Debate: Creationism vs. Evolutionism
Side: evolutionism

I really don’t know what you want for evidence so I am just going to the logic of it. Do you really think that every reputable university, scientific, geological, and paleontological society is lying to you? These are the people who have dedicated their lives to learning about the world, they have nothing to gain by lying, and they look at the world, make hypotheses and test them to see if they are true. I have sent you many pages showing you the results of extensive studying and testing that scientists have done, but you seem to require more “evidence” and I am really not sure what you want. It is nearly impossible to find raw data from lab results of studies or at least I don’t know where or how to find them. When you have a scientific study or society they can do tests and present their findings just as all of the links I have sent you have done. I don’t know where to find their raw data, by I would much rather trust the American Academy of scientists who have many noble prize winning scientists and have made proven discoveries which are the basis for our modern world than a book that tells me to kill someone who picks up sticks on Sunday (Numbers 15: 33-36). Speaking of the bible, how come you don’t have to prove what’s in there, you can just allude to what someone wrote in a book and take it as fact. Why do you not apply the same scrutiny to the bible as you do to all the links and results I have sent you. What evidence do you have to back up the bible? And speaking of evolution, the pope, is not against it. The Vatican itself does not deny that the theory of evolution is false but states that it doesn’t conflict with their belief because God inspired it, I won’t debate that now because that isn’t the debate, we are debating evolution. And the church you follow does not deny evolution, the pope himself, a man who is God’s representative on earth, and is supposedly infallible, says there is not conflict between evolution and faith. The late Pope John Paul said “New findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than a hypothesis. In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies—which was neither planned nor sought—constitutes in itself a significant argument in favour of the theory.” It may not be an outright affirmation of evolution, but it is highly suggestive that it is correct, “more than a hypothesis” seems quite indicative to me. Also Pope Pius the 12th had this to say in his encyclical Humani Generis, “The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, insofar as it inquiries into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter.” Now I don’t know about you, but if every reputable scientific organization accepts it, the church says it is not in conflict and is leaning towards acceptance, why reject it. “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.” Well neither does the bible! The bible makes plenty of claims without backup, there is certainly no evidence by your narrow and picky definition of the word. “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.”Actually it does make the bible incorrect. It doesn’t have anything to do with differences in classifications, it has to do with differences in reality. If I were to call a chair a table, then you proved to me that chairs were not tables, I could not say, well my system of classification of chairs as tables was fine for the time I used it at, it still does not change the fact that a chair is not a table. It is a misclassification, and the fact that it happened in another time is irrelevant. Just because I thought chairs were tables while I did not know the truth at the time, and made an error that would be discovered later, still means I made an error. Moses said bats were birds, however bats are not birds, therefore moses, thus something in the bible, is wrong. Just because he didn’t know any better doesn’t change the fact that he was wrong. You can’t say someone was right just because they didn’t know they were wrong. “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”You seem to be found of demanding proof and evidence from me so I will simply return the favour. Please provide proof that every species in existence on this planet is capable of a coordinated migration to a single location on earth. We know that species can coordinate massive migrations within their own communities to habitats they move between during a period of time. But there is no evidence to suggest that species can coordinate a migration to a completely new point on earth at a time of the year that is not normal for them. For example, salmon can return to the exact same stream or tributary in which they were born in because they use scent markers to trace the route, there was a test done (look it up if you want, I read it before in a national geographic article) where salmon who had their olfcactory lobes damaged (lobes responsible for scent detection) could not successfully return to their spawning grounds. This shows that organisms can mass migrate because they have been there before and can retrace steps, but with Noah’s ark, there is no way for these species to all move to a specific point they have never been to. I would like some evidence, your “homing instinct” argument is weak and has nothing to back it up in the context of migration to new locations. Okay when you say that “that the salinity of the oceans and seas in Noah’s day was the same as the salinity of those today” I will argue that if there was such a flood salinity would have changed. When rain falls, it falls as fresh water, and salt water is found because fresh water moves through rivers, streams etc and washes dissolved ions into the ocean where they stay because they are not kept dissolved in water when it evaporates. This is why oceans are saline. Okay so you think that if the ocenas rose by 29 055 feet that wouldn’t change salinity? Shut downs ocean currents? Or destroy most marine life. If the ice caps in Antarctica melted, which contains 90% of the world’s ice, the ocean would only rise 200 feet (http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/question473.htm), Now I am no expert on climate change but I do believe one of the negative effects extreme climate change in the shut down of ocean currents. The ocean currents work because the sun heats up shallower waters in the tropic where the sun intensity is much greater (hence why it is warmer), and the water flows, slowly, but it does, (google image ocean currents) these ocean currents are essential for transporting thermal energy stored in water. If the water increases to a height of 29 055 feet within 40 days the sun would not warm the ocean the same way and these current would shut down, not to mention they would shut down due to the change in land formations (or lack there of). “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.”Fish having relatives that once lived in saline environments does not mean that fish that are alive today could survive a change so rapid that occurs in 40 days, fish would not be able to adapt because it takes generations for a species to begin to adapt to a changing environment, most species would not even have gone through a lifetime before this dramatic change was over. But most importantly I have one question, If all the ice in the world can raise sea level no more than 222 feet (90% =200 feet so 100% = 222 feet), where do you get the water to raise sea level 130 times that amount? Not to mention, where did it go? Please answer these question with as much evidence as you expect from me. At one point you calculate the volume of holding area on Noah’s Ark“Well, 550 x 91.7 x 55 = 2,773,925 cubic feet” then factoring in other things you calculate a maximum volume of leaving over 1.5 million cubic feet of free space. Unfortunately, this boat is not a rectangular prism, so this calculation is invalid, this grossly over-estimates the volume of such a ship. Even if you take the maximum square footage of your miscalculated number of 1.5 million square feet that is roughly half of the square footage in the empire state building (http://tallest-building.findthebest.com/question/57/847/What-is-the-square-footage-of-Empire-State-Building) That is nowhere near enough space to fit 17400 birds, 12000 reptiles, 9000 mammals, 5000 amphibians, 2000000 insects and the food for all of these creatures for over a year and the water for them since they cannot drink the saline ocean water. The infant animal theory does not hold up due to the reasons explained in the video that the animals would have matured on their way or on the ship, and it is not plausible for them to coexist outside of the ship until they all spontaneously and simultaneously gave birth. On a side note, I found it funny that you use the work of Ernst Mayr, a leading evolutionary biologist, to attempt to prove noah’s ark and creationism. Anyways all the organisms you seem to be accounting for are animals or birds or reptiles. What about insects or amphibians? I do believe we have those now so you would have to account for them on the ark. “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.” Mind showing me them? I would like you to answer them if you are to assert that the story of the ark is true. 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.” Yeah don’t bother pointing out how these arguments are “wanting” or how there are easily invalidated. If it can be done so easily then please do it. Also, the link you sent me is useless, it takes me to the homepage of the institute for creation research and in no way validates your claims.  “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.”None of this is evidence of a flood that raised the sea level by 29 055 feet. The grand canyon was formed the way all other canyons formed by ancient seas, lakes or oceans draining through rivers, the flowing water cuts through the rock over millions of years. (http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/grand-canyon-national-park-ga2.htm). Coal beds and craters are in no way evidence of a flood. Strata extends across continents because 250 million years ago the continents were attached as the supercontinent of pangea, do you at least accept plate tectonics, that the earth’s crust is made of plates that shift over thousands and millions of years? None of what you are saying is evidence for a flood anymore than it is evidence that I ate pancakes and bacon for breakfast this morning. That’s the difference about what I call science and what you call science. Real science is meant to observe and explain the world, your pseudoscience tries to twist reality to prove a book. Science does not have an agenda, it is impartial and starts without prejudice and pre set conclusions of reality. Science is meant to discover and understand reality, its meant to form theories based on facts, not to twist facts to support a theory. “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. “Just because you believe something does not make it true. I could believe there are a colony of midget gingers who ride 8-legged giraffes and have hair made of steel living on the dark side of the moon but that doesn’t make it true. I could believe anything but just because I believe it has absolutely no bearing on whether or not it is true. If you are going to espouse a positive affirmation, such as that dragons of witches or god then the burden of proof is on you. Until you prove that something does exist, you cannot assume it does, and belief has nothing to do with existence. If I believed that I was a millionaire and had the body of star athlete and had every talent in the world it will not change the fact that I am none of those. Belief has nothing to do with reality, and I cannot stress that enough. I suggest we end this debate soon as the posts are getting ridiculously long and this debate is beginning to run its course. It’s been good but debating just seems to entrench people in their own positions.