Evolution.

Teen, perhaps you could tell us your reason for being here.1) Are you primarily interested in converting someone to Christianity?2) Are you more interested in disproving the idea of evolution?3)Are you interested in actually learning something about evolution and evolutionary theory?4)Are you interested in choosing between a young earth and and old earth?5)Perhaps you have some other point?If (1) then you'd better figure out who it is you are trying to bring into the fold. As far as faith goes people fall into one of a few buckets.
The literalists Christians -- You don't need to spend time on them, they are believers already.
The more mainstream Christians -- if you want to "convert" them to literalism you will have to know a lot more about the subjects you think you are attacking. Your current posts only demonstrate an utter lack of understanding and will only further convince the mainstream that literalist are uneducated and dangerous to the faith.
Other faithful -- I don't see that evolution is an issue here. You'll have to argue the different theologies with them.
The agnostic or atheist -- you're approach so far is only going to antagonize them or make them laugh.If (2) you need to start by asserting less and understanding more. I'm sure you won't believe me but it is clear you have very, very little idea of what it is all about.For one thing you should settle on the age of the earth question. There really isn't any need to discuss evolution if you think the earth is only 6,000 or so years old. If you could prove to me that it was only that old I'd have a hard time in accepting that evolution could be the explanation for the diversity of life.If (3) then slow down and pick and choose a view things. Start off by understanding that almost everything you've been told is wrong and probably a lie. It doesn't appear that this is your intention so you might be wasting your time posting.If (4). this might be a good place to start for any of items 1 through 4.The literalists would be exstatic if you could do this. Almost none of them want to take on the issues posted in dates and dating. It appears there is no answers available from any creationist sources that stand up to scrutiny.As I noted this would possibly convince a lot of Christians and even some of the unbelievers if you could do it. It would also pretty much destroy Darwinian evolutionary theory. Six thousand years just isn't enought time.If you elaborate on what you do want to accomplish here perhaps I can make some suggestions. So far you look like dozens of others who drop in, post the same stuff that you have and then leave when it turns out you have no real defence of what you have asserted.Normally you would be expected to last about 50 posts and a week. I'd guess that is about average.

A couple of things: Do you care to discuss your reasons for being here as noted in Message 47and
Do you actually know the whole story of Nebraska "man" or are you going by source that just might be misleading you?

You might stop suggesting that you are offering anything that we haven't already heard a bunch of times.This has been brought up before. It happens to be, at best, utterly misleading and from what you've gotten from it you can take it to be utterly wrong. If you really want to learn you have to understand that you're starting from knowing very, very little.In addition, a great deal of what you've been told is false.

I wrote Ark off as being unable to learn a thing days and days ago. I'm hoping teen isn't yet another one like him.

It makes perfect sense that you need to be shown that what you've been told is false. It might be an idea to take one or two clear cases and walk through them. Stick to just a couple or three.Would you agree if you find out that you have been mislead on these you might think twice about believing what some of the places like ICR, AIG or others are saying.You will find this hard to believe I'm sure. Those here who tell you about biology, physics and geology are not going to lie to you. When we tell you that you've been mislead you should think about that.

No, a fair amount of what you have written looks very foolish. Since you got it from a liar you can be forgiven for that.We can only go by what you write here. It is hard for all of us (on both sides) to remember that we don't actually know the person we are talking to.To some degree we are not reacting to you or even what you are posting this time but the fact that we have see all of this stuff several times before. There is a tendancy, which is hard for anyone to resist, to jump to conclusions and let our past experiences show.Please try to understand that. We have been through all of this before.We will try to remember that you may well be surrounded by ppl who tell you a one-sided story.Can I suggest you read over:
Message 1
ad
Message 1You might also talk to Mike the Wiz a bit. He is a Christian, considers himself a creationist (there are different meanings for that term) and, I think, accepted all the things you are posting.He has learned a lot (so he isn't as much fun any more ) but will emphasize one important thing: all of this, the geology (age of earth), the biology (evolution), the cosmology(formation of the universe), does NOT have to threaten your faith at all.A number of us here are atheists. A few of those might be described as 'militant' but most are NOT interested in "converting" anyone. There are enough that are not just areligious but actually anti-religous that it is possible to get the idea that everyone is against religion. We are, generally, not.

There is a series of posts in a reasonably current thread on this: Message 1I'm no expert but I don't think this has been demonstrated under plasible pre-biotic conditions.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 05-09-2004 09:17 PM