Evolution... good, bad or ugly?

[Dave]

all other creatures on this planet are virtually unchanged over the past few million years. domesticated animals have been genetically manipulated by humans to fill certain useable niches, but otherwise, a dog has remained a dog. humans have multiple starts and stops along the way. several "species" of humans have existed at the same time along the evolutionary trail. they also seem to arrive quickly and vanish almost as quickly. the human species has evolved at an astonishing rate compared to all other species.
any significantly advanced species is going to appear godlike to a lesser species. what would a caveman think of a cigarette lighter?
my conclusion... the human race is a genetic experiment by some other extraterrestial species. that would make evolution and creationism the flip side of the same coin.

 

[Luis G]

Spot, that still doesn't solve the problem of evolution. Here's a simple question for your theory: is the other extraterrestial specie an experiment of yet another specie, a product of evolution or a race created by God?

if you choose the first option, ask yourself again the same question until you choose one of the other 2 options or you find another theory

 

[Dave]

now theres a good "chicken and the egg" type of loop. i understood the thread to apply to life here on earth.

 

[Luis G]

i understood it as "life" in general, still, if it only applied to life on earth, and we want to follow your theory we should also dig into the extraterrestial origins.

 

[Dave]

we should also dig into the extraterrestial origins.

nah. i dont think so.

although i did't specifically say it in my first post, i believe in evolution. (me being an atheist makes it kinda difficult to subscribe to creationism.) i believe that evolution is a long slow process. the fact that humans have gone from cave-dwellers to building space stations in a mere 2 million years (mere in a cosmic sense) has me thinking humans may have had an evolutionary push.

 

[outside looking in]

1. MOON DUST

Meteoritic dust falls on the earth continuously, adding up to thousands, if not millions, of tons of dust per year. Realizing this, and knowing that the moon also had meteoritic dust piling up for what they thought was millions of years, N.A.S.A. scientists were worried that the first lunar ship that landed would sink into the many feet of dust which should have accumulated.

However, only about one-eight of an inch of dust was found, indicating a young moon.

Meteoritic material contributes nickel to the oceans. Taking the amount of nickel in the oceans and the supply from meteoritic dust yields an age figure for the earth of just several thousand years, not the millions (or billions) expressed by evolutionists. This, and the lack of meteoritic dust piles on the earth, lend to the belief in a young earth.

First off, it's a fairy tale that NASA was worried that the first lunar lander would sink into the dust on the moon. Calculations had indicated that the dust layer should be less than one foot thick. Second, calculations claiming that the dust layer should be "a hundred feet thick" (as is seen in some Creationist writings) are based on inaccurate measurements of dust fall onto the Earth. Accurate measurements place the amount of dust fall at 18000 to 25000 tons per year. The moon should receive roughly 25% per unit surface area due to its lower gravity. Using accurate data, calculations indicate a dust layer on the moon of only a few inches in accordance with the billions of years old age presumed by evolution and all other mainstream scientific theories. Finally, there is a difference between lunar accumulation and 'lunar dust' as in a lose powdery layer. Not much of the accumulated material on the moon stays in its powedry loose form; most of it is contained in the regolith, or subsoil layer that in some places can be 10 meters thick. Creationists themselves have admitted that the argument is based on outdated data, but it continues to spread simply because it "sounds good."

About the nickel concentration. The argument sounds good enough, until you realize that a crucial part of the equation has been left out: the removal rate of metals from oceans. Creationists use nickel simply because the figure for how long it would take to reach the current concentrations with known accumulation rates is roughly 9000 years. They neglect the other metals, some of which place the figure at 100 years, others at 260,000,000 years. All of those figures however ignore metal removal rates. For some metals we know that they are in equilibrium (accumulation and removal rates are identical) within the measurement error of our most sophistocated measurement techniques. For they others, they are probably very close to equilibrium as well, perhaps going through cyclic concentration changes.

 

[outside looking in]

2. MAGNETIC FIELD

The earth's magnetic field is decaying rapidly, at a constant (if not decreasing) rate. At this rate, 8,000 years ago the earth's magnetism would have equaled that of a magnetic star, a highly unlikely occurrence. Also, if electric currents in the earth's core are responsible for the earth's magnetism, the heat generated by these currents 20,000 years ago would have dissolved the earth.

The magnetic field varies drastically in its strength, as is indicated by magnetic particles trapped in the geologic record. In fact, the Earth's magnetic field has swapped polarity many many times during the Earth's lifetime. Currently, the magnetic field is decreasing in strength rather rapidly. If this continues (which there is no guarantee that it will), then there will be a polarity change in perhaps a thousand years or less. Saying that 8000 years ago the field strength would have equalled that of a magnetic star is like taking one data poing off of a sine wave, and extrapolating that slope back into the past (or foward into the future). It completely ignores the cyclic nature of the data.

 

[outside looking in]

3. FOSSIL RECORD

Charles Darwin stated, in his Origin of Species, "The geological record is extremely imperfect and this fact will to a large extent explain why we do not find intermediate varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps. He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my whole theory."

Now, 130 years and billions of fossils later, we can rightly reject the view of an incomplete fossil record or of one "connecting together all . . . forms of life by the finest graduated steps."

Out of the millions of fossils in the world, not one transitional form has been found. All known species show up abruptly in the fossil record, without intermediate forms, thus contributing to the fact of special creation. Let's take a look at Archeopteryx, a fossil that some evolutionists claim to be transitional between reptile and bird.

So is it millions, or billions of fossils?

Archeopteryx is discussed in evolutionist Francis Hitching's book, The Neck of the Giraffe - Where Darwin Went Wrong. Hitching speaks on six aspects of Archeopteryx, following here.

(The following six points are quoted from Luther Sunderland's book, Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems, pp. 74-75, the facts of which points he gathered from Hitching's book.)

1. It had a long bony tail, like a reptile's.

In the embryonic stage, some living birds have more tail vertebrae than Archeopteryx. They later fuse to become an upstanding bone called the pygostyle. The tail bone and feather arrangement on swans are very similar to those of Archeopteryx.

One authority claims that there is no basic difference between the ancient and modern forms: the difference lies only in the fact that the caudal vertebrae are greatly prolonged. But this does not make a reptile.

2. It had claws on its feet and on its feathered forelimbs.

However, many living birds such as the hoatzin in South America, the touraco in Africa and the ostrich also have claws. In 1983, the British Museum of Natural History displayed numerous species within nine families of birds with claws on the wings.

3. It had teeth.

Modern birds do not have teeth but many ancient birds did, particularly those in the Mesozoic. There is no suggestion that these birds were transitional. The teeth do not show the connection of Archeopteryx with any other animal since every subclass of vertebrates has some with teeth and some without.

4. It had a shallow breastbone.

Various modern flying birds such as the hoatzin have similarly shallow breastbones, and this does not disqualify them from being classified as birds. And there are, of course, many species of nonflying birds, both living and extinct.

Recent examination of Archeopteryx's feathers has shown that they are the same as the feathers of modern birds that are excellent fliers. Dr. Ostrom says that there is no question that they are the same as the feathers of modern birds. They are asymmetrical with a center shaft and parallel barbs like those of today's flying birds.

5. Its bones were solid, not hollow, like a bird's.

This idea has been refuted because the long bones of Archeopteryx are now known to be hollow.

6. It predates the general arrival of birds by millions of years.

This also has been refuted by recent paleontological discoveries. In 1977 a geologist from Brigham Young University, James A. Jensen, discovered in the Dry Mesa quarry of the Morrison formation in western Colorado a fossil of an unequivocal bird in Lower Jurassic rock.

This deposit is dated as 60-million years older than the Upper Jurassic rock in which Archeopteryx was found. He first found the rear-leg femur and, later, the remainder of the skeleton.

This was reported in Science News 24 September 1977. Professor John Ostrom commented, "It is obvious we must now look for the ancestors of flying birds in a period of time much older than that in which Archeopteryx lived."

For starters, how would you explain the existence of Protoarchaeopteryx robusta and Caudipteryx zoui, two dinosaurs that were discovered to have been feathered? Yep, that's right, not only is there a transitional species between dinosaurs and birds, but there are fossil examples of dinosaurs that lack most all of birds common features but were covered in feathers.
Aside from that, instead of refuting the claims of what makes the Archaeopteryx similar to modern birds (for that is a given, and has never been in dispute... in fact, that's part of the requirement for it to be a transitional fossil in the first place), I'll just list some additional features that set it apart from modern birds that have not been refuted to any degree.
1) It doesn't have a bill. Modern birds do.
2) Trunk region vertebrae are free. In birds, they are always fused.
3) Brain shape matches that of dinosaurs, not birds.
4) Long bony tail with many free vertebrae. In birds, these are fused up to give them the pygostyle.
5) Slender ribs without joints.
etc., etc., etc.
In short, this particular fossil has many attributes of both birds and dinosaurs. That is the very definition (the one commonly used by Creationists anyway) of a transitional fossil. Also, many of Dr. Gish's arguments have been made obsolete by years and years of new (and up to date) information.

And so it goes with the fossil that many textbooks set forth as the best example of a transitional form. No true intermediate fossils have been found.

In a letter to Luther Sunderland, dated April 10, 1979, Dr. Colin Patterson, of the British Museum of Natural History, wrote:

"...I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic licence, would that not mislead the reader?"

Just think of it! Here is a man sitting amidst one of the greatest fossil collections ever and he knows of absolutely NO transitional fossils. So convincing I believe this quote to be that it will sum up this discussion on fossil evidence.

Ludicrous. There are reams of examples of transitional fossils. In fact, the very term has many different meanings. Are you referring to a transition from species to species, from genera to genera, from family to family? Here's an interesting idea: every fossil found is a transitional example between its ancestors and its descendants, assuming that its lineage survived to have descendants.
I could produce a list of dozens of examples, but it seems a rather tedious task.

 

[outside looking in]

4. EMBRYONIC RECAPITULATION

Darwin said that embryological evidence was "second to none in importance." The idea of embryonic recapitulation, or the theory that higher life forms go through the previous evolutionary chain before birth, was popularized by Ernst Haeckel in 1866. It was later found that Haeckel forged the diagrams which he used is evidence for the theory.
The main arguments for embryonic recapitulation are the supposed "gill slits" (left over from fish), "yolk sac" (left over from the reptile stage), and "tail" (from the monkeys) in the human embryo. The gill slits, so called, are never slits, nor do they ever function in respiration. They are actually four pairs of pharyngeal pouches: the first pair become germ-fighting organs; the second, the two middle ear canals; the third and fourth pairs become the important parathyroid and thymus glands.

The yolk sac does not store food because the mother's body provides this to the embryo. In fact, the "yolk sac" is not a yolk sac at all, but its true function is to produce the first blood cells.

The "tail" is just the tip of the spine extending beyond the muscles of the embryo. The end of this will eventually become the coccyx, which is instrumental in the ability to stand and sit as humans do.

Also arguing against recapitulation is the fact that different higher life forms experience different stages in different orders, and often contrary to the assumed evolutionary order.

Darwin is old. Though he was the father of evolution, his original ideas aren't the Bible of scientists. Many of his ideas have been revised, or replaced altogether. This is one of them. A good theory adapts to new information, absorbing it and becoming stronger. Evolution is certainly the best example of this.

 

[outside looking in]

5. PROBABILITY

The science of probability has not been favorable to evolutionary theory, even with the theory's loose time restraints. Dr. James Coppedge, of the Center for Probability Research in Biology in California, made some amazing calculations.

Dr. Coppedge "applied all the laws of probability studies to the possibility of a single cell coming into existence by chance. He considered in the same way a single protein molecule, and even a single gene. His discoveries are revolutionary. He computed a world in which the entire crust of the earth - all the oceans, all the atoms, and the whole crust were available. He then had these amino acids bind at a rate one and one-half trillion times faster than they do in nature. In computing the possibilities, he found that to provide a single protein molecule by chance combination would take 10, to the 262nd power, years." (That is, the number 1 followed by 262 zeros.) "To get a single cell - the single smallest living cell known to mankind - which is called the mycroplasm hominis H39, would take 10, to the 119,841st power, years. That means that if you took thin pieces of paper and wrote 1 and then wrote zeros after (it), you would fill up the entire known universe with paper before you could ever even write that number. That is how many years it would take to make one living cell, smaller than any human cell!"

According to Emile Borel, a French scientist and expert in the area of probability, an event on the cosmic level with a probability of less than 1 out of 10, to the 50th power, will not happen. The probability of producing one human cell by chance is 10, to the 119,000 power.

Sir Fred Hoyle, British mathematician and astronomer, was quoted in Nature magazine, November 12, 1981, as saying "The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way (evolution) is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein."

As one can readily see, here is yet one more test that evolution theory has flunked.

Completely irrelevant calculation. Why? Because random chance is but one part of evolution. The other, equally important, driving factor is natural selection, which is hardly random. No evolutionist ever claimed that any organism, cell, or even a singe protein came into existence entirely by chance. Therefore, all these ridiculously large numbers are simply meaningless.

Why Creationists don't understand this one very important concept I'll probably never understand.

 

[outside looking in]

6. SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS

The second law of thermodynamics states that although the total amount of energy remains constant, the amount of usable energy is constantly decreasing. This law can be seen in most everything. Where work is done, energy is expelled. That energy can never again be used. As usable energy decreases, decay increases. Herein lies the problem for evolution. If the natural trend is toward degeneration, then evolution is impossible, for it demands the betterment of organisms through mutation.
Some try to sidestep this law by saying that it applies only to closed environments. They say the earth is an open environment, collecting energy from the sun. However, Dr. Duane Gish has put forth four conditions that must be met in order for complexity to be generated in an environment.

1. The system must be an open system.
2. An adequate external energy force must be available.
3. The system must possess energy conversion mechanisms.
4. A control mechanism must exist within the system for directing, maintaining and replicating these energy conversion mechanisms.
The second law clearly presents another insurmountable barrier to evolutionary idealism.

Hmm... well, the Earth itself satisfies all four conditions listed there. I suppose an embryo growing into an adult is against the second law as well? The truth is that the second law was a clarification of a few ideas dealing with thermodynamics applied to closed systems (yes, that's right), and was never intended to deal with open systems. Even so, it is not against the law for local regions to increase in complexity at the expense of another region (this is more along the lines of an open system, but the lines are blurred... if you consider the entire solar system as one system, is it closed or open?). To be completely honest, we don't even know if the second law is truly a law or not. It holds for observable measurements of closed systems, but we simply don't know if the universe in its entirety adheres to the law or not. Further, it has yet to be derived from first principles, so we may find that on a quantum level it is not a concrete rule after all.

That is all beside the point however, since - despite Gish's assertions - the second law is completely compatible with evolution. The growth of a single organism offers a more serious challenge to the second law than does the evolution of a species.

 

[outside looking in]

7. VESTIGIAL ORGANS

Vestigial organs are supposed organs in the body which are useless, left over from evolutionary development. The following arguments for vestigial organs are based on those taken from the "Bible Science Newsletter," August 1989, p. 16.
1. Just because we don't yet know the role of an organ does not mean it is useless and left over from previous stages of evolution.

2. This view is plain false. In the 1800's, evolutionists listed 180 vestigial organs in the human body. The functions for all have now been found. Some of these were the pituitary gland (oversees skeletal growth), the thymus (an endocrine gland), the pineal gland (affects the development of the sex glands), the tonsils, and appendix (both now known to fight disease.)

3. The fact that an organ must sometimes be removed does not make it vestigial.

4. The fact that one can live without an organ (appendix, tonsils) does not make it vestigial. You can survive without an arm or a kidney but these are not considered vestigial.

5. Organs are not vestigial based upon your need or use of them.

6. According to evolution, if an organ has lost its value, it should, over time, vanish completely. There has been enough time to lose these "vestigial" organs, but we still have them.

7. If organs do become useless, this would back up the second law of thermodynamics and the degenerative process, not evolution, which requires adaptation of organs for new purposes.

8. Vestigial organs prove loss, not evolutionary progression. Evolution theory requires new organs forming for useful purposes, not "old ones" dying out.

9. Evolutionists have, for the most part, given up the argument over vestigial organs.

And what about male nipples?

Vestigal doesn't mean useless, but rather it points to a trace of something else. Vestigal legs in snakes for example still have some limite use in locomotion, but their importance isn't in their usefulness (or lack thereof) but rather that they look like traces of legs. Think about that for a moment and you'll realize the fallacy of the above arguments.

 

[outside looking in]

8. FOSSIL AND FOSSIL FUEL FORMATION

Evolutionists like to tell us that at least thousands of years are needed to form the fossils and fuels (such as coal and oil) that we find today. However, objects must be buried rapidly in order to fossilize. This, bearing also in mind the billions of fossils and fossil fuels buried around the world, seems to indicate a worldwide catastrophe. None other than, you guessed it, Noah's flood.
Ken Ham, director of the Australia-based Creation Science Foundation, presents some interesting facts in seminars which he gives. Oil can now be made in a few minutes in a laboratory. Black coal can also be formed at an astonishing rate. Ham also has in his overlay presentation a photograph of a fossilized miner's hat, about fifty years old. All that is necessary for fossilization is quick burial and the right conditions, not thousands of years.

I suppose then if it is possible to form a diamond in a few seconds in the laboratory, then we must conclude that the age of the Earth is only a few minutes? I don't follow this line of reasoning at all. Perhaps it is possible to form oil or coal deposits in a few thousand years in some rare circumstances. Perhaps that accounts for a minute percentage of all oil and coal deposits found thus far. How does that, in any way, argue that the Earth must be relatively young?

 

[outside looking in]

9. PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIA

Seeing the problem of gradual evolution with the fossil record, and the obvious abrupt appearances of species, Drs. Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge have formed the theory of punctuated equilibria. Punctuated equilibria, is, by example, a bird giving birth to a mammal, thus leaving no transitional fossils in the geological record.
Many top evolutionists disagree with this position. And punctuated equilibria has its problems, too. For instance, in the above case, of a bird bearing a mammal, another mammal of the same kind of the opposite sex must be born at the same approximate time in the same area in order for the new species to continue. The odds of just one organism appearing this way, let alone two fulfilling the circumstances above, are astronomical.

Stephen Gould would be rolling in his grave were he able to read the above statements. Punctuated equlibria never claimed that a large jump could be made from parent to offspring in a single generation. Whoever the author was that made such an assertion needs to do a bit more reading. Gould's idea was simply about the relative mutation rate; while most evolutionists had assumed it would be fairly constant, Gould argued (correctly IMO) that it would be fairly stagnant for large periods of time when selection pressures were low, and then the mutation rate would rise dramatically as selection pressures rose (climate shifts, disasters, etc.). However, keep in mind that a relatively fast mutation rate, fast enough to be a blink in geologic time, would still be so slow as to be unmeasurable by humans in a labarotory. Related arguments about two "hopeful monsters" being necessary to have sex are equally laughable.

 

[outside looking in]

10. HOMOLOGY/MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

Homology is the similarity of structures between different types of organisms. Some have argued that these similarities are evidence of one common ancestor. However, as Sunderland points out, when the concentration of red blood cells is used, utilizing the ideas of homology, man is more closely related to frogs, fish, and birds than to sheep.
But now, with the development of molecular biology we are able to make a comparison of the same cells in different species, which adds a whole new dimension to homology. Unfortunately, for the evolutionists, molecular biology does as all other evidences do: presents greater argument against evolution theory.

In molecular biology, proteins of the same type in different organisms can be tested for difference in amino acid makeup. The figure resulting is converted into a percentage. The lower the percentage, the less difference there is between the proteins. Dr. Michael Denton, in experiments with Cytochrome C, a protein that converts food into energy, and hemoglobin, found the following.

   Cytochrome C Differences          Cytochrome C Differences

   Bacterium to Six Organisms        Silkmoth to Vertebrates
   to yeast . . . . . . . 69%        to lamprey . . . . .27%
   to wheat . . . . . . . 66%        to carp. . . . . . .25%
   to silkmoth. . . . . . 65%        to pigeon. . . . . .26%
   to tuna. . . . . . . . 65%        to turtle. . . . . .25%
   to pigeon. . . . . . . 64%        to horse . . . . . .30%
   to horse . . . . . . . 64%
 
   Cytochrome C Differences          Hemoglobin Differences
 
   Carp to Terrestrial Vertebrates   Lamprey to Other Vertebrates
   to bullfrog. . . . . . 13%        to human . . . . . .73%
   to turtle. . . . . . . 13%        to kangaroo. . . . .76%
   to chicken . . . . . . 14%        to chicken . . . . .78%
   to rabbit. . . . . . . 13%        to frog. . . . . . .76%
   to horse . . . . . . . 13%        to carp. . . . . . .75%

Dr. Denton states, "There is not a trace at a molecular level of the traditional evolutionary series: fish to amphibian to reptile to mammal. Incredibly man is closer to lamprey than are fish." The evidence is clear; evolution is struck another hard blow!

What? I suppose that if I picked, more or less at ramdom, some arbitrary criterion for deciding what species are more closely related that I could get some odd results as well. How about... the number of hairs on an organism. By that criteria, we'd probably find we are more closely related to rats than to chimpanzees. Or, how about body mass? We'd probably be more closely related to a few shrubs than we would to a cat. How can people pass off such arguments as being in any way relevant?

 

[outside looking in]

11. DATING METHODS

Many of the radiometric dating methods used for determining the age of fossils are quite unreliable. Carbon-14 dating is usually sound within a few hundred years span of time. But there are exceptions to this. For example, a living mollusk was dated using the carbon-14 method. The readings said it had been dead for 3000 years.

Lava rocks from a volcano in Hawaii which erupted in 1801 were tested, using the potassium-argon method. The readings showed them to be nearly 3 billion years old. Moon rocks were tested by various radiometric methods, yielding dates ranging from 700 million to 28 billion years.

I suppose a few sporadic examples are reason enough to ignore the thousands of examples that fit well into our best understanding of reality? You know, there is always the possibility of human error and instrument error. Aside from that, rare environmental conditions might explain a few anomolous cases. That still does nothing to discredit the thousands upon thousands of results that agree very well with each other and with theory.

Dating methods such as potassium-argon, uranium-lead, and rubidium-strontium, are based on assumptions. These methods are based on chemical change (uranium to lead, etc.) where the parent material (ie., uranium) is converted to the daughter material (ie., lead) at a known rate, called a half-life. These methods cannot be trusted on the basis that too little is known. In order to come up with a correct date, you must know:

1. how much of the parent material was in it at the start,
2. how much of the daughter material was in it at the start, &
3. if there has been some type of contamination since.
In obtaining dates now, scientists assume the answers to or ignore these questions. The fact is that we cannot know how old a specimen is unless we were there when it was formed.

1. Wrong
2. Wrong
3. Wrong

Dating methods such as Uranium-Lead, Potassium-Argon, or Rubidium- Strontium do not rely on information about initial quantities of parent or daughter materials. They also do not rely on any specimen of known age for calibration. Finally, these methods can indicate whether any contamination was present or not.

Whoever wrote the above arguments against radiometric dating knows as much about the science behind it as your average house cat does.

 

[outside looking in]

12. DINOSAURS

Evolutionists insist that dinosaurs died out millions of years before man appeared. However, there are many reasons to disbelieve this. There are the stories of animals much like dinosaurs in the legends of many lands. These creatures were called dragons.
Many times in the recent past, explorers have recorded sightings of flying reptiles much like the pterodactyl. Human footprints were found along with those of a dinosaur in limestone near the Paluxy River in Texas.

Also not to be tossed aside is the possibility of dinosaurs living today. Consider the stories such as the Loch Ness monster (of which many convincing photographs have been taken). Some have claimed to see dinosaur-like creatures in isolated areas of the world.

Recently, a Japanese fishing boat pulled up a carcass of a huge animal that intensely resembled a dinosaur. A group of scientists on an expedition into a jungle looking for dinosaur evidence claims that they witnessed one, but their camera was damaged.

However, they tape recorded the roar of the beast. This recording was checked. The voice patterns on it did not resemble those of any other roaring. You decide. At any rate, the evidence that man and dinosaur did live together at one time poses another problem for the evolutionists.

"But if the dinosaurs lived at the same time as man, they would have had to have been on the Ark, and that's impossible!" Is it? The ark was about one and one-half football fields long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet tall. It had a cubic footage of 1,518,750.

There would have been plenty of room on the Ark for the dinosaurs (especially considering that only a few were of the enormous size of Tyrannosaurus or "Brontosaurus.") Also, the Bible states that Noah was to take two of every kind onto the Ark. Many dinosaurs and reptiles were of the same kind, but much smaller. Dinosaurs pose no problem for creation science.

Whoa, a lot of stuff there. First, do you seriously believe dinosaurs and man lived at the same time? Perhaps so, if the earth is less than 10000 years old.

The Paluxy River footprints were not human footprints. Some were eroded dinosaur footprints, and some were carved by man. This argument has long since been refuted.

The Loch Ness monster? Wow... I'm not touching that one.

What the Japanese fishing boat pulled up was most likely a rotten shark carcass.

The scientists' camera was damaged? How convenient. So was mine.

Dinosaurs pose no problem for creation science? What about the hundreds of thousands of species present? What about all the food they would need to eat for a year? That sounds like a pretty serious problem to me.

 

[outside looking in]

13. SUN'S DIAMETER

The sun's diameter is shrinking at the rate of five feet per hour. At this rate, life could not have existed on the earth 100,000 years ago.

And what makes you think the size of the sun or its rate of shrinkage or growth is a steady state condition? Mighty big assumption there. Besides, the five foot per hour figure is but one measurement made in the past few decades. Historical comparisons of various solar eclipses and transit times place the figure anywhere between the five foot per hour number and zero, and to be honest it could well have been fluctuating the whole time.

 

[outside looking in]

14. NILE RIVER'S OVERFLOW

Measurements of the sediment deposited as a result of Nile's flooding each year leads to the conclusion of an earth under 30,000 years old. Considering a few larger than normal overflows would place the age of the earth close to the biblical account.

What? So the author identified a possible geologic feature that might be less than 30,000 years old. Some mountains are much younger still. How does that in any way suggest that the age of the entire Earth is dependent on the age of the Nile river delta? Besides, there is again that lingering assumption of a steady state system, which river delta formation is most certainly not. How is it that this is consistently overlooked?

 

[outside looking in]

15. EARTH'S ROTATION

The spin rate of the earth is slowing .00002 second per year. If the earth were the billions of years old that the evolutionists say it is, the centrifugal force would have notably deformed the earth.

Using an even higher rate of .005 seconds per year per year (since it is a deceleration, a 'per year per year' type of unit is correct) yields a 14 hour day 4.5 billion years ago. This is hardly a problem for mainstream science. Also, using this .005 seconds figure gives roughly a 22 hour day 370 million years ago, which agrees quite well with analysis of coral outlays from that period. However, it is thought that the deceleration rate is currently much higher than it would have been in the past due to resonance modes with the oceans. When the Earth was spinning a bit faster, these resonance modes would not have acted as the brake that they currently are (as a type of hysterisis damping).

What is really amusing is that the .00002 second per year per year figure given in the argument above would not have caused any notable deformation of the Earth by centrifugal force.