Why is naturalism considered scientific and creationism is not ?

[Hollie]

I will concede that earth may be an open system even though some say it is essentially a closed system. Are you willing to admit that it is very rare for a system to reduce entropy ?

I will concede that earth may be an open system even though some say it is essentially a closed system.

Great.

Are you willing to admit that it is very rare for a system to reduce entropy?

You still don't get it. Looking at the universe as a whole, entropy increases.
You can look at a plant or an animal and by using outside energy, they can decrease entropy in themselves, without changing the fact that entropy, universe-wide, is still increasing.
The fact that an oak tree is more complex than an acorn can be explained by the sunlight energy it used to make itself more complex.

So claiming that because, universe-wide, entropy is increasing, therefore life cannot evolve into more complex forms, is just plain wrong.

Do you get it yet?

Listen, I don't believe the current theory of evolution is even possible let alone ever happened. I believe small changes happened but only because the genetic data for these small changes already existed in our genome.

I believe there are limits to adapting to the environment and that is why the extinction list is so long.

How did the extinction list grow so long in just 6,000 years?

 

[YWN666]

I will concede that earth may be an open system even though some say it is essentially a closed system. Are you willing to admit that it is very rare for a system to reduce entropy ?

I will concede that earth may be an open system even though some say it is essentially a closed system.

Great.

Are you willing to admit that it is very rare for a system to reduce entropy?

You still don't get it. Looking at the universe as a whole, entropy increases.
You can look at a plant or an animal and by using outside energy, they can decrease entropy in themselves, without changing the fact that entropy, universe-wide, is still increasing.
The fact that an oak tree is more complex than an acorn can be explained by the sunlight energy it used to make itself more complex.

So claiming that because, universe-wide, entropy is increasing, therefore life cannot evolve into more complex forms, is just plain wrong.

Do you get it yet?

Listen, I don't believe the current theory of evolution is even possible let alone ever happened. I believe small changes happened but only because the genetic data for these small changes already existed in our genome.

I believe there are limits to adapting to the environment and that is why the extinction list is so long.

I think extinction has a lot to to with unnatural intervention, namely humans killing them on a large scale or destroying their habitat

 

[Youwerecreated]

I am fairly certain I never made such a statement. I don't usually make general statements. I can say that the combination of the first and second laws of thermodynamics yields a behavior for certain systems by which energy is transformed into work. I can say that living organisms maintain their entropy by drawing on external resources.

"certain systems have the ability to decrease entropy" doesn't sound like a statement I'd make, especially in conversation with you as your definition of entropy includes "dissorder" making any discussion of the entropy of systems rather meaningless given your incorrect understanding of it.

I want to know more about and what are these system possessing the ability decrease dissorder. We have a universe experiencing decay and everything in it.

Living organisms are experiencing genetic decay that is threatening the survival of animal, human populations,and plant populations. What is the cause of this genetic decay ? No Natural selection can’t prevent this genetic decay because the majority of mutations are recessive and can find their way in to a population through hidden carriers, rarely showing up as the double recessive that can be attacked by natural selection.This is a problem for what your theory calls for but this is reality.

I want to know more about and what are these system possessing the ability decrease dissorder.

Plant a seed. Add water. Place in sunlight.

The plant will decrease disorder. It will turn CO2 and H2O into a nice structure of cellulose.

You keep pointing to natural cycles as your evidence. I don't have a problem acknowledging natural cycles. what I have a problem with are the extrapolations of these natural cycles and promoting a theory that you have no support for.

 

[itfitzme]

You're the one making the claim that certain systems have the ability to decrease entropy, and I am asking you of an example of a living organism that can do as you claim. So do you have evidence or is this just making an explanation up to fend off the hordes of critics ?

I am fairly certain I never made such a statement. I don't usually make general statements. I can say that the combination of the first and second laws of thermodynamics yields a behavior for certain systems by which energy is transformed into work. I can say that living organisms maintain their entropy by drawing on external resources.

"certain systems have the ability to decrease entropy" doesn't sound like a statement I'd make, especially in conversation with you as your definition of entropy includes "dissorder" making any discussion of the entropy of systems rather meaningless given your incorrect understanding of it.

I want to know more about and what are these system possessing the ability decrease dissorder. We have a universe experiencing decay and everything in it.

Living organisms are experiencing genetic decay that is threatening the survival of animal, human populations,and plant populations. What is the cause of this genetic decay ? No Natural selection can’t prevent this genetic decay because the majority of mutations are recessive and can find their way in to a population through hidden carriers, rarely showing up as the double recessive that can be attacked by natural selection.This is a problem for what your theory calls for but this is reality.

You clearly don't know what I believe or know. Neither are you able tk distinguish between reality and what you read. Apparently, you will believe anything you read...or rather, pick and choose to believe one thing you've read over some otherthing you've read, depending on what you want to believe.

 

[Youwerecreated]

I will concede that earth may be an open system even though some say it is essentially a closed system.

Great.

Are you willing to admit that it is very rare for a system to reduce entropy?

You still don't get it. Looking at the universe as a whole, entropy increases.
You can look at a plant or an animal and by using outside energy, they can decrease entropy in themselves, without changing the fact that entropy, universe-wide, is still increasing.
The fact that an oak tree is more complex than an acorn can be explained by the sunlight energy it used to make itself more complex.

So claiming that because, universe-wide, entropy is increasing, therefore life cannot evolve into more complex forms, is just plain wrong.

Do you get it yet?

Listen, I don't believe the current theory of evolution is even possible let alone ever happened. I believe small changes happened but only because the genetic data for these small changes already existed in our genome.

I believe there are limits to adapting to the environment and that is why the extinction list is so long.

Thank you for confirming that you don't understand genetics and evolution at all.

Ok big boy it is your chance to be specific concerning my ignorance of genetics. Poop or get off the pot.

 

[Youwerecreated]

I am fairly certain I never made such a statement. I don't usually make general statements. I can say that the combination of the first and second laws of thermodynamics yields a behavior for certain systems by which energy is transformed into work. I can say that living organisms maintain their entropy by drawing on external resources.

"certain systems have the ability to decrease entropy" doesn't sound like a statement I'd make, especially in conversation with you as your definition of entropy includes "dissorder" making any discussion of the entropy of systems rather meaningless given your incorrect understanding of it.

I want to know more about and what are these system possessing the ability decrease dissorder. We have a universe experiencing decay and everything in it.

Living organisms are experiencing genetic decay that is threatening the survival of animal, human populations,and plant populations. What is the cause of this genetic decay ? No Natural selection can’t prevent this genetic decay because the majority of mutations are recessive and can find their way in to a population through hidden carriers, rarely showing up as the double recessive that can be attacked by natural selection.This is a problem for what your theory calls for but this is reality.

You clearly don't know what I believe or know. Neither are you able tk distinguish between reality and what you read. Apparently, you will believe anything you read...or rather, pick and choose to believe one thing you've read over some otherthing you've read, depending on what you want to believe.

If you're speaking of genetic decay,it's a fact. Would you like to compare numbers concerning beneficial mutations vs harmful mutations ?

 

[Youwerecreated]

I will concede that earth may be an open system even though some say it is essentially a closed system.

Great.

Are you willing to admit that it is very rare for a system to reduce entropy?

You still don't get it. Looking at the universe as a whole, entropy increases.
You can look at a plant or an animal and by using outside energy, they can decrease entropy in themselves, without changing the fact that entropy, universe-wide, is still increasing.
The fact that an oak tree is more complex than an acorn can be explained by the sunlight energy it used to make itself more complex.

So claiming that because, universe-wide, entropy is increasing, therefore life cannot evolve into more complex forms, is just plain wrong.

Do you get it yet?

Listen, I don't believe the current theory of evolution is even possible let alone ever happened. I believe small changes happened but only because the genetic data for these small changes already existed in our genome.

I believe there are limits to adapting to the environment and that is why the extinction list is so long.

I think extinction has a lot to to with unnatural intervention, namely humans killing them on a large scale or destroying their habitat

So much for the extinction events of the past according to theorists. Do you believe everything you read on the net ?

 

[Hollie]

Listen, I don't believe the current theory of evolution is even possible let alone ever happened. I believe small changes happened but only because the genetic data for these small changes already existed in our genome.

I believe there are limits to adapting to the environment and that is why the extinction list is so long.

I think extinction has a lot to to with unnatural intervention, namely humans killing them on a large scale or destroying their habitat

So much for the extinction events of the past according to theorists. Do you believe everything you read on the net ?

So Ken Ham's creation museum depicts historical fact. The dinosaurs became extinct due to competition from co-existing with humans.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

I want to know more about and what are these system possessing the ability decrease dissorder. We have a universe experiencing decay and everything in it.

Living organisms are experiencing genetic decay that is threatening the survival of animal, human populations,and plant populations. What is the cause of this genetic decay ? No Natural selection can’t prevent this genetic decay because the majority of mutations are recessive and can find their way in to a population through hidden carriers, rarely showing up as the double recessive that can be attacked by natural selection.This is a problem for what your theory calls for but this is reality.

I want to know more about and what are these system possessing the ability decrease dissorder.

Plant a seed. Add water. Place in sunlight.

The plant will decrease disorder. It will turn CO2 and H2O into a nice structure of cellulose.

You keep pointing to natural cycles as your evidence. I don't have a problem acknowledging natural cycles. what I have a problem with are the extrapolations of these natural cycles and promoting a theory that you have no support for.

You, and the others who misunderstand the 2nd Law, said order can never increase.
Said that things can't get more complex.
I just showed the simplest of examples proving your claim was wrong.

Will you continue in error, or admit you were wrong?

 

[Steven_R]

Like no other person of science never went against the establishment ? namely secularists gaining control over the creationist. I happen to agree with his views on Irreducible Complexity. Intellectual dishonesty,that is just a little over the top don't you think ?

There is a difference between having an unconventional idea and disregarding and/or intentionally misrepresenting what science has discovered.

And no, I don't think intellectual dishonesty is over the top considering some of the things the ID crowd and their allies among Fundamentalist Christianity have done.

Creationists were the earliest scientists. They don't attack real science,they reveal the weaknesses of theories that lacks evidence and is taught as fact. They poke holes in stupid baseless theories that cause people to reject God.

Deal with it,the creationist is slowly but surely poking holes in peoples vivid imaginations. ID are not allies to creationists you are beginning to sound like many of the angry Ideologues in this thread.

What are you worried about you have the courts and the government on your side ?

The only people that are buying the Creationist "victories" and "hole-punching" are people who don't know or understand what science does, how it does it, and what the findings mean. In short, your arguments are intended for laymen who don't know any better. Scientists dismiss your nonsense out of hand for good reason; namely because they know the science. Creationism is no more valid of an explanation of anything than the guy screaming about the Loch Ness Monster, Chemtrails, and the Queen of England is a lizard lady from Alpha Centuri 12.

Believe what you want, but it is factually wrong.

 

[daws101]

Like no other person of science never went against the establishment ? namely secularists gaining control over the creationist. I happen to agree with his views on Irreducible Complexity. Intellectual dishonesty,that is just a little over the top don't you think ?

There is a difference between having an unconventional idea and disregarding and/or intentionally misrepresenting what science has discovered.

And no, I don't think intellectual dishonesty is over the top considering some of the things the ID crowd and their allies among Fundamentalist Christianity have done.

Creationists were the earliest scientists. They don't attack real science,they reveal the weaknesses of theories that lacks evidence and is taught as fact. They poke holes in stupid baseless theories that cause people to reject God.

Deal with it,the creationist is slowly but surely poking holes in peoples vivid imaginations. ID are not allies to creationists you are beginning to sound like many of the angry Ideologues in this thread.

What are you worried about you have the courts and the government on your side ?

extreme bullshit alert!
the kind of creationist pseudoscience that YWC is pontificating about did not even exist until the 1960's..
Creation science or scientific creationism[1] is a branch of creationism that attempts to provide scientific support for the Genesis creation narrative in the Book of Genesis and disprove generally accepted scientific facts, theories and scientific paradigms about the history of the Earth, cosmology and biological evolution.[2][3] It began in the 1960s as a fundamentalist Christian effort in the United States to prove Biblical inerrancy and nullify the scientific evidence for evolution.[4] It has since developed a sizable religious following in the United States, with creation science ministries branching worldwide.[5] The main ideas in creation science are: the belief in "creation ex nihilo" (Latin: out of nothing); the conviction that the Earth was created within the last 6,000 years; the belief that mankind and other life on Earth were created as distinct fixed "baraminological" kinds; and the idea that fossils found in geological strata were deposited during a cataclysmic flood which completely covered the entire Earth.[6] As a result, creation science also challenges the commonly accepted geologic and astrophysical theories for the age and origins of the Earth and Universe, which creation scientists acknowledge are irreconcilable to the account in the Book of Genesis.[4] Creation science proponents often refer to the theory of evolution as "Darwinism" or as "Darwinian evolution".

 

[daws101]

I will concede that earth may be an open system even though some say it is essentially a closed system. Are you willing to admit that it is very rare for a system to reduce entropy ?

I will concede that earth may be an open system even though some say it is essentially a closed system.

Great.

Are you willing to admit that it is very rare for a system to reduce entropy?

You still don't get it. Looking at the universe as a whole, entropy increases.
You can look at a plant or an animal and by using outside energy, they can decrease entropy in themselves, without changing the fact that entropy, universe-wide, is still increasing.
The fact that an oak tree is more complex than an acorn can be explained by the sunlight energy it used to make itself more complex.

So claiming that because, universe-wide, entropy is increasing, therefore life cannot evolve into more complex forms, is just plain wrong.

Do you get it yet?

Listen, I don't believe the current theory of evolution is even possible let alone ever happened. I believe small changes happened but only because the genetic data for these small changes already existed in our genome.

I believe there are limits to adapting to the environment and that is why the extinction list is so long.

your belief is not relevant..

 

[daws101]

I will concede that earth may be an open system even though some say it is essentially a closed system.

Great.

Are you willing to admit that it is very rare for a system to reduce entropy?

You still don't get it. Looking at the universe as a whole, entropy increases.
You can look at a plant or an animal and by using outside energy, they can decrease entropy in themselves, without changing the fact that entropy, universe-wide, is still increasing.
The fact that an oak tree is more complex than an acorn can be explained by the sunlight energy it used to make itself more complex.

So claiming that because, universe-wide, entropy is increasing, therefore life cannot evolve into more complex forms, is just plain wrong.

Do you get it yet?

Listen, I don't believe the current theory of evolution is even possible let alone ever happened. I believe small changes happened but only because the genetic data for these small changes already existed in our genome.

I believe there are limits to adapting to the environment and that is why the extinction list is so long.

How did the extinction list grow so long in just 6,000 years?

bump!

 

[itfitzme]

I want to know more about and what are these system possessing the ability decrease dissorder.

Plant a seed. Add water. Place in sunlight.

The plant will decrease disorder. It will turn CO2 and H2O into a nice structure of cellulose.

You keep pointing to natural cycles as your evidence. I don't have a problem acknowledging natural cycles. what I have a problem with are the extrapolations of these natural cycles and promoting a theory that you have no support for.

You, and the others who misunderstand the 2nd Law, said order can never increase.
Said that things can't get more complex.
I just showed the simplest of examples proving your claim was wrong.

Will you continue in error, or admit you were wrong?

They are excellent examples that present a qualitative example of "orderliness" seeming to increase.

I am not sure how to get quantitatively. Entropy is simply a non-sequiter. I had this great image of the metabolic pathways of a cell. They are considerable and, qualitatively, it is all "orderliness". Indeed, the more metabolic pathways that a cell has, the greater will be both "orderliness" and entropy.

Entropy simply doesn't distinguish between "orderliness" and "dissorder". It only counts the number of states that a system can settle into, over the long run.

The more complex the organism, the more metabolic pathways, the greater the number of ordered states, and the greater the entropy.

There is another place where entropy doesn't extend, at least as far as I understand it, superconductivity. As I understand it, in superconductivity, the electrons are coupled so there is no resistance, no friction, no thermodynamic losses. Of course, as is usually with these things, it may not scale up.

But it at least raises the question as to if the macrodynamic laws of thermo is simply an artifact of the fact that the velocities, energy, and momentum of the mass of particles is spead out over a band of velocities, energy and momentums. The work can be extracted from the majority of the particles in the system, in mass, the spread of energy results in inefficiency in the transfer, ergo heat loss.

The fact that energy is conserved is everything. The second law simply says that, lacking any prefered direction for the energy to go, it will go equally in all directions. At a quantum mechanical level, if there are multiple states of equivalent probability, then multiple packets of energy will be shared "equally", probabilistically, between all the equivalent states.

There is no natural law that requires there be inefficiency losses in energy as a photon transfers from one particle to another. Obviously, right?

The second law is a mass process property of probabilities, not an absolute law of individual particles. It simply makes no sense at an individual particle level.

The second law of thermo is just a statistical accounting, nothing more. Statistical processes are dependent on having a statistically significant number of partticles or a statistically significant number of times. Extending it beyond what it is, simply counting states and presenting the mean and varience, is completely inappropriate.

And statistics doesn't have a measure of "orderliness".

People decide a straight flush is a winning hand. Statistis doesn't distinguish this from any other set of cards that we might decide is a winner.

Thermo doesn't distinguish between dead and alive, they are just another arrangement. For that matter, a living cat, in a box, has greater entropy than does a dead cat in a box. And if you don't feed either, over the long run, they both have the same entropy.

The whole entropy thing is a strawman arguement. No evolution theory says that entropy decreases due to living organisms or that it is proof of evolution. The entropy argument was introduced by creationists, misrepresenting the meaning of entropy, to "prove" that God must exist. YWC then created a strawman argument, saying that evolutionists claim that life reduces entropy. And it is all based on a false equivalency between "entropy" and "dissorder". If "entropy" meant exaclty the same thing as "dissorder", Kelvin, Caurnot, Joule, or whomever coined the phrase, would have just called it "dissorder" and left it as that.

As far as I'm concerned, in YMC's vision of the world, "entropy" is equivalent to "dissorder" and "dissorder" is equivalent to "entropy". When he says "dissorder", it also means "entropy" and when he says "entropy", it also means "dissorder". As such, any statement that he makes which uses either term is simply incorrect by definition.

There is no "correct" response to a non-sensical statement. There is no response to "Purple fingerwangs kibble nits."

 

[daws101]

Ywcs' propensity for spewing pseudoscience bullshit is matched only by his willful ignorance.
none of the threads he's posted are really about the subject matter or faith.
they are about his narcissism.

 

[itfitzme]

There is a difference between having an unconventional idea and disregarding and/or intentionally misrepresenting what science has discovered.

And no, I don't think intellectual dishonesty is over the top considering some of the things the ID crowd and their allies among Fundamentalist Christianity have done.

Creationists were the earliest scientists. They don't attack real science,they reveal the weaknesses of theories that lacks evidence and is taught as fact. They poke holes in stupid baseless theories that cause people to reject God.

Deal with it,the creationist is slowly but surely poking holes in peoples vivid imaginations. ID are not allies to creationists you are beginning to sound like many of the angry Ideologues in this thread.

What are you worried about you have the courts and the government on your side ?

extreme bullshit alert!
the kind of creationist pseudoscience that YWC is pontificating about did not even exist until the 1960's..
Creation science or scientific creationism[1] is a branch of creationism that attempts to provide scientific support for the Genesis creation narrative in the Book of Genesis and disprove generally accepted scientific facts, theories and scientific paradigms about the history of the Earth, cosmology and biological evolution.[2][3] It began in the 1960s as a fundamentalist Christian effort in the United States to prove Biblical inerrancy and nullify the scientific evidence for evolution.[4] It has since developed a sizable religious following in the United States, with creation science ministries branching worldwide.[5] The main ideas in creation science are: the belief in "creation ex nihilo" (Latin: out of nothing); the conviction that the Earth was created within the last 6,000 years; the belief that mankind and other life on Earth were created as distinct fixed "baraminological" kinds; and the idea that fossils found in geological strata were deposited during a cataclysmic flood which completely covered the entire Earth.[6] As a result, creation science also challenges the commonly accepted geologic and astrophysical theories for the age and origins of the Earth and Universe, which creation scientists acknowledge are irreconcilable to the account in the Book of Genesis.[4] Creation science proponents often refer to the theory of evolution as "Darwinism" or as "Darwinian evolution".

Sounds kinda like a conspiracy.

 

[daws101]

GSA Today
The evolution of creationism
Table of Contents

◦Introduction
◦Faith in Nature
◦Finding Time
◦Testimony of the Rocks
◦The Roots of Creationism
◦The Birth of Modern Creationism
◦Creationism Today
◦References
David R. Montgomery*

Quaternary Research Center and Dept. of Earth and Space Sciences, Box 351310, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195-1310, USA

Abstract

For centuries, natural philosophers, their scientific successors, and theologians alike sought to explain the physical and natural world. The now common cultural narrative of perpetual conflict between science and religion simplifies the arguments and struggles of the past and overlooks cross-pollination between those who embraced faith and reason as the keys to understanding earth history. When geologists unequivocally dismissed the idea of a global flood and recognized Earth’s antiquity, many conservative theologians acknowledged that there was more to the past than literally spelled out in Genesis, the opening chapter of the Bible. But some Christians—those we now call creationists—rejected this perspective and chose to see geology as a threat to their faith. In so doing, they abandoned faith in reason and cast off a long-standing theological tradition that rocks don’t lie.

Introduction

The story of historical views on Noah’s Flood shows how there is far more to the story of the relationship between science and religion than the simple portrayal of a long-running feud (Gillespie, 1951; Glacken, 1967; Davies, 1969; Rudwick, 2005; Montgomery, 2012). By the end of the nineteenth century, conservative Christians generally accepted that there was no geological support for reading Noah’s Flood as a globe-wrecking deluge and that natural revelations established by science should guide biblical interpretation. Even the original fundamentalists accepted geologic evidence that contradicted the view of a six-day creation followed by Noah’s Flood as all there was to earth history (Numbers, 1993). But the forerunners of modern creationists chose to defend their preferred literal reading of scripture no matter what the rocks revealed. Dismissing the findings of geologists, they rejected reason in the name of faith. In this sense, modern creationism evolved in response to geological discoveries. The following brief review traces aspects of this story to illustrate how geological debates evolved into theological schisms anchored by creationist views with no scientific currency.

Faith in Nature

For the first millennium of Christianity, major theologians embraced knowledge of the natural world in order to defend against pagan challenges to biblical authority. Saint Augustine (354–413), Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), and John Calvin (1509–1564) all endorsed reason as the way to learn about the world. Augustine was among the first to caution against advocating for biblical interpretations that conflicted with what one could observe for oneself. Centuries later, Aquinas praised the pursuit of knowledge and insight gained from experience reading God’s other book—nature.

Writing at the time of the Reformation, Calvin, too, considered the revelations of both nature and the Bible as fundamental truths. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), Calvin explicitly embraced the idea of respecting natural truths revealed through the study of nature: “If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God” (McNeill, ed., 1960, p. 273–274).

Calvin believed in keeping an open mind when it came to evaluating what we can learn about the natural world from observation and experience. In his view, closing one’s eyes to the way the world works was to close one’s eyes to God.

Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin all believed that Noah’s Flood was a global flood. They interpreted fossil seashells found in rocks as compelling proof—how else could the bones of marine creatures have ended up entombed in rocks high in the mountains?

Biblical interpretations accommodated new discoveries as knowledge of the natural world grew, because theologians adhered to the principle that God’s works in the natural world could not conflict with His Word in the Bible. Generation after generation of natural philosophers slowly uncovered facts inconsistent with a global flood, making it increasingly implausible to understand earth history in ways consistent with traditional literal interpretations of the Bible.

Finding Time

In 1669, when Steno, the venerated grandfather of geology, laid down his principles for reading the rock record, he interpreted his observations of the Tuscan landscape as recording six stages, one of which corresponded to Noah’s Flood (Fig. 1). Steno’s insights framed how to read earth history directly from the rocks. In arguing that the Flood laid down strata that subsequently collapsed to form today’s topography, Steno indirectly introduced the idea of tectonic controls on landforms, a foundational concept of modern geomorphology.


Steno’s six-stage model for the formation of the landscape around Florence, involving (1) precipitation of fossil-free sedimentary rocks into a universal ocean; (2) excavation by fire or water of great subterranean caverns; (3) collapse of undermined continents and the inundation of newly formed valleys in a great flood (Noah’s Flood); (4) deposition of layered sedimentary rocks containing fossils as the floodwaters receded; (5) renewed undermining of younger rocks in valleys; and (6) a final round of collapse to create modern topography. Letters serve to identify the same locations or rock layers in successive panels.


Steno’s little book, with its simple diagrams, formalized how to read earth history using the basic principles of geometry. The key wasn’t the underlying mathematical symmetry astronomers found in the heavens; it was simple rules based on what one could see for oneself. Before Steno, only a curious few read beyond the cover of nature’s great book to ponder the relationship between rocks and the lay of the land.

A century later, geologic history began to challenge theological tradition after discoveries like James Hutton’s unconformity, separating two distinct sandstones, at Siccar Point (Fig. 2) demonstrated that Earth’s history was too complicated to be accounted for by a single flood, no matter how big. Mainstream theologians willing to allow that there was more to the geological story than laid out in the Bible, and that the days of creation may have been allegorical, were less inclined to give up on the reality of a global flood. Many believed that the biblical flood inaugurated the most recent geological age. The lack of human remains in rocks thought to pre-date the flood was widely considered to confirm this view.


James Hutton’s unconformity at Siccar Point, Scotland—the contact between the gently inclined Devonian Old Red Sandstone and vertically dipping Silurian graywacke that established a compelling case for the vast scope of geologic time. The expanse of time required to uplift and erode the two mountain ranges that were the source for the sand in these deposits was unimaginable to Hutton. Photo by David R. Montgomery.


Although it is commonly assumed that eighteenth-century Christian theologians were opposed to science, some orthodox churchmen openly accepted the idea that Earth was ancient. In 1785, the Reverend James Douglas presented A Dissertation on the Antiquity of the Earth to the Royal Society. Douglas noted that sound geological observations supported the idea that the world was much older than the traditional 6000 years inferred from biblical interpretation: “Many well-informed persons have therefore been inclined to suppose that the earth was created in six expanses of time instead of six days” (p. 40).

By 1800, the question under debate among natural philosophers was whether Earth was tens of thousands or millions of years old. Some, however, refused to consider geologic evidence and simply rejected an old Earth outright. In his Genius of Christianity (1802), François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) argued that God “created the world with all the marks of antiquity and decay” (Roberts, 2007, p. 43). This new idea that God made the world to appear ancient—and therefore one could not investigate earth history by studying Earth itself—broke with tradition and garnered little support in the nineteenth century.

Testimony of the Rocks

In his influential Natural Theology (1802), Reverend William Paley echoed Aquinas and argued that because the Bible and nature shared the same author, scientific revelations that contradicted biblical interpretations provided natural guidance for better interpreting scripture. As realization grew that the world was unimaginably old, those seeking to reconcile biblical interpretation with geological findings employed two primary arguments. The day-age theory held that each day in the biblical week of creation corresponded to a geologic or cosmic age. The other theory, known as the gap theory, held that God created the world long ago but remodeled it for human use a few thousand years ago. The time in between wasn’t recorded in the Bible, creating an indeterminate gap between the first two verses of Genesis.

In 1807, London’s Geological Society was founded to promote the elevation of facts and observations over imaginative theories. Central to the issue of whether a global flood shaped the world was the question of what carved valleys. Did topography form beneath the waters of a great flood, or did rivers slowly cut their own paths? Studies of regional geology were seen as key to such fundamental questions.

In his inaugural address to the Princeton Theological Seminary in 1812, Archibald Alexander (1772–1851) promoted the need for scientific literacy among those preparing for the ministry. Alexander noted that natural history, and geology in particular, could help resolve difficult or ambiguous Bible passages. He preached that Christians should respect truth in all its forms because failure to take heed of scientific knowledge would only breed contempt for believers and hinder the spreading of the Gospel.

At the same time, geologists moved the search for evidence of Noah’s Flood out of the rocks and up into surficial deposits and the form of topography as they continued to see the biblical deluge as a geologically significant event. In his Reliquiae Diluvianae (Relics of the Flood, 1823) Oxford’s first geology professor, Reverend William Buckland, gathered facts thought to demonstrate the reality of a global flood. He described great accumulations of bones he believed were deposited by an enormous flood “immediately antecedent to the formation of those superficial and almost universal deposits of loam and gravel, which seems impossible to account for unless we ascribe them to a transient deluge, affecting universally, simultaneously, and at no very distant period, the entire surface of our planet” (Buckland, 1823, p. 146).

Buckland went on to admire the way in which originally horizontal strata were inclined such that mineral deposits and coal were accessible to miners, as well as how convenient it was that fertile soils were found in flat valley bottoms. Like many of his contemporaries, he thought geological evidence confirmed the Genesis stories and showed how well the world was designed for human use.

After several decades studying Europe’s rocks and surficial deposits, Buckland eventually admitted to having let his imagination run wild in his zeal to defend a global flood. He formally reversed course when he was asked to prepare a volume in a series of treatises illustrating “the power, wisdom, and goodness of God, as manifested in the creation,” which was commissioned by the will of the Earl of Bridgewater. In his 1836 volume, Buckland acknowledged new geological discoveries that contradicted his earlier views. There was no geological evidence of a global flood after all.

Shortly after Buckland’s recantation, Louis Agassiz invoked stray boulders in the Swiss Alps, grooved rock outcrops, and scratches on the underside of a rock overhang near Edinburgh to convince geologists that most of the evidence traditionally interpreted as resulting from a global flood actually recorded a flood of ice.

Particularly compelling was Charles Lyell’s argument that the cinder cones of southern France were too fragile to have survived a global flood. Deep valleys were incised into hard lava flows that could be traced back to their volcanic source in the cinder cones. Thus, the valleys must have been carved after the cinder cones formed. Lyell reasoned that Noah’s Flood could not have carved the valleys because any flood capable of carving valleys into solid rock would have swept away the loose cinders that formed the volcanic cones.

In the third volume of his Principles of Geology (1833), Lyell concluded that Noah’s Flood must have been a local or regional affair rather than a global deluge. Perhaps, he proposed, catastrophic flooding of a low-lying area like the Caspian Sea may have been recorded in the biblical flood story.

By the late nineteenth century, educated Christians widely endorsed the idea of a local flood in response to new geologic evidence. Theologians across denominational bounds endorsed variants of Lyell’s Caspian Sea hypothesis as a reasonable way to generate a devastating flood in humanity’s ancestral homeland. In 1863, the Dictionary of the Bible dismissed the notion of a universal flood and argued that a local flood in the lower valley of the Euphrates River provided a reasonable interpretation compatible with scripture. Many nineteenth-century Christians—geologists and archaeologists among them—concluded that the biblical flood story described a devastating Mesopotamian flood.

Forerunners of modern creationists adopted a different approach. In 1857, Philip Henry Gosse, a leading British naturalist, published Omphalos (“bellybutton” in Greek), in which he argued that Earth’s apparent antiquity was an illusion. In his view, all the world’s strata, fossils, and even fossil footprints were created at the same time, along with glacial furrows and polished rocks, evidence for the retreat of Niagara Falls, and mammoth bones gnawed by wolves. Confident he had the answer for the geological problems of the age of the world and the effects of the Flood, like Chateaubriand, he too thought God simply made the world to look old. Geologic evidence of past epochs of earth history was created to appear as if “all the preceding eras of its history had been real” (Gosse, 1857, p. 351).

Gosse argued that because all organic life exists in a cycle of birth, growth, decline, and death, everything must have started somewhere within this cycle back at the Creation. Adam was not created as a fertilized embryo, for he had no mother. Gosse professed that as surely as the first man had a bellybutton, trees were created with rings and rocks with fossils. Victorian minds ridiculed mercilessly his idea that God preloaded fossils into rocks back at the original Creation.

The Roots of Creationism

The roots of modern creationism run directly back to George McCready Price (1870–1963), an amateur geologist with no formal training. In a book designed to look like a geology textbook, Price (1923) asserted that there was no order to the fossil record. Rejecting the idea of fossil succession, he argued that the succession of organisms that geologists read in the fossil record was really just a mixed-up sampling of communities that lived in different parts of the antediluvian world. He considered the fossil record too incomplete to confidently reconstruct the past, citing the occasional discovery of animals thought to be extinct and known only from fossils.

Leading fundamentalists praised Price’s book, calling it a “great and monumental” work of an “up-to-date scientist”—“a masterpiece of real science” by one of “the world’s leading Geologists,” and “the sanest, clearest and most irrefutable presentation of the Science of Geology from the standpoint of Creation and the Deluge, ever to see the light of day” (Numbers, 1992, p. 98). But even some of Price’s most ardent supporters had questions about his new flood geology. In a 1924 review in the evangelical journal Bibliotheca Sacra, the editor credited Price with throwing “a wrench into the smooth running machinery of the evolutionary theory” butwondered why it was that when fossils were found in the wrong order, they were always in exactly the reverse of that predicted by geologists (Numbers, 1992, p. 95). How could strata have gotten flipped upside down after Noah’s Flood laid them down if the Bible did not mention subsequent catastrophes? Despite such qualms, fundamentalist proponents of flood geology were inclined to assess Price’s credibility by the conclusions he reached rather than the strength of his arguments or evidence.

Byron Nelson (1893–1972), one of Price’s flood geology disciples, reviewed the history of thinking about flood geology in The Deluge Story in Stone (1931). In praising Buckland as an upstanding nineteenth-century catastrophist, and overlooking Buckland’s famous recantation of Noah’s Flood, Nelson glossed over the reasons mainstream geologists abandoned flood geology in the first place. He then blamed the demise of flood geology on education having passed into the hands of men “more or less lacking in religious convictions” (Young, 1995, p. 252).

Other fundamentalist theologians joined in steadfastly defending Price’s global flood. Herbert Leupold (1892–1972) dismissed all criticism related to the distribution and migration of animals to and from the ark as pointless. He thought that eruptions of vast amounts of subterranean water caused huge waves that deposited the entire fossil record, drowning mammoth, dinosaur, and man alike. Illustrating just how wide the communication gulf had become between geologists and fundamentalists by the mid-twentieth century, Leupold wondered “when will geologists begin to notice these basic facts?” (Young, 1995, p. 283). Such ignorance of how geologists had already considered, tested, and refuted a global flood helped keep flood geology alive in the twentieth century.

Despite the efforts of Price and his followers, during the first half of the twentieth century, the majority of Christians—and evangelical fundamentalists—continued to endorse attempts to reconcile geology and Genesis. Even prominent anti-evolution crusader Harry Rimmer (1890–1952) acknowledged that Earth was quite ancient and thought the biblical flood was a local affair rather than a global catastrophe. Twentieth-century fundamentalist circles split into young-Earth creationists, who defended a global flood, and old-Earth creationists, who acknowledged geological evidence that we live on an ancient planet but maintained that God fashioned it for eventual human use.

The Birth of Modern Creationism

Curiously, the founders of modern young-Earth creationism grounded their unorthodox views in a surprisingly perceptive critique of pre-plate tectonics geology (Montgomery, 2012). John Whitcomb and Henry Morris wrote The Genesis Flood (1961), the book that spawned the creationist revival and resurrected evangelical faith in a global flood. Whitcomb, an Old Testament teacher, and Morris, a hydraulic engineer, embraced literal biblical interpretation to argue that the world was a few thousand years old and that Noah’s Flood had laid down all the sedimentary rocks before carving the topography we know today. Their lack of geological training did not stop them from claiming that a global flood provided a better explanation for the geologic record than did the theories of geologists.

Following Price, Whitcomb and Morris argued that the stratigraphic column worked out by geologists was fiction because, they believed, it was based primarily on the illusion of fossil succession. Pointing out that if one stacked up the greatest thickness of sedimentary beds in every geological age, the pile would reach more than 100 miles high, they held this ridiculous height to invalidate the conventional geologic column. In coming to this conclusion, they breezed by the facts that the average thickness of the rocks of any geological age is only a fraction of its maximum thickness and that only a fraction of Earth’s dynamic history is preserved in any one region of the planet.

Whitcomb and Morris did not go so far as to suggest that Christians reject geological facts, but maintained that the long and complex history of the planet that geologists read in the rock record was fiction. In their zeal to dismiss conventional geology as a sham, they described it in terms that serve well to describe their own work: “Procrustean interpretations, pure speculation and dogmatic authoritarianism—a system purporting to expound the entire evolutionary history of the earth and its inhabitants, yet all the while filled with innumerable gaps and contradictions” (Whitcomb and Morris, 1961, p. 212).

In their view, the plain meaning of God’s words trumped anything science could throw at it. “The instructed Christian knows that the evidences for full divine inspiration of Scripture are far weightier than the evidences for any fact of science” (Whitcomb and Morris, 1961, p. 118).

They read the Bible to determine geologic history and then looked for scientific support for their views—and dismissed or ignored contradictory evidence. They were surprisingly forthright about it: “We take this revealed framework of history as our basic datum, and then try to see how all the pertinent data can be understood in this context” (Whitcomb and Morris, 1961; preface to the 6th printing).

Their view of earth history was based on a literal interpretation of Genesis. In the beginning, at the Creation, God made Earth’s core and some kind of crust. Rocks that display evidence of internal deformation, like folds or minerals that form only at high pressures or temperatures, date from the First Day. Over the next week, a tremendous amount of geological work was accomplished, especially on the Third Day, when mountains were thrust up and ocean basins were carved out in a great rush of water as the planet was remodeled into a suitable dominion for man (Fig. 3). All this erosion and deposition formed the non-fossil–bearing sedimentary rocks and carved mountains into them. Several thousand years later, the Flood ripped up the entire surface of the planet, killed everything not aboard the ark, and laid down fossil-bearing sedimentary rocks. Then the present geological era began after a brief Ice Age caused by all the snow accumulating on freshly uplifted mountains. As far as the appearance of great antiquity, it was just that. The world was created to seem old. Whitcomb and Morris simply dismissed fossil evidence for a long history of life “on the basis of overwhelming Biblical evidence” (1961, p. 457) and asserted that it was impossible to learn the age of the world through studying the operation of natural laws now in operation. The idea laughed out of Victorian England took root in Cold War America. Still, at the time, Morris admitted he knew few evangelicals who bought into their views (Numbers, 1992).

One of many awkward facts facing advocates of a global flood is that although most of the world’s sedimentary rocks are found on continents, a global flood would have preferentially deposited sediments in low spots, such as ocean basins. Many flood geology proponents adopted the ecological zonation theory of Price’s student Harold Clark, which held that geological strata with distinct fossil assemblages represented antediluvian ecological zones. While they argued that the sedimentary cover on the modern continents was eroded from the ocean basins, this begs the question of how whole ecological communities of organisms and coral reefs could be transported intact and without mixing across great distances to be deposited preserving their original ecological zonation.

Creationism Today

When nineteenth-century geologists shelved the idea of a global flood as the central event in earth history, even the original fundamentalists accepted that the opening book of the Bible could not wholly explain the past. Later, in waging war on evolution, reactionary evangelicals resurrected discredited seventeenth-century ideas to explain topography, rock formations, and earth history—invoking a mysterious vapor canopy that they held fell from the sky to trigger Noah’s Flood. The displays at the Creation Museum in Peterson, Kentucky, USA, explicitly reject reason, branding it the enemy of faith and invoking a centuries-long, ongoing conspiracy of scientists to mislead the faithful about the nature of the world. Despite centuries of geological research that contradicts creationist claims, Gallup tracking polls from 1982 to 2012 have consistently found that more than 40% of Americans believe that God created people fewer than 10,000 years ago (Gallup, 2012).

While struggles over the geological implications of biblical interpretations date back to the earliest days of the Church, the story of how naturalists wrestled over reconciling the biblical flood with a growing body of contradictory geological evidence shows that the twentieth-century revival of flood geology recycled ideas previously abandoned in the face of compelling evidence. In light of nineteenth-century scientific discoveries, it appeared reasonable to read the biblical account of the Flood as either allegorical or a story told from the perspective that the whole world appeared flooded from the ark. Time and again, Christians accommodated geologic findings by reinterpreting Genesis to preserve the integrity of both natural and scriptural truths.

Of course, there were significant holes in conventional geological theories when Whitcomb and Morris laid out their biblically inspired views on earth history. Plate tectonics did not yet provide an explanation for the origin and distribution of mountains and other geological problems, such as the presence of fossils of temperate and tropical creatures entombed in rocks at high latitudes. But when the plate tectonics revolution swept through the earth sciences and explained previously perplexing observations, creationists ignored what they considered yet another misguided geological theory.

While geological thought has evolved over the past several centuries, Christianity has too—to the point where several varieties of creationists now argue bitterly amongst themselves. Young-Earth creationists believe the world is fewer than 10,000 years old and that Noah’s Flood remodeled it into the topography we know today in one fell swoop a few thousand years ago. Old-Earth creationists accept geological evidence and endorse ideas such as the gap or day-age theories and progressive creationism (also known as theistic evolution), through which God guided evolution in creating the diversity of life. The latest step in the evolution of creationism is based on repackaging as intelligent design the inherently untestable assertion that God designed the world with a particular purpose or goal in mind. Today, after losing repeated court battles over efforts to teach creationist views in science classrooms, the creationist strategy appears to have shifted to promoting efforts to question evolution.

Generally left out of the resulting “debates” is the simple fact that creationists lack any independently supported geological evidence to support their views. The late Harvard paleontologist Stephen J. Gould described a global flood as “the only specific and testable theory the creationists have offered,” noting that “the claim that creationism is a science rests above all on the plausibility of the biblical flood” (Gould, 1982, p. 12, 10). And yet, the geological case for a global flood that creationists offer as an alternative to evolution was discredited before Darwin set foot aboard The Beagle.

Geologists assess theories by how well they fit data, and creationists evaluate facts by how well they fit their theories. This simple distinction frames an unbridgeable intellectual rift. Nowhere is this divide deeper than over how to interpret the story of Noah’s Flood, for the ideas invoked to explain such an event have been refuted time and again, and there is no geologic evidence of a global deluge. Following Whitcomb and Morris, today’s creationists continue to pick and choose evidence to support beliefs their faith inspires. Given the ongoing conflict over what to teach in science classrooms, perhaps teaching the historical evolution of creationism offers a fresh way for students to learn about the history of geology, and thereby our knowledge of the world and how it works. How many creationists today know that modern creationism arose from abandoning faith that the study of nature would reveal God’s grand design for the world?

REFERENCES CITED
1.Buckland, W., 1823, Reliquiae Diluvianae; or, Observations on the Organic Remains Contained in Caves, Fissures, and Diluvial Gravel, and on Other Geological Phenomena, Attesting the Action of an Universal Deluge: London, John Murray.
2.Davies, G.L., 1969, The Earth in Decay: A History of British Geomorphology 1578 to 1878: New York, Elsevier Publishing, 390 p.
3.Douglas, J., 1785, A Dissertation on the Antiquity of the Earth, Read at the Royal Society, 12 May 1785: London, G. Nicol.
4.Gallup, 2012, In U.S., 46% hold creationist view of human origins: Gallup Inc., In U.S., 46% Hold Creationist View of Human Origins (last accessed 14 Sept. 2012).
5.Gillespie, C.C., 1951, Genesis and Geology: New York, Harper & Row, 315 p.
6.Glacken, C., 1967, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century: Berkeley, University of California Press, 800 p.
7.Gosse, P.H., 1857, Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot: London, J. Van Voorst, 376 p.
8.Gould, S.J., 1982, Creationism: Genesis vs. geology: The Atlantic, v. 250, no. 3 (Sept.), p. 10–17.
9.Lyell, C., 1833, Principles of Geology, Being an Attempt to Explain the Former Changes of the Earth’s Surface by Reference to Causes Now in Operation, v. III: London, John Murray, 398 p.
10.McNeill, J.T., editor, 1960, Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1559 translated edition (Institutio Christianae religionis by J. Calvin; trans. by F.L. Battles): Philadelphia, The Westminster John Knox Press, 1800 p.
11.Montgomery, D.R., 2012, The Rocks Don’t Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah’s Flood: New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 302 p.
12.Nelson, B., 1931, The Deluge Story in Stone: Minneapolis, Augsburg Press, 190 p.
13.Numbers, R.L., 1992, The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism: New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 458 p.
14.Paley, W., 1802, Natural Theology: Or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature: London, R. Faulder.
15.Price, G.M., 1923, The New Geology: A Textbook for Colleges, Normal Schools, and Training Schools; and For the General Reader: Mountain View, California, Pacific Press Publishing Association, 726 p.
16.Roberts, M.B., 2007, Genesis Chapter 1 and geological time from Hugo Grotius and Marin Mersenne to William Conybeare and Thomas Chalmers (1620–1825), in Piccardi, L., and Masse, W.B., eds., Myth and Geology: London, Geological Society Special Publication 273, p. 39–49.
17.Rudwick, M.J.S., 2005, Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution: Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 708 p.
18.Scheuchzer, J.J., 1731, Kupfer-Bibel in Welcher die Physica Sacra oder Geheiligte Natur-Wissenschaft (Sacred Physics): Augsburg and Ulm.
19.Whitcomb, J.C., and Morris, H.M., 1961, The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications: Philadelphia, The Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Company, 518 p.
20.Young, D.A., 1995, The Biblical Flood: A Case Study of the Church’s Response to Extrabiblical Evidence: Grand Rapids, Michigan, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 341 p.

GSA Today - The evolution of creationism

 

[daws101]

Creationists were the earliest scientists. They don't attack real science,they reveal the weaknesses of theories that lacks evidence and is taught as fact. They poke holes in stupid baseless theories that cause people to reject God.

Deal with it,the creationist is slowly but surely poking holes in peoples vivid imaginations. ID are not allies to creationists you are beginning to sound like many of the angry Ideologues in this thread.

What are you worried about you have the courts and the government on your side ?

extreme bullshit alert!
the kind of creationist pseudoscience that YWC is pontificating about did not even exist until the 1960's..
Creation science or scientific creationism[1] is a branch of creationism that attempts to provide scientific support for the Genesis creation narrative in the Book of Genesis and disprove generally accepted scientific facts, theories and scientific paradigms about the history of the Earth, cosmology and biological evolution.[2][3] It began in the 1960s as a fundamentalist Christian effort in the United States to prove Biblical inerrancy and nullify the scientific evidence for evolution.[4] It has since developed a sizable religious following in the United States, with creation science ministries branching worldwide.[5] The main ideas in creation science are: the belief in "creation ex nihilo" (Latin: out of nothing); the conviction that the Earth was created within the last 6,000 years; the belief that mankind and other life on Earth were created as distinct fixed "baraminological" kinds; and the idea that fossils found in geological strata were deposited during a cataclysmic flood which completely covered the entire Earth.[6] As a result, creation science also challenges the commonly accepted geologic and astrophysical theories for the age and origins of the Earth and Universe, which creation scientists acknowledge are irreconcilable to the account in the Book of Genesis.[4] Creation science proponents often refer to the theory of evolution as "Darwinism" or as "Darwinian evolution".

Sounds kinda like a conspiracy.

to quote one of my favorite movie lines: "Hippy, you think everything's a conspiracy!"

 

[Youwerecreated]

I want to know more about and what are these system possessing the ability decrease dissorder.

Plant a seed. Add water. Place in sunlight.

The plant will decrease disorder. It will turn CO2 and H2O into a nice structure of cellulose.

You keep pointing to natural cycles as your evidence. I don't have a problem acknowledging natural cycles. what I have a problem with are the extrapolations of these natural cycles and promoting a theory that you have no support for.

You, and the others who misunderstand the 2nd Law, said order can never increase.
Said that things can't get more complex.
I just showed the simplest of examples proving your claim was wrong.

Will you continue in error, or admit you were wrong?

We are looking at an increase in complexity in a different way. You're going from an egg to a human a totally natural cycle. It did not need an increase in new genetic information for this cycle. Your argument is as natural as a child as he or she ages can do more complicated math. That is a natural cycle not evolution and an increase in complexity.

I am looking at an increase in new genetic information to go from an ape to a human now that is an increase in complexity. We are looking at complexity much differently.

 

[daws101]

You keep pointing to natural cycles as your evidence. I don't have a problem acknowledging natural cycles. what I have a problem with are the extrapolations of these natural cycles and promoting a theory that you have no support for.

You, and the others who misunderstand the 2nd Law, said order can never increase.
Said that things can't get more complex.
I just showed the simplest of examples proving your claim was wrong.

Will you continue in error, or admit you were wrong?

We are looking at an increase in complexity in a different way. You're going from an egg to a human a totally natural cycle. It did not need an increase in new genetic information for this cycle. Y our argument is because as a child you learn math and as you get older you can do more complicated math. That is a natural cycle not evolution and an increase in complexity.

I am looking at an increase in new genetic information to go from an ape to a human. We are looking at complexity much differently.

is it just me or is ywc backpedaling?