Halcyonwaters
I agree with TC that once you have the basic picture of the modern creationist ideas it is possible to reread mainstream writings and get an appreciation for where fact becomes interpretaiton and theory. If you want to gain a true impression of what is really going on you do however have to look at the raw data and ignore interpretaitions by both creationists and evolutionists!
You asked about the issue of fossils. The best mainstream book I have ever read on this is by (one of) the world's foremost paleontologists MJ Benton ('Vertebrate Paleontology' - check it out at a uni library). Here you actually get to see a lot of the raw data. How? You get to see fossil distribution diagrams rather than idealised trees. These diagrams have links drawn in but these are carefully distinguished from the actual data.
You'll notice that the lines drawn in connecting each fossil distribution to antoher are of semi-random length. You simply join the tree up in the order that homology told you was best. This means that on average the fossil distribution will disagree with about half of the 'nodes'. What this means is that yuo can't use the fossil distribution to reliably tell you which animal is more primitive than another. Evoltuionists simply claim that the record is not complete but the answer caould also be that the fossil reocrd is a huge flood deposit.
But of course there is a validity to the fossil order that evoltuionists claim and they do follow approximately the order of evolution suggested by cladistics (the order gained via study of the anatomic similarities). Young earth creationists interperate much of the fossil reocrd as flood depostions so we do expect 'similar' creatures to be buried in similar parts of the record. But we certianly do not have a model which can yet explain the exact order. We simply expect it to ultimately do the job via biogeography, hydrodynamic sorting and relative mobility.
We can't prove this by any stretch of the imagination. However, given the distinct nature of basic fossil gourps in the record creation is a very good explantion of the origin. The rocks themselves look like flood deposits - the idea that the worldwide layers look like they were formed gradually like today's layers really is quite ludicrous. IMO mainstream geologists have somehow 'calibrated' themselves to see gradualism. The geological column is made up of vast layers - even vast fresh water layers. Specific continuous formations traverse continents. The classic types of formations found in the geocolumn do not have analogues forming today of the size typically found. There is no series of coal seans being formed anywhere on the planet like those covering the eastern half of USA. The marine layers on the western half of the US similarly is an 'epeiric sea' deposit. There are no flat shelves like this anywhere in the world today. This lines of evidence suggests the flood and so we suspect that the fossil order somehow was generated as descibed above.
[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 08-11-2002]
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