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Explained in a simple way: Mutation applies small random changes to the DNA. Natural selection then removes all changes that are harmful, only leaving progressive modifications. These modifiactions then accumulate over time, leading to the constant evolution of species.



I know how the theory works. But you quoted me out of context. I was asking how getting the DNA from a foreign source, still doesn't explain how that foreign DNA was written in the first place.

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Because calibration is not required, the U235->Pb207 method is extremely accurate - the error is less than 0.1%.



I'll have to look into it when I have more time, but if you don't know the starting point, then how can you ever know how much of the daughter isotope is there in relation to the 'age'.

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And on science-oriented websites like talkorigins.org you'll find a list of the refutations of all those arguments



I've also found a lot of refutations to talk.origins arguments, back and forth and so on.

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What I still would like to hear, for instance, is creationist theory itself.



If evolution is change over time, then I suppose creation is change within a kind over time, within the limit of that kind. To be succinct.

I contest a lot of fundamental beliefs, like the age of the earth, and what have you. But the way I see it, it really doesn't matter. Creationists attribute the observations of nature to an all-powerful creator, evolutionists attribute all natural observations to an all-powerful nothingness.

I guess, if my succinct answer isn't what you were looking for, the I have to ask what specifically you want to know.

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Since creationists gave up defending it long ago, this theory seems to have disappeared from all their websites.



I don't know which sites you've been reading, but this isn't the impression I get at all. But maybe we're not coming from the same viewpoint.

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do creationists "scientifically explain" the origin of the earth and solar system?



Big bang or not, we attribute it to either God or some sort of creator. Materialists must either say that nothing became something, or that matter is in some aspects supernatural.

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Ok, but this then again raises the basic question that I already asked in the other thread: If the earth was created by God in the way it is, what good is creationism then at all?



Creationists would not say the earth, or life, is in the state it was at the beginning of creation. Potentially having a bit to do with the second law of thermodynamics, but there's so much confusion surrounding that law that it could be a whole other debate.

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If you believe the earth was created by God 6000 years ago, then it was certainly no problem for God to place fossils in the earth,



No one seriously believes that except certain ill-informed people.

Same with old rocks. Albeit rocks could have looked like they were older, its simply assumed that all heavy elements came from stars. Which is unverifiable, and actually scientifically unimaginable. Which we can get into if you want. Let's assume a more reasonable explanation though, and say that elements didn't come from stars, but were all created at about the same time. That might throw a wrench into dating methods.

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to create rocks that were already 4.55 billion years old, and to place photons in space so that we can see stars that are billions of light years away.



Same thing here. I believe there's a fairly good chance that we are seeing things that are billions of lightyears away. Although I don't really agree with the way they figure out these distances.

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So for what reasons do you need to explain away all those observations?



I don't kow. Why does anyone care to discover anything?

Why do scientists try and figure out how matter could have created itself. Its a futile thing to do. It must ignore everything we know about nature. But they still do it. It doen't make sense to me either.

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Mt. Helens? Wasn't that several hundred years ago?



1980s.

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You see, the opposite result of what a 'global flood' would provide.



So instead of trying to fix the problem of polystrate fossils, they use them as a way to disprove the flood? As I know it, this isn't a problem for us. There could have been local flood events, or some other simple explanation. I'm not sure about all the details at this time. However, to say that some of these polystrate trees are just stumps ignores that many of them are huge and extend through many layers. So its really a bigger problem for you. Why, if these layers are so old, would the tree have stood up for that long? Even talk.origins explanation fails to address this in any real way, though it seems to address the problem, the argument is paper thin. If you guys want to pursue that line of argument, we can.

The deal isn't to say that polystrate trees prove THE flood, just that they prove that layers of strata can't be dogmatically believed to be millions+ years old.

Actually, I shouldn't say that it proves a young age for strata. But instead makes it hard to believe that any fossil found several feet above another is automatically 65 million years older than the lower one or whatever.

Last edited by Irish_Farmer; 05/21/06 23:29.
"The task force finds that...the unborn child is a whole human being from the moment of fertilization, that all abortions terminate the life of a human being, and that the unborn child is a separate human patient under the care of modern medicine."