Is Evolutionist Disparagement of Creationism Justified?

This thread began life a couple years ago as Message 10. I'll be filling in the other relevant messages soon, this thread will remain closed until that process is completed. --AdminThis forum has recently shut down a number of Creationists for reasons consistent with the forum guidelines. Names that come to mind are Salty, Peter Borger and Inquisitor. Then there's Syamsu who has been "persuaded" to stay in the Free For All forum. Booboocruise just disappeared, and now I'm afraid Buzsaw may do the same since his primary thread, Noah's Flood Came Down. It's Goin Back Up!! was just closed after IrishRockHound enumerated his reasons that Buzsaw had lost on almost all the points from his opening message.Naturally I agree with Irish Rocky, but it is becoming obvious that we're making it damn difficult for Creationists to participate there. They sort of get a month or two to see if they can get a feel for the nature of science, start to understand some scientific principles, and get into the habit of supporting arguments with evidence, and if they don't then we just gradually turn up the pressure until they're forced into misbehavioral patterns that cause discplinary actions that eventually influence them to leave, or they just leave on their own.There's no reason why we should tolerate illogic and ignorance, but Creationists can only maintain their beliefs if they have healthy doses of both. Their goal is the defense of their religion, not the advancement of science. The prominent Creationists defend their religion through the construction of pseudoscientific arguments, and they feel good about their accomplishments because their work bolsters the religious beliefs of those of their faith, which was their goal. And while science suffers by their efforts, as much as they might care about science they care much more about their religion.If Buzsaw departs then I'll feel sad because he leaves without ever understanding almost everything that was explained to him. On the other hand, as I've said many times, it is very rare that anyone is ever convinced by discussions at discussion boards, so the likelihood that we'd ever make progress with Buzsaw is tiny, no matter how long we argued.I don't know what we're to do. This board is now dominated by evolutionists when the goal was to have some balance. But how can there be balance if board administration is determined that the primary component of any argument be evidence. The rhetorical arguments that are more the realm of philosophy and religion don't carry much weight here.I often ponder this problem, but the only answers I can come up with involve more active moderators, and we tried this a few months ago. It bothered the evolutionists more than it bothered the Creationists. The more recent and more subtle approaches haven't raised the ire of the evolutionists but appear to have been even more effective at discouraging Creationists.Given that my initial goal when I created the site was balance it disappoints me that the board is probably gaining a reputation as a pro-evoultion site. I suppose that's unavoidable, but I prefer to think of this as a pro-science site. It puzzles me that we can't even reach agreement about proper scientific arguments with the Creationists who appear to know a lot of science.No answers, I guess, just some musings.--Percy

Hi Faith,Thanks for the feedback. I understand where you're coming from, I really do, and I think the key difference between Creationism and science is captured by what you say here: If by "evidence" you mean "scientific evidence", then you're correct, the Bible is not considered evidence here. One of the key requirements of science is replicability. A single observation by an expert scientist means little by itself. It is only after the observation has been repeated by many other scientists that it becomes accepted. And a single observation by a layperson with no scientific training a couple thousand years ago in a religious book carries no weight as scientific evidence at all.Even if we accept Biblical evidence, say if we consider the Noah's flood account as one observation, then the scientific requirement of replicability demands that we verify it by repeating the observation today. This is precisely what early geologists tried to do in the 18th and 19th centuries, and they quickly came to the conclusion, even by the paltry evidence available at that time, that there had never been any global flood. And all evidence gathered since that time has reinforced that view a million million times over.From a faith standpoint you can know that the flood really happened, but from a scientific standpoint there are no supporting facts. The seriously critical characterizations I made that you found so objectionable have very specific Creationists in mind like Gish, Snelling and Austin among many others who simply make up facts for presentation to the faithful so they can rest easy that evolution is really false. If you doubt the insincere nature of Creationism then just look at the contradictory arguments of Creationism over the past decade or so:

1. Debates with Creationists used to be dominated by different arguments than today. Issues like lack of moon dust and the shrinking sun were common grist for the debate mill. While the Creationist position on these issues lacked any scientific evidence whatsoever, few were the Creationist websites that didn't repeat these arguments, and many still do, and as a result many Creationists argued that the truth about these issues was being kept from children in science class by evilutionists. Once Creationist organizations like AIG began counseling to avoid these arguments they faded away. We hardly ever see them here anymore.
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2. The water of the flood came from a vapor canopy (ICR), or the water of the flood came from vast underground reservoirs. Switching from one view to the other is easy when evidence doesn't matter.
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3. Traditional Creationism should be taught alongside evolution in science class, or ID should be taught alongside evolution in science class. Of course, neither has any scientific supporting evidence. And once traditional Creationists realize that ID does not accept a young earth the fascination with adding it to science curriculums will disappear.
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4. A specific instance of incredible Creationist insincerity: It is a well-established fact of radiometric dating that the longer the half-life of the radiometric element, the less appropriate it is for dating recent events. For example, ¹⁴C has a half life of around 5730 years, and so it can validly be used to date events as recent as a hundred years ago. But the half life of ⁴⁰K is 1.3 billion years, and it can only be used to date events millions of years old, certainly nothing younger than a half million years. Yet Andrew Snelling of ICR turns out paper after paper where he uses K/Ar dating on volcanic events only a hundred or two years old. He gets incorrect results, just as any scientist would expect, and reports them to the faithful as evidence that radiometric dating is flawed. What he's doing is equivalent to using the mile markers on a highway to measure the width of a human hair - of course you'll get wildly inaccurate results. Further proof of Snelling's dissembling are the recent efforts of Creationists Humphreys and Baumgardner described in Message 1.
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5. Another specific instance of incredible Creationist insincerity: Steven Austin's analysis of the age of the Grand Canyon. Austin weaves an extremely complicated web, I won't try to sort it all out in this message but you can see it all unraveled at A Critique of ICR's Grand Canyon Dating Project.

So Creationism that once advocated teaching the vapor canopy in classrooms is now advocating teaching ID. What they share is a lack of any scientific foundation, and since evidence isn't involved Creationism will have no problem switching horses once again somewhere down the line.Science doesn't teach what's true. Science teaches what the methods of science have discovered. If you want to believe that the flood of Noah was a true event that is your right. But there is no scientific evidence for Noah's flood, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either ignorant or fooling himself or lying.By the way, it's important to recognize that the objections of Creationism to science go way beyond evolution. To Creationists it is the entire edifice of science that is wrong. In essence Creationists are saying cosmology is wrong, astronomy is wrong, physics is wrong, chemistry is wrong, geology is wrong, radiometric dating is wrong, genetics is wrong, paleontology is wrong and archeology is wrong. And I probably forgot a few. To Creationists it must seem that only scientists working on new TVs and new cars and new communication satellites and new medicines and new crops ever get anything right. All the rest just make one stupid mistake after another. Do you really believe this?The argument that when science disagrees with the Bible then science is wrong is a religious argument, not a scientific one. Science is a systematic methodology for learning about the universe we live in. Science class teaches what we've learned using scientific methodology. The knowledge of Creationism comes to us by way of revelation and not by way of scientific methodology, and so it has no place in science class. The evangelical community's desire for inclusion of Creationism in science class is religiously, not scientifically, motivated. Creationism will become represented in science class when it finds support using scientific methodology to find supporting scientific evidence.And that is how the debate is framed here at EvC Forum. Science *does* have a definition, and it doesn't change just because its methods arrive at conclusions that offend some group's religious sensibilities. Within the science forums one is supposed to argue from evidence that has been established scientifically. Arguing from a Biblical foundation simply concedes at the outset the unscientific nature of Creationism.If you really believe the Bible contains scientific evidence that trumps observation of the natural world (which is supposedly as much the creation of God as the Bible), then you can make that argument in the [forum=-1], [forum=-6] or [forum=-11] forums. But in the science forums one is expected to argue scientifically.--PercyThis message has been edited by Percy, 03-19-2005 08:16 AMThis message has been edited by Percy, 03-19-2005 09:08 AMThis message has been edited by Percy, 03-19-2005 01:30 PM

From your Message 11: Well, of course you're going to exhaust yourself if you insist on responding to everything people say. Pick the key points you want to make and respond to those parts of people's posts that help you make those points. On to your Message 10: The guidelines make very clear that you're expected to support your positions with evidence and reasoned argument. Nothing at EvC Forum from either side is a given. If you can't support your position that the Bible is an accurate historical record with evidence and reasoned argument then you must drop it. Nothing obligates anyone here to accept anything as axiomatic. There are many religions in the world, and your wish that people defer to the specifics of your interpretation of your religion's holy book will not be granted. I think you may be glossing over a key component of science: replicability. Please don't ignore the definition of science. This is a science site intended to debate Creationism's claim to be science. The definition of science is important here, and replicability is part of science.I'm not precisely sure how to interpret the part about Moses and Kryptonite, but I think you're saying your religious myths should be given the same weight as the observations of trained scientists. Why? Do you think knowledge, training and experience make no difference? I was speaking of observations. Each observation is unique. Some come during an event, some after. Noah observed the flood first hand, but as you correctly note, modern geologists can only observe the evidence left behind by the flood. Still, modern geologists have a huge advantage over Noah. Noah's small group was confined to the ark and could only observe the flood in a tiny part of the world. But modern geologists can go everywhere, and so they are able to find the erosive and sedimentation events that marked the floods progress over the land, and they can find the massive scars in the earth where torrents of water escaped from the depths and where it descended after the flood.Biologists also have an advantage over Noah. Even Noah couldn't observe the migration paths of all the animals to and from their home regions, but biologists can make observations of the existing evidence to find and track these migration routes and tell us how long it took after the flood for marsupials to find their way back to Australia and what routes they took, even dating the flood by analyzing Australia to detect the period before the return of its native species when there was no animal life in Australia at all. They can determine which species returned first and which returned last. They can also detect and track the return of plant life to the denuded landscape. Historical accounts are not treated as you describe here. We do not try to be "true to the historical accounts" or "consider it wrong to deviate from them" if by this you mean take them at face value. The task of historian goes far beyond what you imply here. Some historical accounts are true, some are false, some are both. Oftentimes the actual events must be teased out from multiple conflicting accounts. Even more often the mix of truth and fiction, bias and propaganda is never unraveled. A source earns the privilege of being considered reliable to the extent that it is in concordance with other sources and with such physical evidence as still exists, and historians are still able to find much to argue and disagree about. If you want the Bible considered as a historical source then you must allow it to be assessed and evaluated in the same manner as other historical sources. Your thinking makes no sense to me. How do you hope to discuss this topic intelligently if you don't inform yourself about it? I think this has been a primary concern about your debating style - you don't seem to see lack of knowledge as an obstacle to participation. Since the evidence is paltry, "thoroughly studying" it won't take much time. Some of the people you want to study are Georges Buffon, James Hutton, William Buckland and Charles Lyell. If you want specific references to some rather brief material on the web that can fill you in then just say so. This is a simple dismissal with no engagement of the issues whatsoever. You must engage the discussion on the evidence. I encourage you to stay focused on the facts supporting your case. If we're talking about a young earth and a global flood, then it would be incorrect to state that the evidence supports such views. If this is your belief then you're going to have to make this case in your messages. The pattern of Creationist effort on the flood is to raise a panoply of red herrings in objection to modern geological views without ever explaining how the evidence can be reasonably fit into a severely truncated time frame. Their goal isn't to present a coherent theory of their own, but to simply cast doubt about the views of modern geology within the minds of the faithful. You are a prime example of the success of this effort. This is mere dismissal, and I again caution you to address yourself to the evidence and arguments so as to assess their merits. Certainly we know some things more directly than others, but you can't just dismiss well-established principles of geology by calling them "extrapolations and interpretations" as if there were somehow some shame or weakness in this. If you accept the established principles of how the universe behaves, then the deductions from those principles are valid conclusions, not ephemeral imaginings. We know the limestone layers of the Grand Canyon were laid down over millions of years because it takes a long time for that many tiny ocean-dwelling creatures to die and sink to the bottom. Radiometric dating confirms the timescale. We observe the same thing happening in shallow seas today. A legitimate objection to these conclusions does not consist of labeling them mere "extrapolations and interpretations...that are not necessarily trustworthy." This is an argument from personal skepticism and is worthless.A valid approach would be to propose alternative scenarios that are also consistent with, rather than ignorant of, well-established principles of geology. If it is the well-established principles of geology that you feel are wrong then you can attempt to make that case while at the same time requiring your opponents to justify those principles. But just dismissing the arguments of your opponents with handwaves about "extrapolations and interpretations" instead of directly addressing the scientific merits is quite legimately causing consternation and frustration among those discussing with you.You cannot cherry pick which parts of science you accept and which you reject. The findings of geology that you reject were established using the same principles of science as things that you undoubtedly accept, such as Newtonian mechanics. While to your limited knowledge geology may appear on much less solid ground that Newton's laws of motion, the fact is that it is established with just as much rigor. The various fields of science that you accept or reject according to whether they contradict your Biblical interpretations are interdependent and interrelated, and you don't seem to realize that rejecting one field causes ripples all up and down the line of other scientific fields. And Creationists don't reject just one field - they reject the significant findings of many fields, as I enumerated earlier.I know you'd like to accept the obvious successes of efforts like finding oil in the ground and using genetic engineering to develop new medicines, and at the same time reject other very closely related efforts that don't have so direct an impact on our lives like dating geological layers and tracing evolutionary descent through DNA analysis, but you can't do that. If geologists aren't really able to date geological layers then they can't really find oil. And if biologists can't derive evolutionary histories then they don't really know enough to discover new medicines through genetic engineering. But geologists do find oil, and biologists do perform genetic engineering of DNA. The knowledge is very real, and it is very interrelated.This is in stark contrast to Creationism. There is no Creation Science working on many fields within science and producing its own scientific contributions in these fields. There are no Creationist medicines, no Creationist satellites, no Creationist crops, no Creationist fuel cells, no Creation Science oil search companies, no Creation Science genetic engineering companies. In contrast to conventional science, of which geology and biology are a part, Creation Science has made no tangible contributions. Creationism exists only to promote as science the religious beliefs of the evangelical Christian community in order to counter what they perceive as the evolutionistic threat to faith. True, debating the validity of some Biblical accounts is not religious. But if you want the Bible a priori accepted as reliable, then that is a religious position. I know you understand the difference and are attempting to keep the latter opinion, which you obviously firmly hold, out of your arguments, but you're not succeeding very well in this effort. This very message that I'm replying to is ample evidence of you confounding the two viewpoints. If you were truly keeping your acceptance of Biblical inerrancy aside then you wouldn't be raising it with such consistent frequency. I'll believe you've finally left this argument aside only after a couple months go by during which you never raise it in any science thread. If we're talking about a young earth and a global flood, then the account in the Bible is very strongly contradicted by the physical evidence. This is true whether you as an individual ever accept it. Your views on the age of the earth and the flood stem from your religious views, not from scientific evidence. You would find it as difficult to convince a Hindu of your views of creation as of your views of Jesus Christ. I wonder if you grant the Koran and the Bhagavad-gita the same stipulations about historical accuracy that you demand for the Bible. This is your problem in a nutshell. I raise the issue of whether you believe the Bible contains scientific evidence, and you reply that the Bile is "known by believers throughout time as the revelation of the nature of God by His own direct intervention and inspiration, which we have no other means of knowing because of the spiritual death we inherit from the Fall." I'm talking science, and you're answering with Christian apologetics. If the world is young and there was a recent global flood then the evidence for it will be apparent to everyone, Christian and Moslem, Buddhist and Hindu, agnostic and atheist. You seem to think the views of conservative Christianity are entitled to special treatment and consideration from everyone else, and you seem supremely unaware of the colossal conceit that this appears to be to others.You qualify this somewhat by going on to say: I'm quite sure the Bible contains historical fact. It also contains historical fiction and much else. It is reasonable to request that the Bible be given the same consideration as other historical sources, but it is a religious position that the Bible be granted some special dispensation from such requirements, and you consistently confound the two.--Percy

I agree that something needs to be relaxed to make it easier for Creationists here, but I don't understand how the requirements for evidence can be relaxed. Could you give an example of what you mean, perhaps in the context of the erosion/deposition discussion? I wish it were that simple. Maybe I don't understand how you're thinking about this. For example, it feels to me like following your suggestion would yield discussions like this: Moving on: Buzz asked the same thing. Is there something more I should add to the OP? It already says this: In more detail, Faith responded to a post of mine in the Thread Reopen Requests thread from a couple years ago, and a discussion developed out of her reply that was off-topic for that thread, so I began a new thread starting with my post that Faith responded to. Yes, it references an old thread of Buzsaw's, but I didn't think it right to do anything other than include that post verbatim just as it was when Faith responded to it.--Percy

You've also received compliments about your debating ability and writing style, and a Post of the Month nomination. I don't think anyone disagrees with you that it is evidence for certain things. The a priori dismissal is of a priori acceptance of the Bible's reliability. Given the improvements in health and living standards over the past couple centuries, the deterioration of civilization may be a debatable point. But what you say about the Bible being given much greater credence a couple centuries ago is true. Many people accept that the evidence gathered since then indicates that the Bible is a compilation of works by various authors which contains some truth, some fiction, some in between, and some whose status as truth or fiction may never be known. You can challenge this position and discuss it in the [forum=-1] forum. I wasn't being dismissive, I was putting it in context. Just as there are some sects of Christianity that claim the Christian holy book is inerrant, there are some sects of Islam that claim the Islamic holy book is inerrant. Since the Koran at one point says, "Allah forbid that he should have a son," they can't both be right. Adherents to other religions accept those beliefs as strongly and sincerely as you do Christianity's. Your position that the other religions of the world are false is something you can debate in the [forum=-6] forum. Expressions of religious opinions will find a much more favorable response there than in the science forums. You've already said that historical events can't be replicated, and I've already explained that this isn't what is meant by replicability. It is the experiments and/or observations that must be replicable, not the events themselves. Using Noah's flood as an example again, one geologist can examine geological layers in the Appalachians to track the progress of the flood across the land, and he can publish a paper about his findings. Replicability means that other geologists can also go to the Appalachians and make the same observations. As you sincerely believe this, I won't try to persuade you otherwise. All I can ask is that you consider that it doesn't appear this way to many others. While this passage is an excellent example of why Creationism gets no respect in scientific circles, visiting the particulars of this passage would quickly draw us off-topic. There are many people here who would be delighted to discuss with you the details of this veritable smorgasbord of errors in the [forum=-7] forum. I haven't followed all your threads here, so perhaps no one has yet described the nature of science for you, but tentativity is a primary component of science. So the answer to your question is no, the scientic method is not infallible, and definitely not 100% infallible. Scientific theories are always being questioned, rejustified and reinterpreted in light of new evidence and improved insight. At the end of the day it is always a case of weighing the evidence to see which theories are best supported, and as the evidence mounts and the insights improve the theories will change. Science is not timeless truth, but merely a reflection of the evidence gathered from the natural world. This can all be explored if we're able to find someone willing to debate you in the Deposition and Erosion of Sediments thread. Shallow seas accumulating sedimentary layers rich in calcium? Sure. But regarding how deep the layers and the presence of fossils I'd have to do some research, so for now I'll just defer to the geological experts here. Maybe one of them can provide some information and a link or two. Glad to hear you're doing so well. You're to be complemented on your modesty! And thank you for being so tolerant of all us dunderheads! Wasn't quite able to extract the meaning from the full passage I lifted this from, but I thought I'd take this as an opportunity to emphasize once more that science is not truth. It is just a way of studying the natural world to figure out as best we can how it works.Bringing this all back on topic, the reason for the disparagement of Creationism by evolutionists is primarily due to its inability to backup its claim to be legitimate science. A key point in my previous post was Creationism's inability thus far to make any contribution to scientific progress. Combined with its tendency to severely misinform its adherents, and given its program of bringing its arguments to the meeting rooms of school boards instead of to the halls of science, it would be very difficult to justify bestowing any scientific respect, or any other kind, upon Creationism.--Percy

This is good and appropriate advice, but I confess I've been wrestling with the problem of what arguments to consider appropriate here. I originally raised this issue in a very general way as an example of unscientific Creationist thinking. Faith responded with specific examples and rebuttals, and I responded that we could debate these in other threads. But in Faith's posts to Holmes she has made it clear that she believes her replies had some scientific merit, and that can only because no one has corrected her as yet.And so PaulK's most recent post is actually necessary to this discussion, because it should help Faith understand that her armchair speculations, rather than being good scientific thinking that highlights the tenuous nature of evolution, are actually excellent examples of Creationist bad science.I don't think this should be allowed to become a significant digression in this thread, but I think occasional diversions like this are going to be necessary.--Percy

I should have been more precise when I said your armchair speculations were examples of Creationist bad science. Science does have a definition, and by this definition Creationism doesn't qualify as science. Had I wanted to be more accurate (and taken more time, which I didn't have earlier today) I would have explained that Creationism isn't science at all.The "science" in the term "Creation Science" was not an honor earned by successes in laboratories, journals and conferences. It was simply deemed science by its supporters. This is not all that dissimilar from pure braggadocio, like we hear all the time from boxers who announce they're the best boxer in the world without ever winning a championship fight. Honors are bestowed by others, not claimed by oneself. Associating Creationism with science was a purely political move designed to give Creationism undeserved credibility and respect through association with science. Such behavior is not deserving of respect.Even worse, rather than taking their arguments to the halls of science, they started their own conferences and journals and called them scientific conferences and scientific journals, again without ever having earned the privilege of being actual science. This behavior is also not deserving of respect.But even worse than that, unable to convince the scientific community of their views, they took their arguments to state and local school boards. Before elected officials whose primary responsibility is to oversee budgets and facilities, staff and administrators, they presented arguments that Creationism was legitimate science deserving representation in science class, right alongside Newton, Galileo, Darwin and Einstein. They argued that a view broadly rejected by the scientific community should nonetheless be taught in science class using public dollars. This, too, is not deserving of respect.So it isn't that all Creationist science is bad science. It's that Creationism isn't science at all. Creation Science is a misnomer.Your arguments about fossils and geological layers are good examples of common Creationist practice. You believe the evidence has more than one interpretation, and that evolutionists are ignoring other very reasonable interpretations. I understand that it can seem that way when the evidence is considered at a superficial level, for instance, at the level of knowledge available up until the middle of the 18th century.For example, we know we find fossils of animals in the ground. An obvious possibility is that they were killed by the flood and buried by sediments. But when you examine the fossils more carefully, you discover some important information that renders such a conclusion impossible. Fossils differ increasingly from modern forms with increasing depth. All different sizes and shapes of creatures are represented in all layers (except the deepest, of course), but the deeper you go the less they resemble creatures today. No flood could perform this sorting.There are some dramatic qualities to the ordering of fossils. Had the ordering been due to a flood, how is it that no dinosaur fossil anywhere in the world was ever buried in the same layer as a human being? Nor with any modern mammals of any kind. How is it that in the most ancient layers there are no animals at all, only algae of the type that floats on the sea's surface and which would presumably only be found in the topmost layers?You're to be credited for acknowledging the serious problem the fossil ordering issue represents for YEC Creationism. You've also acknowledged the radiometric dating problem. This is far more than most Creationists will do. Generally they reject these problems out of hand, and that's another reason why Creationism isn't science. Science embraces evidence, it does not pick and choose evidence. Science does not place evidence that contradicts theory in a collection of unexplained puzzles which it then ignores. Science does not even accept theories that have such significant outstanding problems.Science accepts the theory of evolution because it explains the evidence from the field of biology, and it is consistent with other related fields of science. Science rejects YEC Creationism because it doesn't explain the evidence of fossils, radiometric dating, geology, cosmology and physics. It isn't as if Creationism just has a few difficult pieces of data to explain. It has conflicts with entire fields of science that it can't explain. Until Creationism begins dealing honestly with the data it can't yet explain, it does not deserve to be called science.--Percy

I'm not sure why you're disputing what should be a straightforward point. "Science" doesn't simply mean "knowledge". Science is a systematic means of studying the universe to figure out how it works. Science is conferred much respect and credibility in our society because of its record of success and its significant contributions. Views are automatically given more credibility by the lay public if they can lay claim to being scientific. This fact is why one of the staples of flim-flam advertising is to include "scientific" in the advertising as much as possible.The mantle of being scientific isn't something that one claims for one's own theory. It would be like calling yourself a doctor without ever having gone to medical school. The mantle of science is earned by entering one's views into the scientific arena in the form of journal articles and conference presentations. If the relevant sub-community of scientists in a field finds the views persuasive because they are able to replicate the experiments and/or observations and come to the same conclusions, then those views become incorporated into the fabric of science.But Creationism hasn't gone through this process. Knowing that they can't take their views to the halls of science because they aren't scientific, and knowing that their only chance of success is to convince the lay public that Creationism is science, and knowing that only scientific views will be taught in science class, they've simply given themselves the label of science without ever having having submitted their views to scientific scruitiny. This can be addressed on a couple levels. One is by example. The inability of Creationism to explain radiometric dating has persisted for more than half a century. There has been no progress whatsoever. All that has changed over time is the means Creationists use to dismiss radiometric dating, ranging from the simple "It's wrong" to the somewhat more honest "It's a puzzle" to the dissembling of Snelling's "Let's misrepresent." If radiometric dating truly had significant problems then Creationists would have little difficulty going into the field, conducting their own scientific radiometric studies and submitting them to scientific journals. That they haven't speaks volumes.Let me be clear by putting this example in the same terms that you used to characterize Creation Science. You said they investigate natural phenomena. I say they don't, and the absence of any legitimate Creationist work in the field of radiometric dating, probably the most significant single problem for Creationism, tells us that they definitely do not investigate natural phenomena.On another level one can examine the details of how Creationists actually conduct science. Most notable on the list is the common requirement of Creationist organizations like ICR and CRS that their pledge allegiance to a statement of belief that includes adherence to the Biblical account of creation. No true scientist at any legitimate university or research lab would ever have to sign a statement of religious belief.If there were a creed that scientists had to sign, it would probably be one where they pledge to work as hard as possible to overthrow existing paradigms. One does not earn Nobel Prizes by adding one more digit of accuracy to Planck's constant. The young guns entering upon science careers are as interested in making names for themselves as any young football running back or seven foot basketball center, and that requires pushing out in new directions. The scientist who overthrows the evolutionist paradigm will ensure himself a Nobel prize and a place in history along side Galileo, Newton, Darwin and Einstein, and if Creationism were a fertile area for fruitful investigation then its ideas would have found their way into mainstream science decades ago. But no one has ever succeeded in providing a scientific foundation for Creationist ideas.The contrast between how Creationists and scientists think of science is stark. Creationists think of science as something timeless and permanent that you believe, like the creation account in Genesis, and that you then go off and try to justify and find evidence for. Scientists think of science as a way of approaching the study of the universe in which we live, and as an ever growing body of knowledge and tentative theoretical frameworks that reflect our current understanding of that universe.Another important detail highlighting the impoverished nature of Creation Science is the lack of consistency in their ideas. Some Creationists believe the frequency of magnetic field reversals increased enormously during the flood year, others believe there's no such thing as magnetic field reversals. Some believe the rain came primarily from a vapor canopy, others that it came primarily from beneath the earth's surface, and yet others believe it came from both. Some believe the fossil shells on mountain tops were deposited by the flood, others believe they were on an ocean floor that was pushed up to be mountains during the flood year. Some believe the rate of radioactive emissions increased enormously during the flood year, others just claim radiometric dating is wrong. Perhaps most significant is that court rulings have forced Creationists to recognize that the veneer they've put atop Creationism to make it appear scientific is not fooling anyone outside the evangelical community, and so they're changed horses and begun to advocate the teaching of ID in science class. This is a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" kind of forced alliance. Just wait until traditional Creationists begin to realize that ID accepts an ancient earth.It is evident that there is nothing in Creation Science to support your claim that it "employs scientific concepts in investigations of natural phenomena and theoretical formulations." What they actually try to do is build a facade that appears scientific to the lay public, and they make almost no effort at all at promotion within legitimate scientific arenas. Then isn't it premature for them to be going to school boards requesting representation for their ideas? Isn't the fact that they are doing so worthy of contempt rather than respect? This is yet another example of Creation Science not doing science. Science works by submitting one's ideas to the criticisms of the scientific community. The first stage is usually submission of a written paper to a journal where it undergoes peer review, meaning that the paper is distributed anonymously (the authors' names are removed) to other scientists in the field for comment. The feedback is also given anonymously. Depending upon the severity of the feedback, the authors might only need to make some changes to the paper, or they might actually have to go back to the laboratory or field to gather more data to answer issues and questions raised by the reviewers. Why wouldn't Creation Scientists want to benefit from this process?Once a paper is published, or perhaps even presented at a conference, it is scrutinized by the larger scientific community. If other scientists are unable to replicate the results, then the paper becomes forgotten. But if other scientists are able to successfully replicate the results, as would become apparent by the submissions of papers in the future and by the number of references to the original paper, then the results become incorporated into the fabric of science. Why wouldn't Creation Scientists want to benefit from this process?Progress in science comes from enduring the process of feedback and criticism from the scientific community. Isolating oneself from that process only hinders, not enhances, progress. That Creationism is still struggling with the same half-century old problems is because of this isolation.Another way of assessing whether Creation Science is truly science is to examine the normal pattern of scientific progress, which is usually marked by a pattern of refinement over time. For example, Newton's laws were not overthrown by Einstein, but refined and modified. The concept of atoms was not overthrown by the discovery of sub-atomic particles like electrons and protons, but refined. And the discovery that the sub-atomic particles themselves were made up quarks did not overthrow the concept of sub-atomic particles, but merely refined and enhanced our understanding of them. If superstring theory is confirmed, then it will mean that quarks are actually manifestations of superstrings in a multi-dimensional space, but it won't overthrow the concept of quarks.In other words, scientific progress builds on what went before. New ideas build upon and modify old ideas. And so we can ask if the currently accepted ideas of Creation Science follow this normal pattern of science.Before considering this question one must ask, "What are the currently accepted ideas of Creation Science?" We must know which ideas are currently accepted so that we can examine how those ideas have changed over time in order to can see whether it was a process of refinement or not.But in attempting to answer this question we quickly discover a problem: there is no set of broadly accepted ideas within Creation Science. There are Creationists who accept a young earth, and Creationists who accept an old earth. There are those who accept hyrdroplate theory and those who accept vapor canopy theory. There are those who believe radioactive decay rates change, and those who don't. There are those who accept ID, and those who don't.Since we can't even find an answer to the question asking which are the currently established principles within Creation Science, it seems safe to say that the history of Creation Science does not bear any resemblance to the normal patterns of scientific progress.And yet even though Creation Science cannot point to anything that resembles scientific progress, even though it has no coherent established set of principles and ideas, it nonetheless wants to be considered as science and be taught in science class. And so, once again determinedly sticking to the topic of this thread, which despite the very helpful diversions into into dinosaur fossils and geological layers actually concerns the integrity and legitimacy of the Creationism movement, we see that Creationism is not deserving of any respect. Only when it brings its ideas for review to the scientific community, and only when it advocates representation of ideas in science class that are actually accepted by the scientific community, will be it worthy of respect.--Percy

Dinosaurs were the evolutionary ancestors of modern birds. Modern birds and dinosaurs were not contemporaries. That is why you never find modern birds and dinosaurs in the same geographical layer.What we do find in the dinosaur layers are bird ancestors or relatives of bird ancestors (hard to now which for sure) such as archeopteryx. Had modern birds existed at the time of the dinosaurs then they would be found in the same layers with them. But they're not, and that's because modern birds did not exist back then.You're looking for an explanation for fossil ordering, the increasing differences from modern forms with increasing depth of geological layers. The explanation that those best able to flee the encroaching waters would be found at the highest levels is not supported by the evidence. Many slow animals are found in the highest layers, while many fleet footed animals are found in the lowest layers. The sorting isn't by slow versus fast. It also isn't by large versus small, because both large and small animals are found in many different layers. And it isn't by general shape, because carnivores and herbivores and tree dwellers and prarie dwellers are also found in many different layers.Even if it turned out that the sorting precisely matched the Creationist vision with fleet footed and intelligent creatures in the top layers and slow and dumb creatures in the bottom layers with a slow transition in the layers between, there would still be no possible scenario whereby a global flood could accomplish this. You can see this by figuring out what would have had to have happened in order to end up with this type of sorting. The slow and dumb creatures would be overtaken first and buried by the flood. Now they're covered by sediment and the sediment is covered by water. Now it's the turn of the slightly less slow and slightly less dumb creatures to be overtaken. But this area is already covered in water. There is no land left for these slighter better creatures to be running around on and be overtaken by water. The water has already overtaken this region. In order for the slightly less slow and slightly less dumb creatures to be buried in the layer above the slow and dumb creatures, the water must recede, the sediments must dry, the slightly less dumb and less slow creatures must return, and then the region must be flooded once again. And this has to happen over and over and over again in order to correspond to the hundred or so significant layers in the geologic column.Such a scenario doesn't seem reasonable or even possible to scientists, but even if it did it wouldn't matter because as I was careful to point out, fossils aren't ordered by fleetness and intelligence versus slowness and dumbness. What the fossil ordering appears to be telling us is that the longer ago a creature lived, the more unlike modern creatures it was. This is an ordering that flood waters would be unable to achieve.--Percy

A little history might help you put the debate in context.While there are some like yourself who simply have an inherent interest in the debate, for most people on the evolution side the beliefs of evangelical Christians about creation and evolution would be of little interest were it not for for their efforts at promoting their views outside their local religious communities. This is an incomplete list, but here are some of the activities of Creationists that alarm those concerned about the teaching of science in the U.S.:

• 1981: Arkansas legislature passes a law requiring equal treatment for Creationism and evolution in public school science curriculums. Ruled unconstitutional by judge Overton in 1982.
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• 1981: Louisiana legislature passes a similar law also requiring equal treatment for Creationism and evolution. Overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987.
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• 1987 and after: Although grass roots efforts have always been a part of the Creationist repertoire, after the 1987 Supreme Court ruling Creationists turned their efforts away from legal approaches and stepped up their efforts with state and local boards of education and with textbook publishers. Realizing that states like California and Texas carried enormous weight with textbook publishers, they focused their efforts on these states' boards of education. As a result of these efforts textbooks began diminishing treatements of evolution in their textbooks. Smaller states with insufficient clout to influence textbook content were forced to go along.
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  Creationists also focused their efforts on local school boards, arguing for representation for Creationism and against coverage of evolution.
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• 1999-2005: Kansas Board of Education makes several well-publicized efforts to reduce the teaching of evolution in public schools.
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• 2001-2002: Ohio general assembly passes a bill to include coverage of Intelligent Design in public school science curriculums.

This is by no means a complete list, just some highlights. It is the continuing efforts of Creationists to force representation of their religious beliefs into science programs that most people are reacting to. Speaking for myself, but I'm sure many people feel the same way, if it weren't for these efforts I would have little to no interest in this debate. I don't think there wouldn't even be a debate.--Percy

You're probably thinking that the birds found in dinosaur layers are regular birds, just not the same types of birds we see today. What is actually found in dinosaur layers are bird predecessors that bear little resemblance to modern birds. They've been classified as birds because of the presence of feathers, a feature once thought unique to birds (it was subsequently discovered that some distinctly un-birdlike dinosaurs also had feathers). Using archaeopteryx (the most famous pre-bird) as an example, bird predecessors have these differences from modern birds (these are just the more significant differences from All About Archaeopteryx):

• No bill (modern birds have bills)
• Teeth (modern birds do not have teeth)
• Free trunk vertbra in the backbone (modern birds have fused vertebra
• Reptilian brain characteristics intermediate between dinosaurs and modern birds
• Neck attachment to skull from rear (in modern birds it's from beneath the skull)
• Long bony tail (modern birds have very short tail)
• Transitional pelvic girdle midway between dinosaurs and birds.
• Attachment of pelvic girdle to backbone is same as in reptiles in occupying 6 vertebra (it occupies 11-23 vertebra in modern birds)
• Far forward nasal opening.
• Fibula is reptilian in length (modern birds have proportionally much shorter fibula)

Archaeopteryx and other pre-birds were transitional between dinosaurs and modern birds. While we can't be absolutely certain, studies of the skeletal anatomy of these pre-birds and of what feather impressions have been fossilized indicates that they were very unlikely to have flight ability in the way of modern birds. They're suspected to have had gliding capabilty at best. The primary reasons for the current concensus is the low asymmetry of the flight feathers, insufficient flexibility in the joints of the forelimbs, and insufficient muscle mass.The pre-birds found in the dinosaur layers are different from modern forms. None of these pre-birds are found in higher layers. No modern birds are found below modern layers. The different layers in which bird and pre-bird fossils are found is part of the pattern of increasingly different fossils with increasing geological depth. In a flood scenario, flight would be a significant advantage for survival above all others (excepting water dwelling creatures), even above humans, so one would think birds would dominate in the upper layers. But they don't. Water dwelling birds like ducks would have a particular advantage since they can both fly *and* float, but they aren't represented in the higher layers in any greater proportion than other birds. After the appearance of real birds in the fossil record beginning around 50 million years ago in the Cenozoic (the current geological era) they are fairly evenly represented in the geological layers. Flightless humans aren't found until a just a few million years ago. And flightless birds seem to be sorted in the fossil record no differently than their flighted relatives. Let us say we visit a region that includes layers from the Eocene (35-55 mya), the Jurassic (150-200 mya) and the Permian (250-290 mya). In your flood scenario all these creatures lived in this region at the same time. All three layers include carnivores and herbivores and creatures of every type. But no mammals or dinosaurs or birds are found in the Permian, the deepest layer. It is mostly inhabited by reptiles. The next layer up, the Jurassic, contains dinosaurs and reptiles, but none of the types of reptiles that were found in the Permian layer, and it contains very few mammals of tiny varieties, and certainly no large mammals or modern mammals. The highest layer, the Eocene, includes none of the reptiles from the Permian, no dinosaurs or reptiles from the Jurassic, but it does include a great variety of mammals, reptiles and birds that are found in none of the lower layers.You need a flood scenario that accounts for this arrangement of fossils in the geologic layers. You haven't provided a scenario for this thus far, which is why I tried to create one for you in my previous message, as a means of moving the discussion forward. You agreed that the scenario I developed wasn't reasonable, but asserted that there *were* reasonable flood scenarios. One recent proposal from you involves tides. Rather than me again trying to guess the details of your scenario, can you describe how a flood combined with tides could account for the distribution of fossils I've just described? Keep in mind that tides only happen at the margins of bodies of water. Staying with my example of the region with Eocene, Jurassic and Permian layers, since they all lived in the same region, why do no mammals from the higher Eocene or reptiles from the lower Permian huddle with the dinosaurs atop this high place?Also, I think you're letting a couple examples of many jumbled fossils in one place overly influence your thinking. The reason these examples are so well known is because they're so unusual. The vast majority of fossils are not found like this.It helps to understand how most fossils are found. Paleontologists do not in general do any large scale excavation for fossils. It's expensive and would damage the fossils. For the most part paleontologists have to wait for fossils to appear near the surface, as happens in American west where famous paleontologists Cope and Marsh did most of their work. Fossil rich areas are usually regions where erosion exposes the landscape or the cliff faces a little more deeply each year, and so paleontologists return year after year to see what new finds weathering and erosion have exposed. Most fossils do not stand up well to weathering, so once the first sign of a fossil is revealed it must be excavated very soon or the exposed portion will disappear.Any fossil rich area drained by a river system will constantly deliver fossils into the water where they'll be taken downstream. Depending upon conditions and circumstance they will either dissolve or be reburied at points in the river or be delivered to a lake or carried out to sea. I think you're assigning dinosaurs unique qualities that they didn't really possess. The popularity of the larger dinosaurs like the Apatosaurus (formerly known as Brontosaurus) and Tyrannosaurus Rex lends the impression that the dinosaurs were all large, but this is not the case. Dinosaurs came in all shapes and sizes. For example, Microraptor and Compsognathus were small dinosaurs about the size of a chicken or cat. While some members of the dinosaur family were larger than any other creatures before or since, many were of more normal size. Aside from the huge size of some dinosaurs, they were otherwise not unique in size or speed or intelligence, qualities generally possessed in equal amounts by reptiles and mammals and birds.You need to explain how the various qualities of creatures could influence how their remains would be distributed in a flood. This would have to be an extremely strong sorting influence, because fossils from different layers are never found mixed together. In fact, one of geology's first practical contributions occurred back in the 1800's when they first realized that some fossils are always found in certain layers and not others. They introduced the concept of indicator fossils because such fossils were frequently an indication of coal, and later in the 20th century of oil. This "high ground" concept that you keep mentioning isn't what we find in the geological layers. If you consider the layers of the Grand Canyon, for the most part they look like this: If fossil ordering were really determined by flood waters encroaching upon slopes, then we should find something like this: While discontinuities somewhat like this exist in the geological record (in effect, buried hills or mountains), they are not common, and the vast majority of fossils are found not near buried slopes but in deposits that are very, very level for many, many miles. Erosion, tidal currents, run off and mudslides would cause randomization, not sorting, of dead creatures. The early geologists who concluded there had never been a global flood began by searching for evidence of the flood. They originally believed precisely as you believe now, that the flood was a real event, and they searched diligently for evidence of the flood. If the evidence, especially a couple hundred years ago, were really so fragmentary, why would they eventually conclude that the flood had never happened and the earth contained a record of great antiquity?By the very nature of the geological forces which shape our planet, it would be very unlikely for the entire geologic column to exist at very many places. Many places on land are areas of net erosion, not deposition, and so will not be represented. Many regions of the world have changed repeatedly from being mountains to plains to submergence under water. While a region is mountainous or upland it will erode. (This is why the fossil record contains very little of life from upland and mountainous areas, which by the way is another contradiction to the flood model, since presumably creatures who lived on mountains, as opposed to lowland creatures who would have had to flee upland, would be most likely to be preserved rather than least likely as is the actual case.) Only when an area becomes lowland does the potential exist for significant net deposition in some areas. And of course bodies of water, since they represent the lowest possible geographic point, will almost always be areas of net deposition, which also explains why marine layers predominate in the geologic column.Every region of the world is given to periods of uplift and subsidence (sinking). While a region is high there will be little chance of net deposition. While a region is low then deposition is more likely, and certainly there will be deposition when it is so low it is under water. Since periods of uplift and subsidence are in general random over time, what we should see in the geologic record is a patchwork of layers being represented in mosts region. And that's precisely what we do see.But the world is a big place, and so just by chance there are some parts of the world where huge portions of the full geologic column exist, and I see above that there are a couple posts enumerating them for you. The geologic column is not a chimera of geological imagination.--Percy

I just raised this again in my previous message. I suspect we'll continue to raise this issue until we receive an answer consistent with the evidence of history. While the first geologists knew far less than we know today, they certainly knew enough to tell a flood layer from gradual sedimentation. Flood waters are active and so small particulate matter cannot precipitate out (i.e., they're so light they cannot rest on the sea floor in the presence of currents). Sedimentary layers consisting of small particulates cannot have been deposited during a flood. This was recognized very early on, and it was quickly realized that limestone layers, which consist of small particulate deposits of the calcium carbonate carcuses of tiny sea-living creatures, could only have occurred in quiet seas.A slowly encroaching flood of slowly rising water is the only flood scenario consistent with limestone layers, but this scenario is in conflict with a prime tenet of flood theory, that most of the layers of the geologic column were laid down by the flood. The flood would have had to have been very violent in order to stir up the miles worth of sediments found in the geologic column, but this very violence makes impossible the slow deposition of the small particulate matter found in limestone layers.Limestone layers present yet another problem for flood theory due to the short duration of the flood of less than a year. It takes thousands and thousands of years for enough creatures to live and die and be deposited on the sea floor to build limestone layers many feet thick. The White Cliffs of Dover, hundreds of feet high, are the most famous example. These cliffs were once at the bottom of a shallow sea subjected to a soft rain of calcium carbonate from the skeletons of expired microscopic creatures that lived in the quiet waters above, and also including some larger creatures like sponges and coral which streaks the limestone. Uplift raised this former sea bed above water level and erosion exposed the cliffs.And this is one of the problems that the early geologists faced when looking for evidence of the great flood. A quiet flood was necessary to depositing fine sediments, yet a violent flood was required to stir up the deposits of all the layers. Many of the layers required extremely lengthy timeframes and couldn't be the result of the flood. They could only conclude that the flood was not responsible for the layers they observed. What we've learned since that time only confirms the findings of early geologists.--Percy