What is the basis for a Creationist argument against Evolution?

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Dr. Behe has led himself away from science and into mysticism, as evidenced by Darwin's Black Box, a thoroughly unscientific work that is riddled with errors, and his failure to even attempt to perform any scientific research on ID.I am not aware of any proponent of ID and/or creationism who is not also a fundamentalist of some religion, almost all Christian, and is not committed to a religious explanation in spite of any evidence. Formally, the theory of evolution does not address the origin of life; it addresses how life changed after the origin.If one says that other view on the orgins of the panoply of life is scientific without investigating other views, then that's dangerous and unwarranted. Saying that no other extant view on the origins of the panoply of life is scientific after investigating other views extensively is a conclusion based on the available evidence. Thank goodness we have done the latter and not the former. Additional evidence of the correctness of our conclusion is afforded by the observation that the ID crowd appears to be distancing temselves even further from actual scientific investigation and committing themselves exclusively to political activism. How about giving the evidence a thought, and following where it leads, no matter how it may conflict with your preconceptions?We have given creationism far more than a thought. We've investigated it thoroughly, and some continue to investigate it. It has failed every test.Creationism was the dominant scientific paradigm of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. The geologists of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, devout Christians to a man, reluctantly abandoned the idea of a young Earth and a global flood, because the theory was contradicted by the evidence. Darwin and his predecessors did the same for the idea of young life and the separate creation of Man. Many have attempted to resuscitate creationism since then, but the evidence just isn't there to support it.Most of modern creationism consists of attacking various branches of science rather than developing any coherent theories, and the few attempts at developing coherent theories have been abject failures (e.g.: Behe and Dembski) that their proponents have not dared to subject to review and criticism by appropriate experts. But the appropriate experts have read what they have published, and pointed out the fundamental and fatal flaws and errors in many places that are fairly easy for an enquiring mind to find.

I urge you to avail yourself of Ned's offer, but here's what you asked for. The idea of a global flood creating any significant portion of the geologic features of the Earth was abandoned by creationist geologists well before Darwin, because it could not be reconciled with the evidence. Many of them went so far as to assert that no global flood happened.Adam Sedgwick was perhaps the greatest proponent of a global flood, yet in 1831 he said (as quoted at Summary on the Flood and A Flood Geologist Recants: Post of the Month: April 2002):

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Having been myself a believer, and, to the best of my power, a propagator of what I now regard as a philosophic heresy, and having more than once been quoted for opinions I do not now maintain, I think it right, as one of my last acts before I quit this Chair, thus publicly to read my recantation.... There is, I think, one great negative conclusion now incontestably established -- that the vast masses of diluvial gravel, scattered almost over the surface of the earth, do not belong to one violent and transitory period....

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From Hugh Miller -- 19th-century creationist geologist:

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Perhaps of particular interest to present-day creationists, however, is the way that Miller also discusses the theological issues. Many of the points Miller raises will be completely familiar to anyone who has followed the newsgroup talk.origins for a while, no matter what their perspective on the issues discussed there. Also, Miller's "The Testimony of the Rocks" book, published in 1857, provides useful historical documentation of the state of geology and the "global flood" model a few years prior to the publication of Darwin's theory of evolution in "The Origin of Species" in 1859. A common claim of some modern "young Earth global flood" creationists is that the geologic time scale and fossil succession is somehow "circular" or otherwise dependent upon evolutionary theory. A simple reading of Miller's discussion, prior to the proposal of evolutionary theory, makes it obvious that before Darwin's theory was published, the basic fossil succession and geologic time scale was well-established by completely independent means, even in the opinion of creationist geologists of that time. Likewise, the theory of a global flood as an explanation for the Earth's geology had been completely abandoned by almost all scientists familiar with geology, including the creationist ones. It was not consistent with the evidence known even then.

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Then why haven't you responded to my challenge in message 69?

True. Of course, if you want to take that way out, that destroys the entire concept of "scientific creationism" and leaves no possibilities that your beliefs will ever be taught in U.S. public schools as science, and ends this topic (you could re-start it in one of the forums about religious faith), and leaves us with a "trickster God" or even a "lying God" who has deliberately set up the Universe so every test we can apply tells us that no global flood happened. Very few creationists take that way out. Well, for one thing, there's no reason to believe that a global flood would have any effects that are qualitatively different from a local flood. E.g., a global flood would leave a global sediment deposit. We don't see that; there's sediments all over the earth, but they are different deposits.Read the Hugh Miller -- 19th-century creationist geologist link. He goes into great detail on how he knew there was no global flood, before Darwin and before radioisotope dating. See Problems with a Global Flood (Second Edition): Producing the Geological Record for a very brief introduction to the many features a global flood should produce that we don't see, and the many features that we do see that are incompatible with a global flood. See Why Geology Shows Sedimentation to Be too Slow for a Global Flood for some detailed treatises on problems by an experienced oil geologist and former young earth creationist.[This message has been edited by JonF, 01-25-2004][This message has been edited by JonF, 01-25-2004][This message has been edited by JonF, 01-25-2004]

Not an assumption ... a conclusion based on the data, a conclusion regretfully reached by the creationists geologists such as Hugh Miller, man who were desperately trying to believe in a global flood but too honest to deny the evidence. read teh link I supplied. Yes, it's a common attempted rebuttal, but it's sadly lacking. Fossils of any kind passing through strata are pretty rare, and those that have been found do not pass thorugh layers of strata that conventional geology claims deposited at separate times or over long perods of time. See http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/polystrate/trees.html and http://www.talkorigins.org/...lystrate/polystrate_trees.html (in which Andew MacRae discusses some findings on such fossils from 1868). Why not? Are you actually claiming that such a flood would leave no traces? No sediment layer? No great channels carved across the landscape? No erosion to a degree we see nowhere else? No worldwide set of jumbled fossils of the dead?It's certainly unique, no creationist geologist has ever dared claim such a preposterous idea!

Replied to in Soracilla defends the Flood?, in a more appropriate forum.