Defending Evolution: Tips & Strategies

[Tom McCurdy]

It was about ten or twenty years ago. My buddy Jim Haught has it on his web site. I downloaded it so I can find it in a day or so.
I went to the school board meetings last year and the creationists were fighting hard right then, but they lost.
Here is a link to ongoing out of state activities. http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpurrin1/textbookdisclaimers/index.htm

that is amazing...

I heard some of my religous friends aruging that there is scientific evidence that the world is only 10,000 years old. I told them they were wrong, ... does anyone know of any actual scientific evidence of a 10,000 year old earth?

 

[loseyourname]

If, as evolutionists teach, the solar system evolved from a spinning dust and gas cloud 4.6 billion years ago, the slowly condensing Sun would have radiated 25–30% less heat during the next 600 million years than it does today.a (A drop in the Sun’s radiation of only a few percent would freeze all our oceans.) Had this happened anytime in the past, let alone for 600 million years, the ice’s mirrorlike surfaces would have reflected more of the Sun’s radiation into outer space, cooling Earth even more in a permanent, runaway deep-freeze. If so, all agree that life could not have evolved.

One product of radioactive decay within rocks is helium, a light gas. Helium then enters the atmosphere—at a much faster rate than it escapes the atmosphere. (Large amounts of helium should not escape into outer space, even when considering helium’s low atomic weight.) Radioactive decay of only uranium and thorium would produce all the atmosphere’s helium in only 40,000 years. Therefore, the atmosphere appears to be young.

If Earth had initially been molten, it would have cooled to its present condition in much less than 4.6 billion years. This conclusion holds even if one makes liberal assumptions about the amount of heat generated by radioactive decay within Earth.a The known temperature pattern inside Earth is consistent only with a young Earth.

Because Galaxies Are Billions of Light-Years Away, Isn’t the Universe Billions of Years Old?

The logic behind this common question has several hidden assumptions. Probably the most questionable assumption is that starlight has always traveled at the same speed. Has it? Has the speed of light always been 186,000 miles per second or, more precisely, 299,792.458 kilometers per second? One simple test is to compare the historic measurements of the speed of light.

Read the Idiocy for Yourself

 

[Nereid]

An interesting perspective (or not): ask one of these (christian) creationists what they think truly devout believers in other religions think about the theory of evolution and abiogenesis. Apart from their astounding ignorance of the core tenants of other faiths, you may discover that they find it more difficult to accept that deeply religious people (of different faiths) can be truly at peace with Darwin than that 'faithless scientists' are high on evolution (I have no idea why the fact that so many of their christian breathern are equally at peace doesn't discomfort them so much).

 

[selfAdjoint]

I have no idea why the fact that so many of their christian breathern are equally at peace doesn't discomfort them so much

Oh that's easy. They consider any so-called Christian who doesn't accept their ideas to be damned and of no concern (except for possible prosylitizing).

 

[CharlesP]

More links

Here are some more links of interest in evolution

To read Forrest and Gross's essay, and West and Witt's response, visit:
http://www.stnews.org/books_authors_1204.html

For the Panda's Thumb critique of Behe and Snoke's paper, visit:
http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/000480.html

 

[Phobos]

Oh that's easy. They consider any so-called Christian who doesn't accept their ideas to be damned and of no concern (except for possible prosylitizing).

I've often heard fundamentalist Christians refer to those others as "nominal Christians" (i.e., people who say they're Christian, but who are incorrect in their beliefs)