Why does evolutionary science seem to be

If that's the Tim Wallace that runs the "True Origins" website then his opinion carries little weight.Are you actually prepared to back up that statement with facts or is it just Tim Wallaces word against that of the scientists who have studied evolution for the last 150 years ?Is it from Tim Wallace that you got the idea that the "Big Bang" is "the God of evolution" ? Because such an idea has no basis in reality.[This message has been edited by PaulK, 02-01-2004]

Tim Wallace's opinion carries little weight because much of what he says is not true. His appearance on the talk.origins newsgroup where he kept insisting that the t.o crew MUST have seen a "theory of creationism" yet never being able ot offer more than vague handwaving as to where such a thing could be found was pretty pathetic.Then there's his attempt to argue that evolution violates the second law of termodynamics on trueorigins.org where he starts arguign about the real second law of thermodynamics, admits that evolution doesn't violate that and then invents his own "second law" so he can keep to the conclusion he wanted all along. A PhD in chemistry OUGHT to know better.As to your comments the Big Bang is the beginning of outr universe but that doesn't make it anything to do with evolution or any sort of God.

I think that this shows what the mainstream churches think of "creation science".The link below is the decision of the Judege in the case against a law forcing "creation science" into Arkansa schools.McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education Remember all these people were strongly enough against the law to put their names to a complaint aiming to have it removed from the statute book.

The Episcopalian church is a branch of the CofE. If they're anything like the home crowd then they're split between almost-Catholics, liberals and Evangelicals. It is only the latter who are likely to preach BI - and not even that many of them. There may be a tendency for Evangelicals to take a more extreme position because of the internal disputes over ordaining gays.

The literal interpretations of both the Noah Flood myth and a young Earth were disproven by geology before Darwin proposed his theory of evolution. While the evidence for evolution also contradicts a literal reading of the Flood story (e.g. the absence of the genetic bottlenecks that should exist if it were true) it had already been falsified before that became an issue.So no, evolution is not really used to disprove either of those - because we already knew that they were false.

No, you're missing the facts. Neanderthals are either a very closely related species or a subspecies - we don't know which. So even if you limit "kin" to the same species they could be "kin" and certainly they are very close relatives in evolutionary terms.And no we are not descended from a single couple. We are decended from a population - but only a single mitochondrial line has survived. Mitochondria are inherited from the mother so a if a woman has only sons none of her grandchildren will continue her mitochondrial line.This is all quite common knowledge so I don't see how you can be surprised by any of it. If you know enough to be so certain then you already know all this.

No, the facts do NOT say one woman. I explained exactly why you cannot conclude "one woman" - it is because the mitochondrial lines die out. The "one woman" refers ONLY to unbroken matrilineal descent.And those are the facts.

Do all women possess the smae line - depends where you put the start point ! Of course if there is only one surviving line from the time of mitochondrial "Eve" then all women currently alive are part of that line.Do we know for a fact that lines die out ? Well that means do we know for a fact that there are women who have no daughters ? Well *I* know that - didn't you ?How long does it take lines to die out ? That depends on the population. In a small population a line can die out very quickly - if there were twenty women at the time of mitochondiral Eve then it is quite easy for one of them to have no daughters and HER line is gone right there.And why would there be just one ? Because it is inevitable. Given that we are alive there must be at least one line. Given that lines tend to die out if we just go back far enough we will inevitably find a start point for a line includng all living humans - the only question is how far back we have to go. And that is what "mitochonndrial Eve" is all about.

The male equivalent is based on the Y-chromosome which is inherited exclusively through the male line.

I notice that you quote from my psot and attribute it to Jack.Lest start with the simple point that there is zero evidence that there was a single woman alive at that time. And absolutely no good reason to believe that there was.While we know of one species that managed to survive such a severe genetic bottleneck (cheetahs) any species reduced to a single female is staring extinction in the face. And it leaves detectable traces in the genome - cheetahs are severely inbred. If humans were reduced to a single female in the same timescale (around 10,000 years ago) it would show.Now it's your turn. You've been claiming that it was a fact that there was only a single woman alive at some point inhuman history. Where is your evidence for that ?Oh, and I forgot - you must be the first creationist I've ever seen who would go so far as to classify Neandertals as being apes - most insist that they were entirely modern humans, not even a subspecies.[This message has been edited by PaulK, 02-13-2004]

A nice little presentation on how the distribution of mitochondrial DNA lineages shows how humans spread out over the world.McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research | Department of Archaeology