a theory is to say it's an accepted hypothesis.

A scientific theory is not a guess or an approximation but an extensive explanation developed from well-documented and reproducible sets of data derived from repeated observations of natural processes. From such data models are developed and it is important to note that these models (and their subsequent outcomes) are not decided in advance but can be modified and improved as new empirical evidence is uncovered.

Scientific Law: A law generalizes a body of observations. At the time it is made, no exceptions have been found to a law. Scientific laws explain things, but they do not describe them. One way to tell a law and a theory apart is to ask if the description gives you a means to explain 'why'.

Scientific laws are generalised descriptions of an ideal or isolated systems behaviour and will seldom, if ever, occur exactly as predicted in the real world because the only truly naturally occurring, isolated system is the universe itself.

Evolutionary Theory: comprised of 6 parts explaining the origin of life on Earth:
     - Cosmic Evolution - explanation of the origination of matter and energy
     - Stellar Evolution - explanation of the vast amounts of heavenly bodies in our own galaxy, as well as the thousands of other galaxies
     - Chemical Evolution - explanation of the periodic table of elements from the lightest to heaviest elements
     - Abiogenesis - explanation of life originating from non-life (aka spontaneous generation)
     - Macroevolution - explanation of classes of animals changing from one class to another (i.e. reptile to mammal)
     - Microevolution - explaination of the speciation of animals
--The theory requires each section in succession - the presence of one does not prove any others.  For example, there can be no macroevolution without abiogenesis. Microevolution does not prove macroevolution.
-- Each section may be a separate scientific branch, but each is required to fully encompass the theory. You cannot have any form of evolution without a beginning and middle.

Nope ... cosmic, evolution, stellar evolution & chemical evolution are nothing to do with the theory of evolution and are really just terms that take a poetic view of the development of some of these subjects in other words "evolution" is simply taken to mean change over time which is not the same thing as biological evolution except in the most general sense.

Abiogenesis has nothing at all to do with the theory of evolution because the theory of evolution is a biogenetic discipline (another reason why the others you mentioned have nothing top do with it) IOW life from pre-extant life. Of course this means you can be religious AND be an evolutionist as long as you accept that your god (perhaps creating first life) has nothing to do with evolution once it is in progress ... such a position is typically referred to as that of theistic evolution.

Finally, and as far as I can tell you have even your own definitions wrong, micro (adaptation) and macro-evolution (speciation) are creationist derived terms and have no relevance at all to the theory of evolution because the theory of evolution only recognises adaptation in the sense that that is all it requires, speciation comes about over time i.e. sufficient adaptation over immense periods of time leads to the advent of new species.

---(Which parts of the evolutionary theory have been observed? Can any of those observations be tested? If science is based on experimentation, can any parts have any experiments performed? Are these parts inherently true/false based on the lack of testability?  Can this even be considered a hypothesis, much less a theory without observation - the first step in the Scientific Method?)

Is Evolution Science?
By
Kyuuketsuki

Introduction
Young earth creationists, as always attempting to disprove theories that dispute their belief that the Earth & universe were divinely created, often claim that both evolution and creationism are religions. In doing so they seem more than a little confused as to how they would prefer their own personal worldview to be regarded ... one moment they claim it is science in order to rank it on a level equal to that of evolution and the next they are denying it is a science as a science or as a religion! Evolutionists, on the other hand, consistently regard creationism as religion and evolution as science.

Discussion
The Scientific Method
Science is a methodology and any interpretations based with the scientific knowledge base should be necessarily derived from properly derived data.

“Science” which begins with an unshakeable assumption, is not true science. True science is about having no assumptions until they have been accepted through the application of evidence and have demonstrated resilience to genuine falsifiability observations. This does not apply to creation but wholly applies to evolution.

A scientific theory is not a guess or an approximation but an extensive explanation developed from well-documented and reproducible sets of data derived from repeated observations of natural processes. From such data models are developed and it is important to note that these models (and their subsequent outcomes) are not decided in advance but can be modified and improved as new empirical evidence is uncovered. Science is constantly subject to peer-review and is a self-correcting attempt to understand nature and the observable universe. Science is not teleological that is to say theories do not start with a conclusion, refuse to change and acknowledge only data that the initial conclusion supports. Further, science does not base theories on untestable collections of dogmatic proposals but is characterised by questions, hypothetical proposals, design of empirical models and conceptual frameworks with the aim of researching natural events.

Whilst it may not always be possible to demonstrate how something happened in much of science it is often possible to demonstrate how something could have happened. Having demonstrated how something could happen that hypothesis can be used to predict other events and thus confirm or deny their own validity.

The scientific method relies upon two phases, those of observation and hypothesis or theory. Hypotheses and theories are slightly different but in principle a hypothesis must be verifiable or repeatable, falsifiable and it must only use as accepted “facts” theories that have yet to be found flawed. Theoretically, all hypotheses are under constant “attack” and may be removed from understood science and, in essence, this requires that observation data be made which does not fit the hypothesis forcing modification or removal.

One of the principal tools used in science are those involving radiometric techniques. Wherever possible several different methods are used and they almost always agree to within very small variations and evidence derived from them is considered to be very safe.

Despite creationist claims to the contrary, radio-isotopic dating methods are accurate to within acceptable limits. The most common claim (aside from references to observations where a given dating method was demonstrated as fallible) is that a given method's assumptions may have been violated. Typically these revolve around the constancy of decay rates and claims that contamination may have occurred. If carbon dating were so inaccurate (as creationists claim) why would it agree so closely with all the other forms of dating available? C14 dating is accurate in the 1000 to 50000 year band with great reliability, outside that it is less useful.

So, how do we go about deciding a given theory or hypothesis is part of science?
“Science is characterised by the willingness of an investigator to follow evidence wherever it leads. It rests on testable observations and natural processes continuously moving ahead with new evidence and new viewpoints. It is, of necessity, self-correcting. On the other hand, the ‘proofs’ of the creationists consist not of testable observations, or analysis of the basic processes of creation, but of attacks on scientists and their methods.” (Newell, 1982)
The distinguishing factor of science is its appeal to and reliance upon the natural observable universe, natural law if you like. Natural law is blind, blind and regular and every other part of science follows on from that notion: explanation, prediction, testing, confirmation, falsifiability and tentativeness. (Ruse, 1984)
Another view of the essential characteristics of science was derived from the US legal trial, McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, 1996 and it is worth noting that both sides (creationist and science) agreed the definitions.

* It is guided by natural law;
* It has to be explanatory by reference to nature law;
* It is testable against the empirical world;
* Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the final word; and
* It is falsifiable.

From these we can see that there are recurring themes to pursue; some essential characteristics of science that we could look for in either creationism or evolution; some criteria we could use to determine if they are "equally valid scientific theories" as the creationists claim. This article, however, is not a critique of creationism but a defence of evolution.

In order to continue it is necessary to discuss each of these characteristics ... unfortunately it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss these in depth so we will be brief.

Natural Law
Natural law is central to science. Natural laws are broad generalisations, essentially descriptions, of the way nature has been repeatedly observed to operate. If a phenomenon depends on supernatural intervention, then it is not relying on natural laws, and it is not explanatory by reference to natural law. (Overton, 1982)

The theory of evolution requires the existence and regularity of at least some laws of nature, such as the laws of chemical combination. And, to explain how the necessary atoms were available to form the biological molecules necessary for the evolution of life requires reliance on other laws of nature from the physical sciences. (Chaisson, 1981). The theory of evolution attempts to explain how successive forms of life evolved by specifying the natural laws, such as principles of biochemistry, genetics, and cellular biology, that were and are involved in this process. Therefore, evolution does appeal to and rely on natural law. There is no need for supernatural forces and miracles to explain the development of life from primitive forms to more advanced forms using the theory of evolution.

Falsifiability
Another essential characteristic of science is the requirement that a scientific theory be falsifiable, that it be testable and like most scientific theories evolution has some trouble with this criterion. Obviously there is no way that we can look back upon the very first instance of life or upon the way in which amoeboid creatures evolved into multi-cellular creatures or how the first fish developed limbs to move about the ocean floor and later used those limbs for their first tentative steps onto dry land. We cannot turn history back so we can view it directly but in that evolution is no different from many other forms of science ... in fact no one can literally look directly back to any time prior to their own lifetimes so what are we to do? Would creationists have us assume that everything before our own time is untrue?

Obviously we must step outside our own personal, limiting confines but we must do so with caution and, yet again, we must be careful not to take our criteria too literally or too narrowly or we will end up counting out just about all of our science (Ruse, 1982). Ruse goes further to suggest that a theory must be judged as a whole and should not be dismissed out of hand merely because some aspects are not testable.

“One must look at the total picture and see if the theory is protected, in fact or in principle, from any empirical phenomenon that might impinge and refute it. If this is so, then obviously the theory must go - it is not real science.” (Ruse, 1982)

So, as with all sciences with historical aspect, we look for indirect and comparative evidence ... evidence that gives us answers to the questions we are asking and comparative evidence that will prove possibilities and potential mechanisms rather than the actual fact. Moreover, once found and theories established we go on to make predictions and in the majority of these cases such predictions have proven to be correct or, if not, have done so for entirely explainable reasons.

The evidence supporting man’s common ancestry with apes is overwhelming, not only are there thousands upon thousands of fossil remains (including many transitionals) but there is genetic evidence in the similarity of human, chimpanzee and other animals DNA.

“Neither the central mechanism nor the Darwinian theory taken as a whole stand outside of the bounds of genuine empirical science. To go on arguing otherwise is to put ideology and ignorance above reason and experience.” (Ruse, 1982)

If the mechanisms employed by creationists (naive falsification) to tear down evolution were valid in the manner in which they are being employed then it would be possible to tear down the whole of science by the application of the very same methods. The naive falsificationist criterion is "hopelessly flawed" and is a very poor test of genuine science (Kitcher, 1982).

Verifiability
Once a hypothesis has been tested through observation and/or prediction it must be possible for other workers to confirm that observational data. That verification may employ the same techniques or different ones but it must be possible.

Observable consequences of the theory of evolution, on the other hand, have been verified (Morden, 1996). The transitional fossil Archaeopteryx is an example of such verification in as much as it, as a find, has been independently verified as authentic by a number of investigators from different fields and that other specimens of the same animal have been found elsewhere. Similarly fossils of common human ancestors have been found on many occasions by investigators the world over. Biochemical evidence verifies this and it is possible to trace an entire, confirmatory, evolution within proteins themselves.

Tentativeness
Scientists often say there are no facts, that is to say that nothing is "set in stone" in science, although being human, scientists are often reluctant to give up long-standing theories. From this (and verification) it can be seen that science is self-correcting. If a given hypothesis or theory does not fit the available evidence it is modified or it is discarded to be replaced with one that better fits the observations ... it really is that simple.

Evolution, like any other long-standing, useful, productive, scientific theory, would be hard to discard and creationists often attempt to cite this as a means of portraying evolution as inflexible and dogmatic. However, though the overall theory is set and generally accepted, the underlying mechanisms are not and there remain many debates over whether, for instance, evolution proceeds by punctuated methods or by gradual and this demonstrates the self-correcting nature of science. Creationists also cite examples such maggots from meat, Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man etc. when, if the observer were truly objective, these stand as examples of science self-correcting as it really should and constantly does.

Conclusion
There is no difference between science and evolution in terms of the methodology used ... science and evolution are inextricably linked!

Creationists often try to claim that there are two scientific variants, science and naturalism when, in fact, science is the study of the natural universe turning to that same universe for the explanation. Science and naturalism are one and the same.

To get to the key point, the claim that any science that opposes the inspired word of a god (any god) is irrelevant to science. Science has no interest in myths and fairy tales.

This worldview leaves creationists with a problem and is likely the root cause of their constant struggle to tear down any aspect of science that does not agree with their beliefs and most of all that affront to all literal creation beliefs, evolution. Creationists, and many ordinary people, are concerned that if there is no need for a god to explain their existence and the existence of the universe in all its magnificence around us then people will no longer have to believe in their god. They fear that this might lead to a loss of control or decay in moral standards whilst conveniently forgetting that religion has been at the root of moral abuse and corrupt behaviour since time immemorial. In fact the Institute of Creation Research, a leading creationist organisation, has stated:

“If man is an evolved animal, then the morals of the barnyard and jungle are more natural...than the artificially imposed restrictions of premarital chastity and marital fidelity. Instead of monogamy, why not promiscuity and polygamy? Self-preservation is the first law of nature; only the fittest will survive. Be the cock-of-the-walk and the king-of-the-mountain. Eat, drink, and be merry, for life is short and that's the end. So says evolution.” (Nelkin, 1977)

So, in reality, creationists oppose evolution and other accepted theories of science, and indeed attempt to claim they are not science, merely because they do not suit their personal worldviews.

The fact that is that creationist’s abuses of evolutionist’s attempts to refine the theory of evolution (for instance when Gould et al proposed the concept of punctuated equilibrium) hampers the self-correcting nature of science. The result is that some evolutionists try to limit evolutions own attempt to correct itself for fear of giving these twisted and ignorant individuals more ammunition to throw back at them leading to a tendency to reject new theories regardless of whether they have potential or no.

Creationists also point at the holes in evolutionary theory as if they are some gaping flaw in the concept whilst evolutionists, always treating the theory in the way any scientist would, realise that not knowing all the details only means there is yet more to be explored, more detail to be worked out. Typically evolutionists, unlike creationists, demonstrate a tentative attitude so critical to self-correction ... evolutionists are willing to modify the theory to suit the facts!

When comparing the essential characteristics of science with the manner in which both scientific and evolutionary research is carried out it is difficult to see exactly where it is creationists claim that evolutionists are going wrong. In all respects evolutionary research conforms to the essential characteristics of science, those of reliance on natural law, falsifiability, verifiability, and tentativeness and that unless the critic of such research is truly blind, ignorant and/or bigoted there is no case to answer.

Evolution is a true representative of science.

References
* “Information For All Biologists” Dr. Morden
* “True Science (a posting)”, Fallen Angel [FIST] (1999)
* “Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism”, Kitcher (1982)

1st Law of Thermodynamics - Matter cannot be created or destroyed (Does this law apply to the Big Bang? Do we determine when and where laws apply or are they inherently law? Did the laws evolve?)

Actually the first law of thermodynamics states, "The increase in the internal energy of a system is equal to the amount of energy added by heating the system, minus the amount lost as a result of the work done by the system on its surroundings."

In essence you seems to be suggesting the old anti-big bang argument that, "something can not come out of nothing", yes? This argument is only superficially convincing because, from quantum mechanics (not that I'm any expert) it is understood that "vacuum fluctuations" can occur. To recycle an earlier answer of mine (elsewhere):

It is known that quantum vacuum fluctuations allow for the appearance of energy & matter from nothing without violating the First Law of Thermodynamics. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle allows for the spontaneous appearance of particles of matter from vacuum for a period of time inversely related to their masses and without violating the laws of Conservation of Energy. A predicted effect of this (the Casimir-Polder force) has been detected (Crabb, 1994) and a further predicted effect (that of the effect of vacuum fluctuations upon the energy levels of atoms ... the Lamb shift) has been detected and measured to five significant figures in hydrogen (Barrow, 1983). The existence of these “Vacuum Fluctuations” has led to speculation that the universe itself may have originated in such a fluctuation followed by a rapid inflationary period. It has been further proposed that the positive and negative energy in the universe balance each other so that the universe's net energy is zero (Ecker, 1990, 203). As such the appearance of the universe out of nothing via a quantum vacuum fluctuation does not violate the laws of Conservation of Energy.

Ultimately however the origins of the universe including the very earliest stages of the massive expansion phase known as "the big bang" are highly speculative and no one in the scientific community is, as far as I am aware, arguing otherwise.

2nd Law of Thermodynamics - Entropy - In other words, all things continue toward disorder [Can a fully balanced and organized universe from an explosion (i.e. Big Bang) fall under this law? Can a planet's axis/rotation/revolution continue in balance over billions of years, overcoming entropy? Does entropy apply to the universe outside of Earth or only here? Can an enormously complex cell continue to become even more complex given that, over time, it must continue towards disorder? ]

Oh yes, another creationist standard (and stupid) assertion:

The Second Law of Thermodynamics is a fundamental law of physics that states that there is a general tendency of all observed systems to go from order to disorder (or more accurately, move towards a higher state of entropy) and the claim is often made by creationists that the big bang (if it occurred) would violate this law.

Creationists often abuse the Second Law of Thermodynamics (apparently) not realising that it explicitly states, "...in a closed system..." By definition, a closed system cannot contain anything external to itself and planets, stars & stellar systems are not closed as they feature elements external to themselves. In raising this question creationists assume that a change characterised by a decrease in entropy cannot occur under any circumstances. However, thermodynamic experiments have been carried out in laboratories in near-perfect closed systems and spontaneous entropy decreases can, and do, occur all the time in nature, providing sufficient energy is available (Steiger, 1997). The ONLY example of a perfect closed system is the universe itself.

A simpler analogy to the aeroplane/junkyard scenario would be the stacking of a number of blocks neatly atop each other which, common sense dictates, requires intelligent design however stacking per se does not violate the laws of thermodynamics. Since same relations hold any activity involving thermodynamic energy change the blocks will not stack themselves but, as far as thermodynamics is concerned, all that is required is the energy to pick them up and place them one on top of the other. Thermodynamics merely dictates the energy changes required getting from state A to state B but, if the energy relationships permit, that change may occur whereas, if they don't permit it, the change can not occur.

On the other hand, thermodynamics does not rule out the possibility of intelligent design; it (whether design is intelligent or not) is just not a factor that is considered with respect to the calculation of thermodynamic probability. Considering the earth as a system, any change that is accompanied by an entropy decrease is possible as long as sufficient energy is available. The ultimate source of most of that energy, is of course, the sun.

The numerical calculation of entropy changes accompanying physical and chemical changes are well understood and are the basis of the mathematical determination of free energy and many of the parameters involved in much of our technology. Creationists would necessarily discard the entire mathematical framework of thermodynamics and provide no basis for the engineering design of turbines, refrigeration units, industrial pumps, etc. They would do away with the well-developed mathematical relationships of physical chemistry, including the effect of temperature and pressure on equilibrium constants and phase changes.

Geologic Column - Published in the book "Principles of Geology" in 1830-1833 and authored by Charles Lyell. Strongly influenced Charles Darwin's theologic beliefs. Introduced uniformitarianism as opposed to catastrophism (i.e. global flood). Charles Lyell was widely known for not only his disbelief, but intense hatred for the Bible and "Mosaic teaching" (Lyell's term).  Dates for the different eras were exact to the year (i.e. 2,467,399,284 mya) Radioactivity was discovered in 1896.  The mass spectrometer was developed in the 1930's and radiometric dating techniques developed in the 1940's -- approx. 100 years later.  (Could Darwin or Lyell date rocks/fossils without radiometric dating?)(If so, where did they come up with the dates?) The geologic column is not found in its entire order on the planet as presented by Lyell and taught in schools.

Er ... you are aware that the geologic column is an abstract concept inasmuch as there is absolutely no requirement for it to exist "in its entirety" in one single place on the Earth. Please tell me that you're not advancing quite so stupid a claim that it has to be?

Fossilization: replace organic material with mineral substances in the remains of an organism. Although originally believed to take thousands of years, fossilization can occur in as little as one year.

Please see my earlier reply on this subject which you have yet to deal with.

Organic matter (or organic material) is matter that has come from a once-living organism; is capable of decay, or the product of decay; or is composed of organic compounds however the precise definition varies with context

Organic material: noting or pertaining to a class of chemical compounds that formerly comprised only those existing in or derived from plants or animals, but that now includes all other compounds of carbon.

Fossils do not contain any carbon. Carbon-14 dating cannot be used to date any fossils.

C14 dating has an effective range of approximately 1 to 50 thousand years so if the fossil is fairly recent then yes it can be dated by carbon dating but much outside that range other techniques (including other forms of radio-dating) are used.

Index Fossils - any animal or plant preserved in the rock record of the Earth that is characteristic of a particular span of geologic time or environment. A useful index fossil must be distinctive or easily recognizable, abundant, and have a wide geographic distribution and a short range through time. Index fossils are the basis for defining boundaries in the geologic time scale and for the correlation of strata.

Yes, index fossils (guide or zone fossils) are fossils used to define/identify geologic periods on the basis that, despite other variations, a given layer may include the remains of the same fossil species. If a species used was relatively short-lived (perhaps a few hundred thousand years) then we can be confident that the sediments being analysed were deposited within a relatively narrow time band and the shorter the lifespan of the species, the more precise this period can be established to be IOW rapidly evolving types of fossils are particularly valuable. The best index fossils are common, easily identifiable and of a broad distribution.

Rock Layers - Rock layers are also called strata, and stratigraphy is the science of strata. Stratigraphy deals with all the characteristics of layered rocks; it includes the study of how these rocks relate to time.  To tell the age of most layered rocks, scientists study the fossils these rocks contain.

Index fossils are dated by rock layers and rock layers are dated by index fossils - circular reasoning is not science.

Way to go with the out-of-context reasoning ... if that were all there was then we might agreed but as it happened one simply confirms the other and both are confirmed by many other scientific methods.

Fossilized trees are found extending through several strata of rocks as well as separate seams of coal. Trees have even been found coalified at the bottom, fossilized in the middle, and coalified at the top.
-If rock layers take millions of years to form, there are three possibilities:
--The tree stood for millions of years while the rock layers and coal layers formed around it.
--The tree grew into the coal, through the rock, and into the coal again, then fossilized and coalified.
--The coal layers and rock layers formed quickly, and the tree was fossilized in between the forming layers (evidence for a catastrophic event i.e. flood).

Or perhaps the tree simply stood upright for many, many hundreds of years and the layers around it formed relatively quickly ... did you think of that one? The scientists did ... but then in all your haste to copy/paste all these supposedly unanswerable questions you forgot to research that side of the argument didn't you?

Following the eruption at Mt. St. Helens in 1980, Spirit Lake was clogged with hundreds of trees blown down from the blast.  Later divers noticed some trees at the bottom of the lake were vertical, and were stuck in the mud below. The trees have begun to fossilize and will be left standing vertically through several layers of coal and rock. This is a logical conclusion to the example above, given the scientific evidence (Catastrophism).

Following the eruption at Mt. St. Helens in 1980, radioisotope dating was used to confirm its accuracy in the late 1990's. K-Ar Dating put the newly formed rock flows at .35 to 2.8 million years.
-Radioisotope dating has been used on volcanic rock in Hawaii, Arizona, California and in Sicily. All eruption dates are known. All radioisotope measurements put the dates from .25 to 1.6 million years old.
-The samples were sent to laboratories with only the knowledge that the rocks came from volcanoes.
-(Are we assuming radioisotope dating works on rocks of unknown age, while it does not work on rocks of known age? Shouldn't dating rocks of known age be the method we actually use to confirm the accuracy of radioisotope dating?)

I can't be bothered to refute this crap ... but, since you think it's OK to copy and paste why not have some back in return (from Talk Origins: Coal Beds, Creationism, and Mount St. Helens):

Claim no. 1: The accumulation of bark at the bottom of Spirit Lake, which is called peat, demonstrates that peat can accumulate fast.

The accumulation of a thin layer of shredded bark at Spirit Lake is irrelevant to how peat is formed, because coal is rarely associated with the highly fragmented, angular volcanic debris that characterizes the material at Spirit Lake. Rather, coal occurs interbedded with either nonvolcanic channel sandstones, freshwater limestones, shales, and paleosols of riverine origin or cyclic sequences of sandstones, shales and marine limestones identical to those that comprise modern deltas and coastal plains (Flores 1981, Donaldson et al. 1985). Finally, the base of many coals lies directly on top of well developed paleosols, often called seatearths, seatclays and fireclays, that would be absent from the base of the Spirit Lake peat (Gardner et al. 1988, Joeckel 1995). It is extremely clear that the shredded wood at the bottom of Spirit Lake accumulated in a vastly different environment than currently known coals.

Claim no. 2: Swamp peat rarely contains sheets of bark because tree roots disintegrate and homoginize [sic] the peat.

The absence of bark in many peats reflects the abundance of other components (i.e., wood, foliage, roots, and pollen) accumulating to form a peat. The composition of peats varies so much that it is incorrect to make such generalizations. Also, the coalification, process by which peat is transformed into coal, will homogenize and destroy the identity of the individual components. Initially, microorganisms degrade plant material. Then, chemical processes convert the lignin of the plants into humic substances and condense these humic substances into larger coal molecules. All of these coalification processes serve to homogenize the former peat (Meissner et al. 1977). The presence of in place tree roots that have grown into and homogenized the peat would demonstrate the peat accumulated in place and not transported from elsewhere as the shredded bark found at Spirit Lake. Trees and other plants could not grow in and put roots down into material that accumulates on the bottom of a lake or other water body, mush less rapidly deposited sediments. Thus, claiming that peat has been homogenized by tree roots contradicts the claim that the peat accumulated at the bottom of some body of water. In fact, where the original texture of peat is preserved in coal balls from Midwestern coals, in place roots are not only present, but have clearly failed to homogenize the peat.

Claim no. 3: Spirit Lake peat is texturally very similar to coal.

This is also a false statement. The shredded plant material at the bottom of Spirit Lake that is being called peat has little if any resemblance to the peat found in modern peat swamps such as those in Indonesia that are considered modern analogues of the eastern United States' Pennsylvanian coals. It has even less similarity to coal.

It can be questioned whether peat is even the proper term for the shredded wood and bark found at the bottom of Spirit Lake. From the descriptions that Austin (1986) and other creationists have given of this material, it sounds likes a relatively unaltered layer consisting of fragments of ground up wood and bark of varying sizes. Geologists call such woody debris "coffee grounds." Coffee grounds consists of wood and other plant debris that have been carried out of the mouth of the delta, rolled around and fragmented by waves for while, and deposited as sand- to pebble-sized chunks of sorted plant debris on the beach, back beach, or abandoned channel areas. This material is called "coffee grounds" because of its visual similarity to coffee (black or brown little bits of wood). In ancient deltas, coffee grounds have accumulated within abandoned deltaic channels to form high-quality, but very thin, coals (Coleman 1982, p. 39). However, these coals, like the coffee grounds of the modern Mississippi Delta, lack the lateral continuity, paleosols, and presence of recognizable foliage or root material that characterize the widespread Pennsylvanian coal seams (DiMichele et al. 1986, Gardner et al. 1988, Wnuk 1989).

Claim no. 4: Only burial and slight heating is required to transform the Spirit Lake peat to coal.

This is another false claim that burial and slight heating will convert the coffee grounds that they call peat into coal. The conversion of this material takes considerable burial and time to convert to the quality of coal found in Pennsylvania. In the case of anthracite, very intense tectonic metamorphism is also needed for the conversion of this material into coal.

Conclusions
The web page that I examined contains a number of claims about the significance of the "coffee grounds" found at the bottom of Spirit Lake relative to the formation of Pennsylvanian coals in the eastern United States. It can be concluded that Spirit Lake lacks very little instructive value in explaining how coal is formed. There are some transported coals, however they are very rare and can be better understood by looking the coffee grounds that accumulate within the modern Mississippi Delta. The web page examined here is nothing more than a bunch of creationist text-bites designed to sound good despite lacking any scientific value.

Radiometric dating: A method for determining the age of an object based on the concentration of a particular radioactive isotope contained within it. Examples include: Potassium-Argon dating, Rubidium-Strontium dating, Carbon 14 dating, Uranium-Lead dating and Samarium-Neodymium dating. These basic assumptions are inherent with radiometric dating:
-The decay rate of the radioisotopes has remained constant throughout time
-There has been no leaching of any of the isotopes-from the time of its formation to the present.
-There has not been any infusion of parent or daughter material-from the time of its formation to the present.
-There was no daughter material present at the formation of the specimen.
(Can we assume any dated specimens have scientifically proven all these assumptions to be true? Can we solve an equation with more than one variable?)

Radiometric Dating Methods v2.00
By
Kyuuketsuki

Introduction
Despite creationist claims to the contrary, radio-isotopic dating methods are accurate to within acceptable limits. The most common claim (aside from references to experiments/observations where a given dating method was demonstrated as fallible) is that a given method's assumptions may have been violated. Typically these revolve around the constancy of decay rates and claims that contamination may have occurred.

Discussion
Radiometric dating works by comparing the amount of radioactive parent material present in a rock sample to the amount of daughter material, a ratio that is the direct result of the parent material's decay. Based on standard decay rates for a known isotope (parent) it is then possible to estimate how long ago the rock was formed.

The rate of decay for any given isotope is considered to be fundamental and significant changes in any isotopic decay rate have never been observed (to an accuracy of about one part in 1011 per year). However, in order to explain flood-based geology and/or a young earth (approx. 6000 years), the rate of decay of such elements would need to be in the order of six to ten times as high as have been noted. Exactly how much higher would depend upon whether age is measured from the flood itself or across the entire young earth scenario.

Typical creationist claims are that radiocarbon and other methods based on radioactive decay rates are invalid because:
* The system is closed and no radioactive parent or daughter enters or leaves it.
* There is no radiogenic daughter in the system to begin with.
* There is no proof that the rate of decay is constant.

Creationists seem to assume that geophysicists ply their trade by rote and never study their methods and parameters. Many factors upon which science rests its confidence in radio dating are not even mentioned by creationist critics e.g. dendrochronology, varves, radiocarbon, thermoluminescence, electron spin resonance etc. Creationists never look at scientific evidence as a whole and seem content to snipe from the sidelines at major and (to them) contentious scientific theories.

If the rate of decay were not as currently specified (as high as creationists suggest) there would be a number of fundamental changes in the universe around us, for example:

* Increased radii of celestial bodies such as Mercury, the Moon or Mars
* Changes in Moon & Earth orbits
* Long-lived isotopes that decay by beta decay (e.g. Rhenium 187, Potassium 40 & Rubidium 87) in comparison to isotopes that decay by different mechanisms.

Whilst not immediately apparent the strength of interaction (which governs beta decay) within molecules would have different effects on binding energies and thus the gravitational attraction for any given element. Likewise this would affect orbital motion and the spectra emitted from stars.

Current evidence and theoretical considerations preclude significant changes to rates of radioactive decay. The limits placed are between ten and twenty orders of magnitude below those required accommodate the apparent age of the Earth within the young-Earth time-scale (by means of accelerated decay).

Conclusion
Radiometric observations are a mixture of sensitive, short time-scale, tests (near past but accurate) and astronomical observations (distant past, less precise). Contamination is an issue for Carbon 14 and Potassium-Argon dating methods however criticism of such methods fail to take into account that data from these nearly always agrees with current expectations for old-Earth dating. Any single result may be subject to criticism but an entire battery of tests, each of which tends to support the data from others, is not easy to refute.

For one moment let us assume that creationists are correct and that the evidence derived from the fossil record, the geologic column and radiometric dating were all wrong. Quite apart from highly noticeable changes in planetary orbits, increased planetary radii etc. it would seem that the various companies involved in mineral (esp. fossil fuels) exploration and exploitation are all looking in the wrong places … no company will search for coal in rocks dated older than when plants evolved., there would be no point! The simple search for such fossil fuels involves the acceptance of radiometric dating, fossil record and geologic column … to do otherwise in such a competitive business would be pointless and tantamount to cutting ones own financial throat!

Perhaps then, in order to further demonstrate evidence for their young Earth hypothesis creationists would be willing to cite any company listed on the stock exchange which uses creationist ideas to predict mineral occurrence?

Sceptics (creationist or otherwise) of conventional geologic science might assume scientist would prefer all acquired dates to be consistent within the current geological time scale but, realistically, this is not how science works. Science is, by its very nature, tentative and nothing in science is proven beyond shadow of doubt. The age of any given sample and the geological time scale only represents the current understanding and science is constantly in a process of refinement of that understanding.

There is an unmistakable trend of smaller and smaller revisions of the time scale as the dataset gets larger and more precise (Harland et al. 1982, p.4-5). If something were seriously wrong with the current geologic time scale, one would expect inconsistencies to grow in number and severity, but they do not.

The evidence against a Young Earth (some 6000 to 10,000 years old) is available in any library and the arguments of creationists will not stand scrutiny if pursued.

References
“Information for all biologists” Dr. Morden, 1996
“Society Of Vertebrate Paleontology” 1994
“Rejoinder to Cliff Hanlon's "Three R's"”, Dave E. Matson, 1998
“Young Earth” Colin Groves
“Posting by John Stear (No Answers In Genesis)” John Stear, 1999
“Radiometric Dating and the Geological Time Scale; Circular Reasoning or Reliable Tools?” Andrew MacRae, 1998
“The Age Of The Earth”, Chris Stassen 1997
“Isochron Dating” Chris Stassen, 1998

Fossils are assumed to be found in restricted ranges based on their geologic timing/evolution.  This is the basis for index fossils.  Stratigraphic-range extension is the scientific evidence showing fossils of a certain time period appearing in 'younger' rock strata.  Examples:
Lystrosaurus - Early Triassic -- found also in Permian
Neoguadalupia (sponge) - Permian -- found also in Triassic
Jawless Fishes - Ordovician -- found also in Cambrian
Pipiscids - Carboniferous -- found also in Cambrian
Camptochlamys - Cretaceous -- found also in Tertiary
Parafusus - Cretaceous -- found also in Tertiary

In a ten year period (1982-1992), over 500 fossils were recorded as extending their respective stratigraphic ranges.  Since the 1960's over 1000 different Families of animals (not just specific species) have extended their stratigraphic range. (If these animals evolved from one another, can we explain their appearance in several hundred million years of the geologic column?  Once the animal evolves into another life form, doesn't natural selection say the older, less evolved animal is snuffed out - not reappearing over hundreds of millions of years of generations in completely identifiable species?)

Er ... so what? Even if we accept what you say is true (and I can find nowhere except creationist sites that reference this material so I am dubious to say the least) why does it matter if science hasn't got it 100% right, right now? There's nothing inherent in the concept of science that says it has to be right merely that it represents our best current understanding based on the evidence available to us at this time.

Cambrian explosion - supposedly, beginning some 545 million years ago, an explosion of diversity led to the appearance over a relatively short period of 5 million to 10 million years of a huge number of complex, multi-celled organisms. Moreover, this burst of animal forms led to most of the major animal groups we know today, that is, every extant Phylum.  In other words, all major body plans and enormous varieties of each coexist in this layer.  The layers below the Cambrian have practically nothing with regard to fossils.  The number of fossilized species above the Cambrian layer decrease with later layers.  The most recent layers approximate 98% of everything that has ever lived is extinct.  According to evolution, the world's speciation is accredited to a common ancestor derived from the primordial soup.  This ancestor eventually became more complex and divergent species occured. The paths then continued to branch and explain the great diversity of life present today. (Can evolution explain why the oldest layers of the geologic column hold the most complex diversity of life as opposed to what the theory actually teaches - the direct opposite?  Can we justify evolution presenting a tree-like progression of life - when the scientific evidence points directly toward an inverted cone as the 'tree' of life.)

Again I can't be bothered to refute this crap ... but (again), since you think it's OK to copy and paste why not have some back in return (from Standard Creationist Claim CC300):

1. The Cambrian explosion was the seemingly sudden appearance of a variety of complex animals about 540 million years ago (Mya), but it was not the origin of complex life. Evidence of multicellular life from about 590 and 560 Mya appears in the Doushantuo Formation in China (Chen et al. 2000, 2004), and diverse fossil forms occurred before 555 Mya (Martin et al. 2000). (The Cambrian began 543 Mya., and the Cambrian explosion is considered by many to start with the first trilobites, about 530 Mya.) Testate amoebae are known from about 750 Mya (Porter and Knoll 2000). There are tracelike fossils more than 1,200 Mya in the Stirling Range Formation of Australia (Rasmussen et al. 2002). Eukaryotes (which have relatively complex cells) may have arisen 2,700 Mya, according to fossil chemical evidence (Brocks et al. 1999). Stromatolites show evidence of microbial life 3,430 Mya (Allwood et al. 2006). Fossil microorganisms may have been found from 3,465 Mya (Schopf 1993). There is isotopic evidence of sulfur-reducing bacteria from 3,470 Mya (Shen et al. 2001) and possible evidence of microbial etching of volcanic glass from 3,480 Mya (Furnes et al. 2004).

2. There are transitional fossils within the Cambrian explosion fossils. For example, there are lobopods (basically worms with legs) which are intermediate between arthropods and worms (Conway Morris 1998).

3. Only some phyla appear in the Cambrian explosion. In particular, all plants postdate the Cambrian, and flowering plants, by far the dominant form of land life today, only appeared about 140 Mya (Brown 1999).

Even among animals, not all types appear in the Cambrian. Cnidarians, sponges, and probably other phyla appeared before the Cambrian. Molecular evidence shows that at least six animal phyla are Precambrian (Wang et al. 1999). Bryozoans appear first in the Ordovician. Many other soft-bodied phyla do not appear in the fossil record until much later. Although many new animal forms appeared during the Cambrian, not all did. According to one reference (Collins 1994), eleven of thirty-two metazoan phyla appear during the Cambrian, one appears Precambrian, eight after the Cambrian, and twelve have no fossil record.

And that just considers phyla. Almost none of the animal groups that people think of as groups, such as mammals, reptiles, birds, insects, and spiders, appeared in the Cambrian. The fish that appeared in the Cambrian was unlike any fish alive today.
4. The length of the Cambrian explosion is ambiguous and uncertain, but five to ten million years is a reasonable estimate; some say the explosion spans forty million years or more, starting about 553 million years ago. Even the shortest estimate of five million years is hardly sudden.

5. There are some plausible explanations for why diversification may have been relatively sudden:

* The evolution of active predators in the late Precambrian likely spurred the coevolution of hard parts on other animals. These hard parts fossilize much more easily than the previous soft-bodied animals, leading to many more fossils but not necessarily more animals.
* Early complex animals may have been nearly microscopic. Apparent fossil animals smaller than 0.2 mm have been found in the Doushantuo Formation, China, forty to fifty-five million years before the Cambrian (Chen et al. 2004). Much of the early evolution could have simply been too small to see.
* The earth was just coming out of a global ice age at the beginning of the Cambrian (Hoffman 1998; Kerr 2000). A "snowball earth" before the Cambrian explosion may have hindered development of complexity or kept populations down so that fossils would be too rare to expect to find today. The more favorable environment after the snowball earth would have opened new niches for life to evolve into.
* Hox genes, which control much of an animal's basic body plan, were likely first evolving around that time. Development of these genes might have just then allowed the raw materials for body plans to diversify (Carroll 1997).
* Atmospheric oxygen may have increased at the start of the Cambrian (Canfield and Teske 1996; Logan et al. 1995; Thomas 1997).
* Planktonic grazers began producing fecal pellets that fell to the bottom of the ocean rapidly, profoundly changing the ocean state, especially its oxygenation (Logan et al. 1995).
* Unusual amounts of phosphate were deposited in shallow seas at the start of the Cambrian (Cook and Shergold 1986; Lipps and Signor 1992).

6. Cambrian life was still unlike almost everything alive today. Although several phyla appear to have diverged in the Early Cambrian or before, most of the phylum-level body plans appear in the fossil record much later (Budd and Jensen 2000). Using number of cell types as a measure of complexity, we see that complexity has been increasing more or less constantly since the beginning of the Cambrian (Valentine et al. 1994).

7. Major radiations of life forms have occurred at other times, too. One of the most extensive diversifications of life occurred in the Ordovician, for example (Miller 1997).

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[Kyuuketsuki]

[Continued From Previous Post]

And again (from Talk Origins: Standard Creationist Claim CC301):

1.  The Cambrian explosion does not show all groups appearing together fully formed.  some animal groups (and no plant, fungus, or microbe groups) appearing over many millions of years in forms very different, for the most part, from the forms that are seen today.

2. During the Cambrian, there was the first appearance of hard parts, such as shells and teeth, in animals. The lack of readily fossilizable parts before then ensures that the fossil record would be very incomplete in the Precambrian. The old age of the Precambrian era contributes to a scarcity of fossils.

3. The Precambrian fossils that have been found are consistent with a branching pattern and inconsistent with a sudden Cambrian origin. For example, bacteria appear well before multicellular organisms, and there are fossils giving evidence of transitionals leading to halkierids and arthropods.

4. Genetic evidence also shows a branching pattern in the Precambrian, indicating, for example, that plants diverged from a common ancestor before fungi diverged from animals.

Trilobites - a class of marine arthropods, with origins in the Cambrian explosion.  Most specimens are between 10 and 50 mm long, characterized by a rigid carapace divided into three lobes - hence the name. Most had eyes, others had none.  Within the family Phacopidae the eyes of the trilobite are of a fundamentally different nature - schizochroal (aggregate) eyes - the most complex eye in the history of life on earth. The trilobite eye is made of pure calcite (optically transparent calcium carbonate) which has a precisely aligned optical axis to eliminate any double image that would have formed.  It is also a “doublet” of two lenses affixed together in order to eliminate spherical aberrations, commonly found in ground glass lenses. Trilobite eyes are massively arrayed in semicircular banks and even almost circular banks of up to 30-60 lenses per row, each with its own individual retina.  Compounding this are the Ordovician trilobites.  The visual field of these trilobites is close to 360 degrees and are capable of seeing anteriorly, laterally, dorsally, downwards, and backwards.  Trilobite eyes have glasslike lenses corrected for spherical and chromatic abberations, the density of seawater and the function of bifocality. Within the last 500 years, most of the mathematical formulae responsible for the caliber of optics used today has been solved.  Trilobites had lenses much more complex on their bodies, but over 500 million years ago. (Can the most complex eye on the planet begin with the Cambrian explosion and get less complex?  Can subsequent generations of species, up to and including mankind, de-volve? Can we justify evolution teaching the simplest forms of life gradually becoming more complex - when the scientific evidence points directly to the opposite?)

Please tell me you're aware that nothing in the theory of evolution dictates that increasing complexity must be the result? That fitness in evolutionary terms does not equate to better within the terms of the human idea of fit or smart or whatever. Please, please tell me you understand this.

Vestigial Organs - organs that represent a function that was once necessary for survival, but over time that function became either diminished or nonexistent.  The presence of an organ in one organism that resembles one found in another has led biologists to conclude that these two might have shared a common ancestor.  Some 180 body parts were considered vestigial as recently as the 1930s.  Modern science has revealed the function of the organs previously termed as vestigial.  A couple examples:
-Appendix - functions within the immune system; it is part of the Gut Associated Lymphoid Tissue system. The appendix is a highly specialized organ, a complex well-developed structure with a rich blood supply. The submucosa (tissue layer) is thickened and almost entirely occupied by lymphatic nodules and lymphocytes.
-Coccyx (tailbone) - a point of insertion for several muscles and ligaments including the gluteus maximus
-Flightless bird wings - used as balance while running, cooling in hot weather, warmth in cold weather, protection of the rib-cage in falls, mating rituals, scaring predators, sheltering of chicks.  The wings have functional muscles allowing them to be moved to serve their purpose
-Male nipples - sensitive to touch and act as erogenous zones, contributing to the pleasure response during sex.
-Hip bones in whales - used in penis erection in males and vaginal contraction in females - essential in birthing.
-Claw like feet in pythons - used in copulation - the male uses these to hold the female - serpents are cyndrilical in shape and do not lay well on top of one another.
--(Can anything actually be vestigial, given the remarkable advances in modern science and medicine?)

Yawn (from Standard Creationist Claim CB630):

1. "Vestigial" does not mean an organ is useless. A vestige is a "trace or visible sign left by something lost or vanished" (G. & C. Merriam 1974, 769). Examples from biology include leg bones in snakes, eye remnants in blind cave fish (Yamamoto and Jeffery 2000), extra toe bones in horses, wing stubs on flightless birds and insects, and molars in vampire bats. Whether these organs have functions is irrelevant. They obviously do not have the function that we expect from such parts in other animals, for which creationists say the parts are "designed."

Vestigial organs are evidence for evolution because we expect evolutionary changes to be imperfect as creatures evolve to adopt new niches. Creationism cannot explain vestigial organs. They are evidence against creationism if the creator follows a basic design principle that form follows function, as H. M. Morris himself expects (1974, 70). They are compatible with creation only if anything and everything is compatible with creation, making creationism useless and unscientific.

2. Some vestigial organs can be determined to be useless if data shows that organisms with them survive no better than organisms without them.

Lamarckism - developed by Chevalier de Lamarck in his book, Philosophie zoologique, published in 1809.  Explains that acquired traits are inheritable, meaning that characteristics that an organism may develop during its lifetime can be passed on to its progeny. Biologists in the 1800-1900's (including Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, Thomas Huxley) were unaware of the mechanisms of inheritance.  They believed that developmental contigencies of individual organisms were not fixed genetically, but they could somehow be passed on to subsequent generations so that evolution could occur.  For example, reptiles jumping higher and higher to reach trees for food/escape eventually just formed wings and became birds.  Giraffes kept on stretching their necks longer and longer until the modern long-necked giraffe evolved.  This was proven scientifically inaccurate first by August Weismann. He cut off the tails of 22 generations of mice - no subsequent generations of mice were tail-less.  Later science has affirmed through genetics how phenotypic traits are passed from parent to progeny.

Is there a question in that? I fail to see the issue at any rate.

(Darwin had no idea of genetics. How did he believe organisms passed on traits to their young?  Is it possible that even our study of genetics today has been so influenced by Darwin, that instead of asking if evolution actually occured, we are asking how can we prove evolution occured?  Instead of blindly trying to prove the theory based on initial bias, should science be purely science and just take the evidence we gain and use it to learn more -- even if it involves creating a new theory?)

What initial bias? Are you trying to say that just because we don't know all the details of a given explanation we should not propose it? I hope not because, if you are, that's not merely naïve it's plain bloody stupid.

Irreducible complexity - a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.  An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional.  Basically, all of the systems must be present at the same time in order for the organism to function as a whole. (Can the body function without any of its basic systems?  Can we assume that all of the systems evolved together? Can we assume birds developed wings, feathers, hollow bones, a new heart, new muscles, new nerves attaching to all the new systems, a new brain -- all at the same time from reptiles?  Did these reptile to bird evolutionary changes happen in an instant?  Could the new organism survive without all the necessary components of either a bird or reptile - not an in-between organism?  If it was an in-between organism without the full functions of a bird or reptile, wouldn't natural selection snuff it out instantly and stop any future generations of a weaker animal?  At a cellular level, can a cell live without a membrane, nucleus, nuclear membrane, mitochondria, etc.? Can all of these separate remarkable systems evolve simultaneously, at the same place, at the same time, on the same cell -- and then develop the ability to reproduce the same types of systems with the newly evolved DNA/RNA and the structures to decode that DNA/RNA to pass on? Can two separate cells spark to life at the same time, in the same place, with the same features, with separate sexual organs, develop the ability to reproduce, then reproduce successfully with a mutation that is beneficial to successive generations - then those generations find a mate in the primordial soup and restart the cycle trillions of times? What did the first cell eat?)

Behe's irreducible complexity argument is very similar to William Paley's in that both are essentially, "if it looks designed then it must be designed" style arguments except that Behe's is somewhat more up-to-date. The problem with both arguments is the same ... Paley was premature, relying on the then current level of scientific knowledge, when he proposed that the eye could not have possibly come existed in a lesser form (we now know that the eye exists in functional "lesser" forms throughout nature and often within the same class) and Behe was premature when he proposed that a given bacterium with components comparable to an outboard motor could not function with any missing parts (bacterium have subsequently been discovered fully functional with a less than full complement of components.). Ultimately both arguments are simply arbitrary definitions of what something should can or cannot be; are absolute in nature (and if there's one thing science reflects, it is our understanding that no explanation can ever be considered beyond challenge) and are based on one individual or groups personal POV or lack of vision. Ultimately what Behe should have done is considered the possibility that an organism may have been irreducibly complex and then proceeded to attack that concept with every means at his disposal rather than, as he appeared to do, write popular science books and make himself the darling of the IDC community.

Ernst Haeckel developed the idea that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny in 1866. This described his embryological observation, which says basically that the development of the individual retraces the evolutionary steps of the species from its conception to its birth. It was proved to be a fraud in 1874 by Professor Wilhelm His, Sr. Haeckel personally admitted to falsifying his illustrations in 1909.  American textbooks as recent as 1998 continue to display Haeckels drawings as scientific fact and proof for evolution.

So what? Science represents our best current explanation and, as stated above, there is no specification that a given scientific explanation remain the "correct" one until the end of time. Sh** happens (new evidence is discovered) ... what's your point?

And BTW, regardless of Haeckel's arguments and their status within science at the present moment, embryology still provides evidence for evolution.

Piltdown Man was discovered in 1912 by Charles Dawson. In 1953, it was finally revealed to be an elaborate hoax - purposely filed teeth and iron dyed for aged appearance.  This was used as evidence for evolution and taught to an entire generation of students for over 40 years.

See my last statement and whilst you're re-reading it bear this in mind ...it wasn't you numpty's that uncovered the fraud, it was scientists so it is actually more fair to say that the Piltdown episode is actually an example of science self-correcting in exactly the way it should!

Java Man was discovered in 1891 by Eugene Dubois.  After many evolutionists accepted this specimen as manlike, Dubois admitted finding modern human skulls in the same rock formations in which the bones of his specimen were found. Later he changed his opinion about Java Man (Pithecanthropus erectus), and considered the skull cap that of an ape or gibbon. Some textbooks still refer to this find as an example of man's evolution from apes.

Discovered by Eugene Dubois in 1891 near Trinil in Java. Its age is uncertain, but thought to be about 700,000 years. This find consisted of a flat, very thick skullcap, a few teeth, and a thigh bone found about 12 meters away (Theunissen, 1989). The brain size is about 940 cc. Trinkaus and Shipman (1992) state that most scientists now believe the femur is that of a modern human, but few of the other references mention this.
 
A very similar but more complete braincase was found at Sangiran in Java in 1937 by G.H.R. von Koenigswald. It is even smaller, with a brain size of only 815 cc.

Many creationists consider Java Man to be a large ape, but it is far more humanlike and has a far larger brain size than any ape, and the skull is similar to other Homo erectus skulls. It is also frequently claimed that Eugene Dubois, the discoverer of Java Man, later decided it was only a large gibbon, but this claim is not true.

Nebraska Man was found in 1922. The specimen consisted of one molar tooth. An artist created the entire apeman-like creature from this find, which was then used as evidence in the Scopes Monkey Trial. In 1928, science revealed the specimen belonged to an extinct pig.

The tooth was never held in high regard by scientists. Osborn, who described it, was unsure whether it came from a hominid or from another kind of ape, and others were sceptical that it even belonged to a primate. The illustration was done for a popular publication and was clearly labelled as highly imaginative.

Nebraska Man is an example of science working well. An intriguing discovery was made that could have important implications. The discoverer announced the discovery and sent casts of it to several other experts. Scientists were initially sceptical. More evidence was gathered, ultimately showing that the initial interpretation was wrong. Finally, a retraction was prominently published.
 

Neanderthal Man was discovered in 1856. The arching back and bowed legs were alleged to be the precurser to modern humans slowly straightening their vertebrae in order to stand upright. Later, science revealed that Neanderthal Man was an ordinary man suffering from rickets/arthritis. His arching back was slowly moving down instead of up. In 1908, a typical  Neanderthal fossil was discovered wearing a full sets of chain armor that had not rusted completely. Another Neanderthal skeleton was found in 1910 in the Phillippines. Due to the extreme moisture of the area, it would have been impossible for the skeleton to have been more than a century old. Neanderthals are still depicted in textbooks as hairy, grunting cavemen living eons ago, while scientific evidence proves their existence within the last couple hundred years.

Neandertals are usually classified as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, a subspecies of humans, in recognition of consistent differences such as heavy brow ridges, a long low skull, a robust skeleton, and others. (Some scientists believe the differences are large enough to justify a separate species, Homo neanderthalensis.) Evolutionists last century claimed that these were real differences between us and Neandertals, and they were right. Creationists claimed that the differences were a result of various diseases or environmental factors, and they were wrong. For Parker to claim that creationists won this debate is a rewriting of history.

Amazingly, a century after scientists knew otherwise, most creationists still believe that Neandertals were merely modern humans, deformed by diseases such as rickets, arthritis or syphilis. Some, but by no means all, Neandertals have been found with signs of health problems such as arthritis. But Neandertals have many distinctive features, and there is no reason why these diseases (or any others) would cause many, let alone all, of these features on even one, let alone many, individuals. Modern knowledge and experience also contradicts the idea that disease is a cause of Neandertal features, because these diseases do not cause modern humans to look like Neandertals.
 
In the 1800's the famous pathologist Rudolf Virchow was one who claimed that the first Neandertal fossil found was of a rickets sufferer. As Trinkaus and Shipman (1992) point out, Virchow, an expert on rickets, should have been the first to realize how ridiculous this diagnosis was. People with rickets are undernourished and calcium-poor, and their bones are so weak that even the weight of the body can cause them to bend. The bones of the first Neandertal, by contrast, were about 50% thicker than those of the average modern human, and clearly belonged to an extraordinarily athletic and muscular individual.

Lubenow (1992), relying on the authority of Virchow and Ivanhoe (1970), claims that Neandertals (and H. erectus and the archaic sapiens) were caused by a post-Flood ice age: heavy cloud cover, the need to shelter and wear heavy clothes, and a lack of vitamin D sources, would all have combined to cause severe rickets.

This explanation fails for many reasons:

* Rickets does not produce a Neandertal, or Homo erectus morphology; it is clear from many sources (Reader 1981; Tattersall 1995) that the original Neandertal skeleton was unlike any previously known, even in a century in which rickets was a common disease.
* Evidence of rickets is easily detectable, especially on the growing ends of the long bones of the body. Radiology courses routinely teach the symptoms. It has never (so far as I know) been detected in Neandertals or Homo erectus.
* Even Virchow did not claim rickets as a sole cause. Virchow in 1872 decided that the first Neandertal Man fossil had had rickets in childhood, head injuries in middle age, and chronic arthritis in old age. A whole population of such people strains credibility, to say the least, although Lubenow says that this diagnosis "is as valid today as when [Virchow] first made it".
* The long bones of Neandertals, like those of rickets victims, are often more curved than normal, but rickets causes a sideways curvature of the femur, while Neandertal femurs curve backwards (Klein 1989).
* Humans could hardly have stayed in shelter all the time; food gathering would have required them to spend a lot of time outside (and probably a lot more time than most modern urban humans).
* The most extreme differences from modern humans (H. erectus) are mostly found in regions such as Africa and Java, which were always tropical; the reverse of what would be predicted by Lubenow's hypothesis.
* Creationists usually claim that most of the fossil record was laid down by the Noahaic Flood. And yet there are hundreds of fossils of "post-Flood" humans, who supposedly lived in a period of low population and little fossilization. Why, underneath these post-Flood humans, do we not find far larger numbers of fossilized pre-Flood humans?

Lubenow claims that modern scientists do not consider rickets as a cause of Neandertalism because it is a virtually unknown disease nowadays. This is not true. Although not as common as it used to be, rickets has other causes besides vitamin D deficiency and still occurs. Information on it is common in medical textbooks (and even on the web), and the symptoms bear no apparent similarity to the Neandertal skeleton or skull.
 

Cro-Magnon Man was discovered in 1868. Science has revealed that Cro-Magnons were excellent artists, kept records of astronomy, usually over six feet tall and some had a slightly larger cranial capacity than any modern skull.  Cro-Magnon Man is still depicted in textbooks as being a separate species, although no anatomical differences can support this claim.

Yawn (from Talk Origins: Fossil Hominids -Cro-Magnon Man):

Discovered by workmen in 1868 at Cro-Magnon, in the village of Les Eyzies in France. The estimated age of the site is 30,000 years. The site yielded 5 skeletons (3 adult males, an adult female, and a child) which had been buried there, along with stone tools, carved reindeer antlers, ivory pendants, and shells. The Cro-Magnons lived in Europe between 35,000 and 10,000 years ago. They are virtually identical to modern man, being tall and muscular and slightly more robust on average than most modern humans. They were skilled hunters, toolmakers and artists famous for the cave art at places such as Lascaux, Chauvet, and Altamira.

If Cro-Magnons were modern humans, does that mean that modern humans are Cro-Magnons? Not really. Logically, many modern humans should be, since most modern Europeans are probably descended from them. But the term has no taxonomic significance and usually just refers to Europeans in a certain time range, even though other modern humans were living throughout much of the world at the same time. To quote the Oxford Companion to Archaeology:

> Cro-magnons are, in informal usage, a group among the late Ice Age peoples of
> Europe. The Cro-Magnons are identified with Homo sapiens sapiens of modern
> form, in the time range ca. 35,000-10000 b.p. ...

The term 'Cro-Magnon' has no formal taxonomic status, since it refers neither to a species or subspecies nor to an archaeological phase or culture. The name is not commonly encountered in modern professional literature in English, since authors prefer to talk more generally of anatomically modern humans. They thus avoid a certain ambiguity in the label 'Cro-Magnon', which is sometimes used to refer to all early moderns in Europe (as opposed to the preceding Neanderthals), and sometimes to refer to a specific human group that can be distinguished from other Upper Paleolithic humans in the region. Nevertheless, the term 'Cro-Magnon' is still very commonly used in popular texts because it makes an obvious distinction with the Neanderthals, and also refers directly to people rather than to the complicated succession of archaeological phases that make up the Upper Paleolithic. This evident practical value has prevented archaeologists and human paleontologists - especially in continental Europe - from dispensing entirely with the idea of Cro-Magnons.

The creationist tract Big Daddy, and many other creationists who have copied from it, have the following to say about Cro-Magnon Man:

> Cro-Magnon Man - One of the earliest and best established fossils is at least equal
> in physique and brain capacity to modern man... so what's the difference?

D'oh! To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever claimed there was a difference.

Rhodesian Man was discovered in 1921.  Anthropologists and artists set to work turning him into a half-ape/half-human sort of creature. Following an anatomist's examination, it was found that this was just a normal human being.

Rhodesian Man is situated (time wise) after H. erectus and, with only one trylu noticeable skull difference, is classified as an archaic H. sapiens. Yet again you are demonstrating your ignorance of science ... science changes, no one (apart from you numty's) ever claimed it doesn't! What's your point?

Peking Man was discovered in 1927 by Davidson Black, less than two months before his grant money expired. Following Black's death in 1934, the Jesuits responsible for Piltdown Man took over digging at the Peking Site. The site turned out to be a town garbage dump. Thousands of animal bones were found in this pit near Peking, with only a few human skulls found. The animal bones in the pit were over 150 feet deep. The human bones totaled 14 skulls in varying conditions, 11 jawbones, 147 teeth and a couple small arm bone and femur fragments, along with stone tools and carbon ash from fires. Peking Man was lost during World War II. The fossils were found mixed with hundreds of animal fossils - textbooks today list Peking Man as evolving from the very same animals that were buried along side him.

Other examples are abundant in every textbook showing Darwin's evolutionary tree.

So what? You really think the current scientific POV is found in school textbooks? Don't be so stupid ... do you know how far behind the scientific curve a school textbook is likely to be?

The 'missing links' are still missing to connect them all together. Missing links are erroneously and purposely falsified to prove evolution with no definitive specimens found in over 150 years. (Can a scientist/archaeologist search for true scientific data -- especially if their sole purpose is to find missing links to prove evolution?  Can they begin their digging, find something, and classify it with no bias? Can you even get a grant to go dig for missing links without being an evolutionist? Would the pressure of finding a new specimen, getting front page recognition in National Geographic, and a possibility of a lifetime digging grant cause someone to stretch their assumption to fit into the evolutionary model - merely for fame/monetary gain? Why is there such a history of frauds and lies designed with one sole purpose -- to prove evolution? Why is it that, each time, only one specimen is found --why not hundreds or thousands of them? Where are the billions of transitional forms that should completely blanket the underlying earth, instead of the distinct species? Shouldn't there be half fish/half amphibians? How would those overcome natural selection without the precise abilities of either a full fish or full amphibian?)

By missing link you mean transitionals yes? Read, absorb and maybe even try to learn.
 
Transitional Species v3.0
By
Kyuuketsuki

Introduction
Young Earth creationists, as always attempting to disprove any theory that disputes their belief that life on Earth has evolved rather than be divinely created, dispute evolution on the basis that there should be evidence of transitional species. In fact some sites (such as "Answers In Genesis") go as far as to insist there must be "billions of transitional fossils" if evolution was correct and not merely "a handful of questionable transitions".

Discussion
In posing this supposed flaw in the fossil record creationists misunderstand one vital concept and that is that all non-current species (with the exception of the ultimate common ancestor) are transitional. Each and every species noted in the evolutionary tree are of a form that is transitional between its ancestor and its descendants.

The problem lies in the fact that once named; an animal (usually extinct) becomes regarded, as a species in itself so, where there were once two species with no transitional, there is, once the transitional is found and named, now three species with two transitional gaps. Any objective observer will realise that this process can continue ad infinitum and that no matter what explanation is offered, in the eyes of the lay critic, there will never be a satisfactory transitional filling the gap between any given species.

So what is a fossil? A fossil is, quite simply, the fossilised remains of a once living creature but how does fossilisation occur?

To allow for fossilisation the remains of a creature must be rapidly covered by (sometimes even killed by) sediments which often occurred when animals were washed into water or lived in lakes and seas as the remains would then have been rapidly covered by sediment at the bottom. This accounts for the higher frequency of fossilisation of sea-creatures and animals that may have lived close to such bodies of water. Once covered by sediment the flesh and skin of the cadaver almost always completely rotted away and, as more sediments began to build on the remaining bones over the following centuries, minerals from surrounding water began to percolate through the rock and into the porous bone structures altering the bone to a petrified state.

In some cases acidic water would dissolve the bone completely leaving a natural "mould" so that the original shape could be discerned by pouring rubber into the "mould" and extracting it and other times the "moulds" filled with natural sediments and became a perfect rock-like replica of the original skeleton. In very rare cases a carcass may have been covered in such a way that it naturally mummified  and even skin & folds in the flesh may have been preserved ... the colour, however, of these animals will likely always remain a mystery to us.

So what is a transitional fossil? As it implies a transitional fossil is one that lies, in evolutionary terms, between two species and exhibits some features of one, some of the other and possibly some features that are at a stage of development some way between the two. In an ideal world the transitional would be unearthed in a location (in terms of the geologic column) at an appropriate position between the evidence for the species it is transitional too however there is no reason why a transitional fossil must only give rise to one descendent or that it must appear to die out as soon as it has done so.

By it's very nature the fossil record is incomplete ... that is the nature of fossilisation and the rather unusual conditions required for it to occur so for creationists to ask where are the "billions of transitional fossils" in the way that they do borders upon complete stupidity.

That said there are a vast number of fossils that are regarded as being true transitionals.

De Ricqles (1983) and Horner et al. (1992) document possible cases of gradual evolution and some lineage's that show abrupt appearance or stasis. Examples are several species from the early Permian (reptiles such as Captorhinus, Protocaptorhinus, Eocaptorhinus, Romeria) and the "Montana" site (a coastal plain in the late Cretaceous) where many excellent transitional dinosaur were found including:

* Many transitional ceratopsids between Styracosaurus and Pachyrhinosaurus.
* Many transitional lambeosaurids (50 plus specimens) between Lambeosaurus and Hypacrosaurus.
* A transitional pachycephalosaurid between Stegoceras and Pachycephalosaurus.
* A transitional tyrannosaurid between Tyrannosaurus and Daspletosaurus.

These transitional animals, apparently lived over a 500,000-year period, but were known from a much larger site ("the Judith River Formation") where a 5 million-year evolutionary stasis occurred with the subsequent, and very abrupt, appearance of many new forms. Evidence indicates that climactic changes acted in such a way the sea level rose during the 500,000-year period temporarily burying the Judith River Formation under water and forcing the dinosaur populations into smaller areas such as the site in Montana. Evolution can proceed very rapidly within isolated populations and, when sea level fell again, the new forms spread out to the re-exposed Judith River landscape, thus appearing "suddenly" in the Judith River fossils, with the transitional fossils only existing in the Montana site.

The "missing link" ER1470 ("Lucy" or Australopithecus afarensis) was found by two independent anthropologists i.e. Donald Johanson (Hadar region, Ethiopia) and Mary Leakey (Laetolil, Tanzania). Lucy's obstetrics demonstrate that she would have been able to give birth to a baby no larger than a newborn male chimp or orang-utan and that that new baby's brain would have comprised around 10% of its total weight. Other facets of Lucy's structure (such as her hind limbs being adapted for walking whilst her toes were longer and more curved, her fingers longer and better adapted for grasping branches and trunks), arguably a direct or close ancestor of mankind indicate her transitional nature in comparison to modern man.

Archaeopteryx, the transitional fossil oft claimed by creationists to be a forgery, is another transitional between reptile and bird ... the German specimen, for example, has feathers and dinosaur like teeth. Independent investigators have verified the authenticity of several specimens of the fossil, in response to creationist allegations of forgery, and other investigators have found other specimens of the same fossil organism.

There are excellent skeletons of extinct animals showing transition from primitive fish to bony fish, from fish to amphibian (the first four-legged creatures walked on the ocean bottom, not on land), from amphibian to reptile, from reptile to mammal, from reptile to bird and even from land animal to whale (fossil whales have been found with four legs & whales today still have skeletal components that can be identified as parts of hind legs deep in their flesh whilst their front legs have evolved into flippers).
One, particularly well-defined fossil sequence of transitions documents the evolution of apelike creatures through 6 or more intermediate forms to modern day humans.
The horse, perhaps the oldest known transitional sequence, starts some 55 million years ago with the terrier-sized Eohippus. Eohippus had four toes in front and three in back and, for technical reasons, has since been renamed Hyracotherium. From Eohippus a lineage descended through at least 14 steps, each step being represented by successfully competing animals, right through to the modern horse ( the pony-sized creature designated as Equus) genus to which all modern horses belong.

Conclusion
Creationists believe that gaps in the fossil record "show fundamental biological discontinuities, while evolutionary biologists think they are the inevitable result of chance fossilisations, chance discoveries, and immigration events" (Hunt, 1997)
It must be admitted that there are gaps in the fossil record, enough to keep scientists in business for many decades (perhaps centuries) to come, and that most fossil types are extremely rare. Fossilisation, in relative terms, is a rare event as the animal to be fossilised must die in circumstances that bury it in sediment before scavengers or environment can destroy it and then that area must be subject to whatever processes are necessary to lift and expose the remains adequately enough for scientists to be made aware of its existence.

Even though there are gaps the fossil record does demonstrate to us the following:
* An obvious tendency for successively higher and more recent fossil finds to resemble modern species more closely i.e. a temporal - morphological correlation that is highly noticeable and appears to point toward an origin of all vertebrates from a common ancestor.
* Many chains or branches of genera that appear to connect primitive genera with modern radically different genera and by which major evolutionary change can be traced.
* Large numbers of species-to-species transitions that (often) cross genus & (sometimes) family lines and often result in significant adaptation.
* A lot of gaps. For stratigraphic reasons there must always be gaps and no current evolutionary model predicts or requires a complete fossil record and no rational person expects that the fossil record will ever be close to complete.

It is also worth noting that it is possible to argue that all species are transitional, that humans and other "end-branch" species are not transitional as they have not yet evolved into whatever species they one day will do.

So, to claim that there are no transitional fossils is not a valid interpretation of the available evidence it is, quite simply, wrong. To claim that the gaps in the fossil record are sufficient to disprove evolution simply demonstrates an extreme ignorance of what science is and a wilful disregard of the awesome levels of evidence supporting the theory of evolution.

References
"Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ", Kathleen Hunt (1997)
"Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ (Part 2c)", Kathleen Hunt (1997)
 "5 Major Misconceptions About Evolution", Mark Isaak (1998)
"It's a bird, it's a dinosaur - it's both", Paul Reger (1999)
"How Science Responds When Creationists Criticize Evolution", Boyce Rensberger (1997)
"The Natural History Book Of Dinosaurs" Tim Gardom & Angela Milner (1993)

The full title of Charles Darwin's book: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

Worldviews attributed to the preservation of favoured races:
-Nazism openly proclaimed its dependence on Darwin. It was right and moral for the strongest race to survive; to have pity for the weak was to defy nature’s laws.
-Socialism denies the existence of a Creator God and proclaims that the rational mind of man created everything we know and can therefore perfect humanity and human society.
-Marxism led to communism and sought to be scientific. It was anchored in a social and economic theory that was believed to mirror the true history of life. Central to that theory was the struggle between the class that owned the means of production (the capitalist ‘bourgeoisie’) and the working class (the ‘proletariat’) that did not.  Marx wrote that Darwin’s book ‘contains the basis in natural history for our views.'
-Communism uses evolution to its logical conclusion. If everything just evolved from ‘natural law,’ then man’s opinion, not God’s Word, determines what is right and wrong. If the working class can take power by armed struggle, then this is ‘right,’ regardless of how many must die to bring in the socialist paradise.

Er ... you are aware that eugenics and evolution are entirely different concepts aren't you? Besides that science provides us with the tools & knowledge to do things ... it's humans who decide whether to use that knowledge for good or bad.

Adolf Hitler killed over 6 million Jews. He referred to Jewish people as being ' mostly full-ape' and based all other cultures on how 'ape-like' they were (Pure Aryan being the master race with no ape features, black being 'predominately ape', etc). His goal was to create the supreme race based on eugenics -- an evolutionary concept developed by Charles Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton.  The German people were being seduced to accept that they could be the “master race” by exterminating the “unfit.” If evolution was right, they reasoned, and “survival of the fittest” was merely a positive, evolutionary process, then what could be wrong with hastening the deaths of the “unfit”?

Hitler was also strongly motivated by religion, from "Mein Kampf":

"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator:by defending myself against the Jew,I am fighting for the work of the Lord."
"As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice."

The shootings in Columbine High School were on Adolf Hitler's birthday - on purpose. One of the perpetrator's shirts was emblazoned with the words: "Natural Selection".  Isaiah Shoels was killed for being black - his murderer reportedly saying "...He did not deserve the jaw evolution gave him.  Look for his jaw, it won't be on his body."

I'm sorry but how can it possibly be the fault of science because someone CHOSE to carry out a shooting on the birthday of their personal hero? If a Christian or group of were to crucify a 1000 people on Christmas Day would you blame Christianity? NO, you'd find some kind of whackhead reasoning to excuse your religion.

Josef Stalin studied at Tiflis Theological Seminary until age 19.  After reading 'On the Origin of Species', he became rebellious, atheisitic and was expelled.  It is estimated Stalin was responsible for the deaths of over 10 million people.

Jesus Christ you really are gullible aren't you? (from Talk Origins: Creationist Claim CA006.2):

1.  Stalin rejected neo-Darwinian evolution in favor of Lamarckism.

> Mendeleyev's "periodic system of elements" clearly shows how very important in
> the history of nature is the emergence of qualitative changes out of quantitative
> changes. The same thing is shown in biology by the theory of neo-Lamarckism, to
> which neo-Darwinism is yielding place. (Stalin 1906, 304)

More specifically, Stalin rejected the ideas of August Weismann, a 19th-century German biologist, in favor of Trofim Lysenko, a pseudoscientist who based his ideas on Lamarckism. Weismann, who accepted Darwin's theory of evolution, disproved Lamarckism and proposed that germ cells pass on hereditary information; his work was an early variant of the modern evolutionary synthesis which unites evolutionary theory with genetics. Stalin appointed Lysenko head of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the Soviet Union, where he had great political power. (Rossiannov 1993)

Stalin and Lysenko rejected evolution and genetics for ideological, not biological, reasons. (Stalin was quite ignorant of science in general.) The class struggle of Marxism contradicts the individual competition implied by natural selection. More importantly, genetics, implying that traits were fixed at birth, contradicted the ideal of moulding and improving traits. Stalin proclaimed genetics a capitalist pseudo-science.

2. Stalin was, first and foremost, a Marxist dictator, far above any allegiance he might have had to any theories concerning the origin of species, whether Lamarckian or Darwinian. Stalin distrusted scientists as being prone to free-thinking. Though his persecution of biologists and biology were particularly egregious (causing appalling damage to Soviet agriculture), he imprisoned and killed thousands of scientists and engineers from all fields.

3. Oppression and murder have been used as tools of statecraft long before Darwin published his work.

4. There is no evidence that Darwin's work was used as a justification for oppression and murder. Stalin doubtless accepted Newton's theory of gravity, but creationists do not claim that Newton's theory should be suppressed because Stalin believed it.

Mao Zedong was the Chairman of China's Communist Party and was responsible of the deaths of tens of millions of people.  Mao listed Darwin and Huxley as his two favofrite authors.

So frakking what? Even if he was an atheist there is no law saying atheists can't do bad things and I can assure you of this ... an awful lot more bad things have been carried out in the name of religion than in the name of atheism (at least count that being ZERO).

Evolution became a state funded teaching in public schools in 1959 - 1960's.  Since then:
- Violent crime rates have increased 313%
- Abortion rates have increased over 500%
-Teen Pregnancy /out of wedlock rates have increased over 1000%
- One of Three babies born to teens are illegitimate
-Teen Suicide rates have increased over 300%
- Divorce rates have increased over 400%

There have been more abortions in the U.S. (approx. 45 million) than deaths from all U.S. military conflicts combined (largest estimate is less than 1 million).  There are more abortions per day (approx 5000) than people that died in 9/11 (approx 3000).  (Is the initial fertilized cell akin to the first cell sparked to life in the primordial soup? Would we ever had considered legalizing abortion without assuming Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny?  Is our culture dehumanized to the point that life is not precious or long life and wisdom not honored - i.e. nursing homes?  Can evolution support our culture as acutally being 'humanized' and what evolutionary purpose does that serve? What is conceived in a human female - a human or a fish/amphibian/reptile with gills slits just waiting to evolve?)

There you go again, being as gullible as ever (from Talk Origins: Creationist Claim CA001.1):

1.  Crime rates go up and down and are associated mostly with the age of the population. There does not appear to be any correlation between crime rates and teaching evolution. The United States was generally more violent in the years 1870-1910 before evolution was taught. In recent years, crime rates have been dropping since 1989.

Regional trends show a negative correlation between crime and teaching evolution. Other developed democracies accept evolution to a far greater extent than the United States and have lower homicide rates, juvenile and early adult mortality, sexually transmitted disease infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion rates (Paul 2005). In the United States, southern states tend to emphasize creationism more, but they also have generally higher crime rates.

2. Correlation does not imply causation. Since the teaching of evolution, death rates from most cancers have decreased, air travel has increased, and the earth's temperature has risen, but we do not attribute any of those to teaching evolution.

3. In the United States, at least, most people do not believe evolution. If social ills follow from belief about origins, creationists deserve more of the responsibility.

4. "Do not ask why the old days were better than the present; for that is a foolish question" (Ecclesiastes 7:10).

The Human Mind - some things to consider:
-Are our thoughts nothing more than chemical reactions in the brain? Did our thinking abilities evolve for no reason other than their utility in allowing our DNA to reproduce itself?
-If our thoughts are the products of chemical reactions, then how can we know if any of our theories are true? Can one person's theory be the 'best'? Who determines the 'best'?
-Can science explain human consciousness? If science cannot explain the mind, then what else can we possibly explain?
-Can we know if we are actually conscious? Is consciousness merely an illusion programmed by our DNA to encourage our brains to make more DNA?
-Can we justify human emotions with evolution?  Can we evolve to feel morality/humanity/compassion/grief/joy and if so, would that be detrimental to natural selection?
-Can we justify morality with evolution? Is there actually a 'right' and 'wrong' experienced by so many human minds? Can we explain why we feel remorse or guilt from an evolutionary standpoint? Did morality evolve along with emotion?
-Did we learn morality from somewhere/something/someone? Is there an absolute standard? Are there any absolutes? Are you absolutely sure?

-Since we can think - and often do think - and even think about what we're thinking about, then there must be a reason ... can evolution explain it?
-Since we feel morality/humanity/compassion/grief/joy there had to be a reason ... can evolution explain it?

Ultimately neither you or I can be sure whether the universe we observe around us is real or unreal, I'm quite happy to assume it is but if you're not then I invite you to step out in from of the nearest fast moving truck and test the idea ... your choice (and I suspect I know which one you'll make). I choose to assume this world is real, I come from the POV that I think therefore I am, I think we know a lot more about the human mind than you'd like to believe we do (when I last counted there were something like 300 scientific journals on mind & brain so it would be more than a little naïve to suggest we know nothing). Morality is just a system of ethics and ethics are just systems that have culturally evolved to allow animals (humans especially but I'm not arrogant enough to believe we are the only species with an ethical code even if it isn't as developed as our own) to live together better, it is relative (as is right and wrong) not absolute. Live with it.

Again, none of this is a tool for conversion. I've never requested it, forced it, or planned for it. I merely presented you facts from my personal research (verifyable, not Wikipedia). You have the opportunity and the ability to think freely and openly. You can take all of this together and research more for yourself, or you can take one or two things you just want to be true and live on from there. You can attack me or what I write or what I believe or whatever, or you can take the time to question yourself and find out why you actually believe what you believe. You can base it on chance, blind luck, or something higher that you can think freely and that you live in a time and a place that encourages free thinking.  You can even base it on chance or luck or God that you happen to live in a place that some people wlllingly sacrifice themselves to ensure you continue to have the opportunity to think freely and be open-minded.  Take one or several points and convince yourself that is the only 'truth' or take them all and advance your own research for yourself.  We live in a world that either has a God or does not, but just know that both thoughts are terrifying.  Either way, thanks for the opportunity.

Christ! Even that bit sounds like it was copied from somewhere else. Of course you are trying to convert us ... this is an atheist forum, if you aren't bothered why don't you just [expletive deleted] somewhere else?

Look ... if you want to continue this farce that's fine, I'm well prepared for your kind of stupidity, over 10 years of "debating" you numpty's has given me a database of pre-prepared answers for most of the crap you can raise and even when I don't have the expertise and can't easily make an answer in a short enough time I can cut and paste a whole bunch of decent answers from many, many pro-evolution sites and trust me, I’m more than happy to oblige. However what I’d really like you to do (what I suspect we'd all really like you to do) is answer my (our) questions with real, pertinent data or to go away until you can come up with something a little more original than more questions off the standard “bible” of 100 questions. And by “100 questions” I refer to that standard list of creation questions that each and every one of you is told we can’t answer but, in fact, have done so ... repeatedly (many times, many places), in many different forms and to many, many different creationists.

I mean think about it (if indeed you have any brain left) ... if evolution and those scientists that support it (i.e. pretty much the entire scientific community) were really worried about these "questions", these "facts" and your warped interpretations of them don’t you think we and they would have backed off and run away by now? But we don’t ... we just deal with every pathetic little creationist that comes along ... we give the same old answers (you know the ones that are backed up by an incredible weight of evidence) and then they go away again. Unfortunately they go away somehow convinced that they won the debate when in fact all they did was not listen to the arguments ... there’s little we can do about that!

The fact is that people like you are not here to debate ... you are here to push your hokey, cult views on a group of people who, quite frankly, don’t want to hear them.

Hunter, we are intelligent, rational, science minded individuals ... we are not a bunch of sheep who hang on the words of a bunch of smart-mouthed, bullsh***ing evangelists! We are not sinners, we don’t need saving, we don’t need you and we don’t need your damned god!

Kyu

[curiosityandthecat]

Kyuuketsuki...

[Stoicheion]

i agree. Kyu, you PWN.

[jcm]

Creationism cannot explain vestigial organs.

poor Kyuuketsuki, no one has been licking his nipples...

For me...it is like licking my elbow.

  way to go Kyu!

[MikeyV]

Kyu -

 :hail:  

As a side note, not all males are sexually stimulated by nipple stimulation. I know I'm not. It does absolutely nothing for me.

[Will]

Kyuuketsuki, can you please elaborate?

[Asmodean]

Kyuuketsuki, can you please elaborate?

Yeah, what Will said.

oO(   )

[curiosityandthecat]

Kyuuketsuki, can you please elaborate?

Yeah, what Will said.

oO(  

[Asmodean]

I think he was being sarcastic.  :eek: . Because... Well,   .

[Kyuuketsuki]

Kyuuketsuki, can you please elaborate?

LOL! :eek2: ... fortunately it was a slow day

Kyu

[Improbable]

For Kels: I believe in evidence. I believe in the Scientific Method. I believe in reality. But I don't believe in anything 100%...the closest I'll go to 100% is 99.999999 infinitely recurring because I consider it unscientific to entirely leave out any possibilities atleast for the now, because I also believe its possible that in the future maybe 100% proof will exist - I just don't see how thats possible and for the now I don't believe it.
    So therefore, I don't believe in God because I don't think there's any evidence for ANY God, or ANYTHING Supernatural. There only seems to be evidence for material things. I'm a materialist and a reductionist. I'm a Darwinian De-Facto Atheist and at times I'm a bit of a Philosopher.
    I do not believe in the 'argument from personal experience' probably mostly because its much more subjective than scientific evidence.
    I do not believe in a Soul because there is no evidence for a soul or spirit of any kind. I believe we have soles if you're talking about the underneath of our feet, but I don't believe in the existence of 'souls'.
    I assume that after we die we will rot..and that there is no afterlife - because there is no evidence of an afterlife and it would almost certainly go totally against all natural laws of the universe if there was one IMO.
    I believe that the truth is not connected with desire and just because you desire God that doesn't make his existence true in ANY way whatsoever.
    I also do not consider it in any way depressing that there is no afterlife. I believe that the fact we have one life is inspiring and stops us treating life as a 'test' and stops us living our whole life for an afterlife that there is no evidence for the existence of.
    I believe that the thing about my belief of there only being one life is a truly inspiring and uplifting and ultimately liberating thing, I agree with Emily Dickinson when she said: 'That it will never come again
is what makes life so sweet.'
    I also believe that you certainly do NOT need to believe in any God or anything Supernatural at all to be moral and to be a good person.
    And I think that if you actually believe and/or agree with for example most of the stuff in the Old Testament that's potentially morally damaging since the Old Testament overall is very immoral. Yahweh in particular. Also there is some pretty horrible stuff in the New Testament...not to such an extent and not to such an extreme extent and Jesus is certainly an improvement. But for example God incarnating himself as Jesus and then telling Judas to betray him and get the Jews to murder him (and some Christians have even blamed the Jews for this over the past even though it was Jesus' fault for telling Judas to get them to do it)I I consider totally horrific. But atleast overall the Old Testament is much worse.
    Also if you're not going to take the bible literally I think...by what criterion do you seperate the good bits from the bad bits? and the (believed to be) true from the untrue bits?
    Like I said theres no more evidence for the good bits than the bad bits...Christians often just choose the bits they life and ignore the bits they don't...so how do they know whats good and whats bad in the first place?  I strongly believe (because of evidence) that this is somewhat an innate thing. It is both Genetic and Memetic Evolution. And I believe that its a naturally altruistic thing thats evolved both genetically and memetically.
    I believe there is strong evidence that many people thought of the 'Golden Rule' before Jesus did. Socrates for example.
    I believe Jesus only probably existed. And I also am almost 100% certain (as the reader should understand by what I stated above) that if Jesus did exist he would not have had any supernatural powers or have performed and miracles whatsoever.
    I do not believe miracles exist - in the supernatural sense - because I do not believe in the supernatural and there is no evidence for miracles.
    I THINK thats it...pretty much...I'll edit later if there's more:P