Both or neither.

What about evolution do you think violates the scientific method? When you do tests on fossils, you do them in the present. When you construct explanitory models, you do so in the present. There's nothing about constructing models of what happened in the past that violates the scientific method of gathering data, constructing hypotheses, and testing their predictions against more data.

There's no such thing as irreducible complexity, at least not in the sense that you're talking about (not being able to construct a given system step-wise).After all, an arch is irreducibly complex - remove any piece, and the arch fails. Yet, arches are built piece by piece. How? By scaffolds. Temporary structures that are not themselves irreducably complex, but aid in the development of structures that appear to be. Scientists have hypothesized analogous "scaffolds" in evolution, as well. What, like it's more probable that Christianity just happens to be the right choice out of the world's hundreds of religions? That there just happens to be a God so loving and so omnipotent that, while he created us all and loves us, he never lifts a finger to do anything or assure us of his presence?No offense, but I'll take evolution as the alternative with the least improbable entities. The only things that's truly improbable about evolution is that a self-catalyzing molecule came to be, but that only has to happen once. Actually, I wouldn't mind the higher being. I'm already accountable to my human peers, what's one more being to be accountable to? I don't believe in evolution because it lets me do what I want. (In fact, I have a harder time doing what I want because there's no clearly defined moral law - I have to assess each individual action in terms of its effect on my human peers and environment, which is a lot harder than just comparing notes with a pre-defined rule set.)The reason scientists (who largely are people of faith anyway) reject creationism is that it simply isn't supported by the evidence. There's far too much evidence that the Biblical account can't explain. (Paleobotanical sorting, for instance.)

-[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 09-16-2003]

What there is is legitimate counter-evidence for them. For instance a young solar system is falsified by the orbital motion of asteroids and the global flood is falsified by paleobotany. The same way we conclude that any model is rubbish: the don't consistently explain the data. For instance how does a global flood explain sorting in the fossil plant record?

I'd say it's 100% as proven as any other scientific theory, like relativity or the germ theory of disease. That is to say, it's as proven as it gets. There's no serious scientific controversy about the validity of the theory of evolution.

No, it really wouldn't. For instance, it wouldn't explain why plants become "less evolved" as you head down in the fossil layers. It wouldn't explain geologic strata that can only be formed under specific situations that wouldn't occur during a flood. I don't know anything about comets. What I do know is that the spin situation of the asteriod belt is not consistent with a recent creation 6000 years ago. They've been there way too long.

Moving the goalposts, are we?Anyway, there's no difference between micro and macro. It's like saying that walking to the store is microwalking, and walking ten miles is macro-walking. It's the same process over different amounts of time.

Wait a minute, now, you need to think about that. You can't have fossils after the flood in your model, because the flood is the source of strata and fossilization. So fossil plants can't be after the flood, they have to be there before the flood.And anyway, what you're describing - plants adapting to new environments by increasing complexity - is exactly evolution. So you're refuting evolution with a theory that relies on evolution? How does that make any sense? Did you click the link and read the thread? It's a little sketchy I know, because all I have is the abstract, but the long and the short of it is that given known amounts of solar radiation, the asteroids can only spin the way they do - in more or less the same direction - if they've been absorbing solar radiation for billions of years. If the solar system was only 6000 years old, the asteroids wouldn't have absorbed enough energy to normalize their spins - their spins would instead be totally random because of collisions. I think what you meant was "astronomers". Evolutionists do biology, not astronomy. Why bother? Not a one of those things you mentioned is true. Oh, I know AiG wants you to think they are, but they're lying to you, and we can demonstrate any time you care to open a new thread on the subject.

How? If you admit that it's even the same process, how can it be different?If you agree that 1 + 1 = 2, then why doesn't 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 5?You're just making stuff up, now.

I dunno, I have a bad feeling about this. Thinking back to my school experiences I remember a lot less critical thinkers and a lot more people who were of the mind that "it must be true, because I heard it from a teacher."This seems like a schadenfreude situation that is too good to be true.

It'd be wrong in a different way. Think about radiometric dating as unmarked yardsticks of different length. Imagine using them to measure the length of your thumb. No matter what length of stick you used, you'd get 1 sticklength (no fractions in this scenario.) Under no circumstances would you get multiple sticklengths for measuring something shorter than the stick.If the Earth was really only 6,000 years old, every radiometric date would return 1 half-life, no matter how long the half-life would be. You wouldn't get multiple half-life dates converging on the same date.It's the convergence of so many unrelated half-life dating methods that is the strongest evidence for the accuracy of radiometric dating.

You're misinformed. To the contrary, it's constantly being proved accurate, provided you follow the correct procedure. Like any scientific test it gives you bad data if do it wrong.