Debate: Creationism vs. Evolutionism
Side: creationism

“Okay to start off, the Devonian era spans from about 416 – 359 million years ago and pteridosperms were the first plants with real seeds, and these plants came around at the latter part of the Devonian, so I was a bit off there, but still, it is no 6000 years”Still irrelevant; it is a statement without evidence there for useless. The study you sent just after this was again more of the same; it provided a study of a plant and the closest it got to evidence was telling us the quality of pictures found without actually providing any of these pictures. I want evidence for - dates that is all. The timeline you sent was more of the same also; it told me when the earth came about without giving any evidence for the time period given – this too was the case with the dinosaur page; it gave me a date of when the dinosaurs first began and instead of backing that up with evidence, they start to tell me how large they were and what their claws looked like. I am not interested in descriptions; I want evidence for the dates you gave me. “Not only do they reference the generalities of what is going on at the time, but they give specific example of certain creatures or organisms present in those times”Sure, they tell me that dinosaurs roamed the earth millions of years ago and tell me what size of feet they had and what they ate. I could easily make such a statement but, as they do, I would appear completely stupid as I give no evidence for such a statement.“Okay for you claim that the bible does not make mistakes, what about the two cases I brought up last time. I will repost both of them and show you how to get to my other link. First off is the bats are not birds as the bible claims them to be”I apologize for not covering this point in my last post – I remember reading it but must have completely forgotten and been caught up in another point you made. Here I will cover this. Moses listed the animals that were clean and unclean, and when he began listing the birds, he included the bat which would imply that he believed a bat to be a bird. Since we know that a bat is not a bird, does this make the bible incorrect? No; modern times have categorized animals far more specifically than they did thousands of years ago resulting in the bat being categorized as a mammal not a bird. Modern science has a far different classification system than ancient times; in Moses’ time, birds and bats were seen as alike since they categorized all flying animals as birds. Since that is the category they used, they were correct. There is no error; it is a difference of categorization procedures and time. The modern critic has imposed on the ancient text a modern system of categorization and then stated that the bible is wrong – this is a big error in thinking. Again, I apologize for not covering this point in my last post.Ok, your second point on Noah’s ark. So firstly, how could Noah round up all these animals and get them into the ship? Noah didn’t round them up, they came to him instead. Although this is hard for many to believe and would have been a supernatural sight to see, it is said that it would have been as though the animals were called by a “homing instinct” – a behaviour planted in them by their Creator. This event in history is an event that cannot be explained by our limited understanding of nature; we are still understanding all the incredible animal behaviours exhibited in God’s creation: the amazing flights of Monarch butterflies, hibernation instincts, earthquake sensitivity, the migration of Canada geese and other birds, the annual travels of whale and fish, and countless other fascinating capabilities of God’s animal kingdom. Secondly, your link states that fresh water animals could not have survived in salt water as the ocean spread across land. “Any suggestion that fresh water fish could not have survived in a post flood world assumes three things not in evidence: 1) that the salinity of the oceans and seas in Noah’s day was the same as the salinity of those today 2) that fresh water fish cannot live in diluted salt water and 3) that the ability of water living creatures in Noah’s day to survive in saline environments was the same as that of creatures found in today’s oceans and seas. So the first assumption does not agree with the available scientific evidence. Based on a study of various factors of the past and present, some scientists believe that the salinity of the oceans may have been one-half of what they are currently (see, for example, Austin and Humphreys, 1990, 2:27, and Walter Lammerts as quoted in Whitcomb and Morris, 1961, p. 70). There is no reason that the fresh-water fish of Noah’s day could not have survived, provided the salinity of the waters was less than it is today. Leonard Brand has noted: “[W]e would expect changes in the chemistry of seas and lakes—from mixing fresh and salt water.... Each species of aquatic organism would have its own physiological tolerance for these changes” (1997, p. 283). In addition, as Brand commented regarding the fresh/salt water mixture that would have ensued during and immediately after the Flood: “[T]he less dense fresh water may not mix quickly with the salt water and it stays on top long enough to provide a temporary refuge for fresh-water organisms. Perhaps, too, many animals have a greater potential for adaptation to changing water conditions than we have recognized” (1997, p. 301-302). The second assumption—that fresh-water fish cannot live in diluted salt water—is now known to be false, as Whitcomb and Morris point out as long ago as 1961 in their classic text, The Genesis Flood (p. 387, footnote). The third assumption—that the ability of water-living creatures in Noah’s day to survive in saline environments was the same as that of creatures found in today’s oceans and seas—similarly is known to be incorrect. Many fresh-water fish have relatives that once lived in saline environments (see Batten and Sarfati, 2000). Furthermore, even today there are fish (e.g., large-mouth bass) that thrive in brackish waters such as those where the Mississippi River dumps its fresh water into the salt water of the Gulf of Mexico. Thus, in the end, the skeptics’ claim that Noah’s ark likely included giant fish tanks is wrong.” This excerpt proves your comedy video very wrong, providing evidence, logic and even numerous studies that too show evidence and logic. Here is a site (that I have often turned to for aid in the past) that helps to explain how Noah managed to fit all the animals onto his ark:“Question: "How did Noah fit all the animals on the Ark?"Answer: How did Noah fit all of those animals on the ark? Was the ark big enough to fit “two of every kind… of the birds after their kind, and of the animals after their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind,” and seven of some kinds? What about food? There had to be enough room to store enough food to last Noah and his family (8 in all), plus all of the animals, at least a year (see Genesis 7:11; 8:13-18) and maybe more, depending on how long it took for vegetation to grow back. That’s a lot of food! What about drinking water? Is it realistic to believe that Noah’s boat was big enough to store all of these animals and all of this food and water for over a year?The dimensions for the ark given in Genesis are 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high (Genesis 6:15). What is a cubit? A cubit is an ancient unit of measurement, the length of the forearm from the elbow to the longest finger (the term “cubit” comes from the Latin word “cubitum” which means “elbow.” The Hebrew word for “cubit” is “ammah.” As everybody’s arms are different lengths, this unit may seem a bit ambiguous to some, but scholars generally agree that it represents somewhere between 17 and 22 inches (43-56 centimeters). The ancient Egyptian cubit is known to have been 21.888 inches. So, doing the math,300 x 22 inches = 6,600; 50 x 22 inches = 1,100; 30 x 22 inches = 6606,600/12 = 550 feet; 1100/12 = 91.7 feet; 660/12 = 55 feet.Thus, the ark could have been up to 550 feet long, 91.7 feet wide and 55 feet high. These are not unreasonable dimensions. But how much storage space does this amount to? Well, 550 x 91.7 x 55 = 2,773,925 cubic feet. (If we take the smallest measurement of cubit, 17 inches, we end up with 1,278,825 cubic feet). Of course, not all of it would have been free space. The ark had three levels (Genesis 6:16) and a lot of rooms (Genesis 6:14), the walls of which would have taken up space. Nevertheless, it has been calculated that a little more than half (54.75%) of the 2,773,925 cubic feet could store 125,000 sheep-sized animals, leaving over 1.5 million cubic feet of free space (see - http://www.icr.org/bible/bhta42.html)..)John Woodmorappe, author of the definitive Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study, estimated that only about 15% of the animals on the ark would have been larger than a sheep. This figure does not take into account the possibility that God may have brought Noah “infant” animals, which can be significantly smaller than adult animals.How many animals were on the ark? Woodmorappe estimates about 16,000 “kinds.” What is a “kind”? The designation of “kind” is thought to be much broader than the designation “species.” Even as there are over 400 dog breeds all belonging to one species (Canis familiaris), so many species can belong to one kind. Some think that the designation “genus” may be somewhat close to the biblical “kind.”Nevertheless, even if we presume that “kind” is synonymous with “species,” “there are not very many species of mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles. The leading systematic biologist, Ernst Mayr, gives the number as 17,600. Allowing for two of each species on the ark, plus seven of the few so-called “clean” kinds of animals, plus a reasonable increment for known extinct species, it is obvious that not more than, say, 50,000 animals were on the ark” (Morris, 1987).Some have estimated that there were as many as 25,000 kinds of animals represented on the ark. This is a high-end estimation. With two of each kind and seven of some, the number of animals would exceed 50,000, though not by very much, relatively speaking. Regardless, whether there were 16,000 or 25,000 kinds of animals, even with two of each and seven of some, scholars agree that there was plenty of room for all of the animals on the ark, plus food and water with room to spare.What about all of the excrement produced by all of these animals? How did 8 people manage to feed all of those animals and deal with tons of excrement on a daily basis? What about animals with specialized diet? How did plant-life survive? What about insects? There are a thousand other questions like these which could be raised, and they are all good questions. In the minds of many, these questions are unanswerable. But they are certainly nothing new. They have been asked over and over for centuries. And in all of that time researchers have sought answers. There are now numerous, very scholarly feasibility studies which have put Noah and his ark to the test.With over 1,200 scholarly references to academic studies, Woodmorappe’s book is “a modern systematic evaluation of the alleged difficulties surrounding Noah's Ark” (John Woodmorappe, “A Resource for Answering the Critics of Noah’s Ark,” Impact No. 273, March 1996. Institute for Creation Research, 30 January 2005 http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-273.htm). .) Woodmorappe claims that after years of systematically examining all of the questions which have been raised, “all of the arguments against the Ark are… found wanting. In fact, the vast majority of the anti-Ark arguments, at first superficially plausible, turn out to be easily invalidated.””“It’s about people admitting the bible can be wrong and it is not perfect. That’s what most of my arguments are getting to, they are to prove that there are parts of the bible that cannot be true. The bible has faulty facts, history, geology, and biology in it and I am trying to prove that by showing how they contradict scientific discoveries. Just because someone writes something in a book doesn’t make it true, and some of the things in the bible (the cases I am debating above) are not true. My cases are made to discredit the bible so it cannot be used as a rebuttal, such as in the evolution debate. You use the bible to support creationism but it's like a court trial, the bible is your witness and I am trying to discredit him by showing how he does not always tell the truth.”I understand, but I am convinced and very sure that you will never be able to prove the bible wrong. Sure, there are many who have attempted to but in process have had to throw logic or some other important factor out the window so that their case can be believable. The excerpts I have included here are very well presented which I thought would be better than my typing up. They provide logic and evidence; the authors clearly have a great understanding of the subjects. “Okay for the passage in Job you brought where god describes something that could be an elephant until it mentions it has a ceder -thick tail. The rebuttal I have to this is that it was made up. I can hypothesize this because this is a case where what the book says doesn’t match reality. First off, you can refer back to the timeline I gave you on the national geographic website that shows that’s dinosaurs died out millions of years before primitive humans ever existed”You can believe it is made up if you like, because that is what I say to all the statements and links you send that fail to provide any kind of evidence. And I can hypothesize this because for several posts you have been sending me links and statements from scientists that repeatedly fail to provide any evidence whereas evidence for the flood is staring us in our faces; the physical features of the earths terrain clearly indicate a catastrophic past – from canyons and craters to coal beds and caverns. Some layers of strata extend across continents, revealing the effects of a huge catastrophe. “The earth’s crust has massive amounts of layered sedimentary rock, sometimes miles (kilometers) deep! These layers of sand, soil, and material—mostly laid down by water—were once soft like mud, but they are now hard stone. Encased in these sedimentary layers are billions of dead things (fossils of plants and animals) buried very quickly. The evidence all over the earth is staring everyone in the face.” Well said. Furthermore, explorers in Turkey are positive they have found the ark. I do not stand firm in believing this, but however, its something to think about :)“There are plenty of stories in medieval Europe of dragons, wizards and witches, but no evidence to support it. Therefore we can conclude that they are simply fiction”Again, you are wrong. Many people, unlike you, believe things without having to see them. In the world today, there are certain people who still study and practice witchcraft – these people for a start would definitely believe the stories of witches. Yourself and other scientists do not have this ability to believe without seeing, therefore it is yourselves that “conclude they are simply fiction” however you must remember that not all people are like that.“PS – no offence intended by the holy crap, just a figure of speech. Anyways since you apparently can’t open the link I sent you I will give it to you again, http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=6024&page=5  , to get to it literally copy and paste this into google search. "The term "evolution" usually refers to the biological evolution of living things. But the processes by which planets, stars, galaxies, and the universe form and change over time are also types of "evolution." In all of these cases there is change over time, although the processes involved are quite different.”Click the link, 3rd down I think, that matches the url and use the instruction I gave you last time to navigate to the area I was referring to.”“Along path leads from the origins of primitive "life," which existed at least 3.5 billion years ago, to the profusion and diversity of life that exists today. This path is best understood as a product of evolution blah blah blah blah” Seriously, I am sick of opening links that give a false time period and don’t even bother to give evidence to support it. Please, the next link you send, if it states a time period and does not support it, don’t send it. It is useless without evidence.