Alright...let me just throw up ways to prove these in order:

-Carbon dating/radioactive decay
-Genetics have shown that eukaryotes(of which we are a part) have roughly 1/3 archea genes, 1/3 eubacteria genes, and 1/3 of eukaryotic variation...basically what one would expect if the hydrogenosome hypothesis(or something similar) holds true.
-Natural selection applies to mutation as well.
-That's one we don't know
-I assume you mean "vestigial" which is easily seen in the human appendix and coccyx. Flightless birds still have wings, snakes and whales still have tiny leg bones inside them...and that's just off the top of my head.
-I don't see why homology doesn't make that case for you. Kids look like parents, and have the same basic structure. Over time they'll retain key identifiable features.

And there ya go.

~Zoo

and here you go...........

-Carbon dating radioactive decay is only useful if the decay occurs at a constant rate- anything that alters that rate (such as a natural disaster) will alter the estimated age (most likely increasing its estimated age).  

 No place endures constant conditions-one day it rains, another day its sunny, and still another day there is a natural disaster such as a hurricane.   Since the conditions on earth are constantly changing, so does the rate of decay over time. it is impossible to carbon date any geology to estimate the age of the earth unless enormous presuppositions are made. Furthermore, how much carbon or any element for that matter did the original rocks contain?

Thats a very necessary but impossible question to answer when considering the age of the earth as determined by these dating methods.

-Think Biochem- the hydrogenosome hypothesis and endosymbiant theories have so many flaws that its hard to know where to begin. These elaborate hypotheses were created to try to describe the impossible from an evolutionary standpoint: the origin of life from non-life. other than pure speculation, there is no proof that this occured.  When these processes are demonstrated in the lab, I'll believe it.

Origin of life is the biggest problem area for the evolutionist. You can talk about homology and natural selection and even conservation of genomes all day, but when you talk about the actual formation of that  first living cell, the evolutionist has a problem. DNA is transcribed into
RNA that is translated into protein, and its the protein that forms the building blocks of life. the problem is that proteins are needed to transcribe DNA into RNA and even more proteins are needed to tranlate RNA.   Proteins are also necessary for maintenance of DNA and RNA as well as protein folding.  So, in a very simple and short explanation of the problem, there is a chicken and egg scenario.   You can't get protein without DNA, but you can't make or translate DNA without protein. at the very least, in order for evolution to work both DNA and proteins to
translate and transcribe would have had to spontaneously form at essentially the same time (keep in mind that DNA degrades fairly quickly especially in the enviornmental conditions that the evolutionist presupposes).  

If you really think about the biochemistry behind this you soon realize that this is far too impossible to believe.   Even the simplest of proteins are far to complex to spontaneously form. and only one allele of DNA is able to form on its own (adenine)- forming even a simple strand of DNA spontaneously is impossible. and this area is only one major problem
evolution has with the origin of living things.

-Name one REAL beneficial mutation (and don't say antibiotic resistance or sickle cell anemia). It's impossible to name one because none exist.
-
- So called "vestigial" organs CAN in fact have important functions.  People have MAJOR problems when the coccyx is absent or misformed. it plays an important FUNCTION in the human body.   Wings on flightless bird DO have a function.

-"Common ancestor" as Evolutionary Scientists use it (refering to species being interrelated)- NOT a kid who looks like his parents.

First of all, radioactive decay is like clockwork...even better because it always occurs at a constant rate. Tic, toc, tic, toc, tic, toc....we even have a mathematical formula that measures the halflife of these things. They're actually quite dependable.  You take a sample and compare how much of the radioactive element you have to the product which results as it releases alpha, beta, or gamma particles.

A natural disaster could scramble up the debris, I suppose...but it's hardly feasible to say that every place on earth has been hit by a natural disaster.  Even if that was the case and rocks do appear older you do realize we're talking in the hundreds of millions, even billions of years and that we give a +/- a few million years in either direction.  There's no way we'd be so off the mark that we'd mistake a 6,000 year old rock for a 500 million year old one.

No, the hydrogenosome hypothesis concerns the formation of the eukaryotic organism from the previously existing eubacteria and archea.  Basically an archea takes a hydrogen producing eubacteria into itself in order to benefit from it's hydrogen production...as such it becomes a chimera, a new organism formed from two others.  That led to the present day mitochondria and choloroplasts we see in animals and plants today.

That's called endosymbiosis, by the way.  If you want proof of it, then I got it.

In 1966, microbiologist Kwang Jeon was studying single-celled organisms called amoebae, when his amoebae communities were struck by an unexpected plague: a bacterial infection. Literally thousands of the tiny invaders — named x-bacteria by Jeon — squeezed inside each amoeba cell, causing the cell to become dangerously sick. Only a few amoebae survived the epidemic.

However, several months later, the few surviving amoebae and their descendents seemed to be unexpectedly healthy. Had the amoebae finally managed to fight off the x-bacterial infection? Jeon and his colleagues were surprised to find that the answer was no — the x-bacteria were still thriving inside their amoebae hosts, but they no longer made the amoebae sick. There were more surprises when Jeon used antibiotics to kill the bacteria inside an amoeba — the host amoeba also died! The amoebae could no longer live without their former attackers. Jeon discovered that this was because the bacteria make a protein that the amoebae need to survive. The nature of the relationship between the two species had changed entirely: from attack and defense to cooperation.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/endosymbiosis_01 Science.

 

Now...as to how life began.  That's an interesting question that's still up in the air.  Either way, that's how eukaryotes were formed and that experiment proves the concept.  Off the scientific record, I'm willing to consider creation at this point.  There are 4 basic traits that all cells share- plasma membrane, DNA(or RNA), ribosomes, and ATP synthase...and you're right, it would be quite difficult to get all of those together at the same time.  So that's where I would consider the idea of creation.  You get past this point and everything works out according to these hypotheses.  A spontaneous creation of everything we see today is just not feasible to me with all the evidence to the contrary.  Maybe not molecules to man, but I can certainly see microbes to man rather easily.

 

For penguins, yes, they act as flippers...ostriches use them as a mating display, I'll even give you that.  Emus, cassowaries, kiwis, and rheas have no use for their wings...none whatsoever.  Snakes have leg bones, they have no use...sometimes they even manifest as little spurs which don't do anything.  Whales have leg bones too, but they aren't used for anything.  You skipped over the appendix, as well.  That's useless...aside from getting infected.  If they have important functions(or any function at all), then they're not vestigial.

Here's a top 10 list...although it seemed to be acting weird for me.  If all you get are pictures, scroll to the very bottom for the text that goes along with them. http://www.livescience.com/animals/top10_vestigial_organs.html

 

Antibiotic, disease and pesticide resistance are fantastic examples of mutation.  I'm not sure why you want me to exclude them.  The organism mutates and survives the attacks on it by these chemicals.  The flu mutates every single year...that's why we have different shots every year.

This site has a bit about mutations: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB101.html and some references and links to other stuff if you want to check it out.

I know what you mean...I was using that as a short term example.  Descendents will always possess traits of their predecessors.  From parent to offspring...now extrapolate that over time and chances are very high that there will be some common traits, usually in very basic morphology at least in some small way.  Although genetics has really taken over when proving relationships these days, kudos to Carl Woese.

 

Whew...that's all for tonight, gotta get my shuteye.

~Zoo

 

 

I'd like to study some of your claims, but you give no references.

Vestigial doesn't mean "functionless," by the way.

I'd really like a reference for this last statement.  "None exist."  A cursory search turned up many of them.

If you answer nothing else, please answer this for my curiosity.  Are Young Earth Creationists actually Young Universe Creationists?  The reason I ask is because God supposedly made the whole universe, including the earth, in basically the same small time fragment (reading it literally), so I would assume that if you believe the Earth is 6-10k years old, then you'd also believe the same for the universe, no?

By the way - your "enter" key is sticking.  Every so often there are line breaks out of nowhere.  How incredibly odd - unless it isn't.  Matthew 12:37

The snake is trying to get it's legs back... I don't know what the whale did though.



How do you know how much carbon started in the whatever-it-is?



There really is no evidence to the contrary, given that God is big enough to create microbes and man at the same time, and everything in between. An earth with things to explore, a universe with a history, etc.

You take a sample and you measure the amount of parent material(the unstable isotope) in proportion to the amount of the daughter material(the stable product). Then you do some figurin' with proportions to figure it all out.

I found a decent enough site that explains it all rather well. Radiometric Dating-How do we determine the age of a rock?

Fossils in sedimentary rock are tricky, though because radiometric dating only gives the age of when the rocks were formed from magma. So it's not entirely accurate when it comes to that. That's why we have broader estimates when it comes to them, which are honed in while looking at the layering done over the years. Cut the side off of a hill and you get a rough timeline of what happened just looking from the top down.

Here's a pretty lengthy overview of geology and dating as a whole. WWW Link It is actually an essay about the creationist-evolution debate in relation to geology.



I ask you, "Why would he bother?" Makes sense to build from the bottom up, instead of all at once. Same way you build a house. It just seems way too complex and convoluted to try and mess with our heads. I mean, if it was a young earth spontaneously created and all forms of life and all that was is spontaneously created, then why worry about weaving a rich tapestry of fake history? That seems counterintuitive if He's trying to get people to believe in Him and His Word and to intentionally have someone write it down and then totally screw with everything. Just seems...odd. That's like a teacher letting you take notes, and then giving you a test that contradicts everything you've written down.

~Zoo

Yeah...I'm guilty of having it always stuck in my head like that.

Upon on further dictionary inspection this is the biological definition:

-Occurring or persisting as a rudimentary or degenerate structure.

Basically an underformed or less than complete version of something. Small wings on ostriches(relative to body size), little snake legs spurs, the coccyx, male nipples...stuff like that.


Hmm, all this science is making me hungry.

~Zoo

Thanks Zoo.

Sorry about the order in how I respond here.  I'm not sure why (on my site) everytime I put up a quote the next quote goes above the previous one so I'm backwards in answering your points made.

Anyhow not alot of time right now and will be back later to anwer more in depth.  Correct me if I'm wrong Zoo but the term "common ancestor" is never used in science to describe all humans coming from an original couple (as in Adam and Eve).   It's always used to describe all life coming from the same common ancestor (ie primitive single celled organisms).

Homology means that some structures or genes in one species look like structures or genes in other species.   It's an obvious observation so Creationists don't disagree with that. 

A simple example is that eye color gene Ock wrote about.   That gene is found in many different species.  An evolutionist looks at that and says "this demonstrates that all species come from a common ancestor" but a creationist looks at that and says "this demonstrates that all species were created by a common designer."   Both agree that the homology exists, but they give different explanations as to why. so  Creationists believe in homology as it points to a common designer but reject the idea that homology suggests a common geneological lineage (common ancestor).   It's never the scientific data that we disagree about, it's always the interpretation of the data like I've been saying repeatedly.

That's why you need to look at both sides Zoo.  At least if you want to be credible in the open minded department......

and I'll be serious here, of course you have to be off the record.  But besides that, you should be very careful in your line who you say that to.  Even being honest about it will do you no favors in the Scientific community.  I don't even think they like joking about this to be honest.  I'll show you what I mean later probably do a separate piece on this.  I've got something to show you that I found interesting. 

well what would say....... a flood due to this carbon dating?  Would it skew it a bit?  I mean it's not like a continuous drip drip of water over a long period of time.  Instead its a huge volume of water in a shorter period of time.  How would that mess up the dating? 

Yes and we saw this in Mount St. Helen's in 1980 with Spirit Lake.  Again, from a Creationist's POV the flood was worldwide not local and every country and society that I know of has a flood story in their history from way back. 

Ock, I didn't have time to get back to you about what you wrote about the Discovery Institute (DI) but among Creationists they are not credible and there's reasons why they always lose in court.   Creationist Scientists cringe at some of the comments made by them.  It's funny when they have all these court cases they call in DI but never AIG.  Have you noticed this?   AIG is well supported by the Creationists, not DI. 

You didn't get back to me about this, either

 

Well, the common ancestor term is used literally.  It does not necessarily relate to a single celled organism, but it can.  A common ancestor is the organism that 2 or more species have differentiated from.  Say we have an Ancestor and through some environmental pressures, disaster, geographic separation, mutation, etc, etc. certain members were either isolated or developed different traits.  For the sake of clarity we'll say this happened 3 times and we now have 3 different populations of organisms.  Over time they would differentiate within their respective populations and become a new species.  So we have Descendent 1, 2, and 3 who have all been isolated and have adapted and evolved according to their different environmental pressures.  They are unique from their ancestor and also unique from each other.  You could compare this to say...a fox, a dog, and a coyote.  They're all pretty similar, i.e canines and yet quite different in their behavior, temperment, appearance, and stuff like that.

 

I can see your point of view.  It's like leaving a signature or having a particular style in art or whatever.  Much like art, we use these things to classify and establish relationships in the living world.  Either way you look at it (creationist or evolutionist) it still means they're kind of related.

Although I tend to lean more towards the evolution standpoint as you might have guessed.   The evidence makes sense to me, so that's what I go with.

Hmm, haven't found anything about a flood, but I did find a decent paper on carbon-14 dating. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood-c14.html

An interesting excerpt is this little bit:

It may interest the reader to know that within this 9000-year period, where the radiocarbon method can be checked by tree-ring data, objects older than 400 BC receive a carbon-14 date which makes them appear younger than they really are! An uncorrected carbon-14 date of 6000 years for an object would actually mean that the object was 6700 years old. Seven hundred years or so is about as far as the carbon-14 method strays from tree-ring dating on the average. Individual dates given on a 1973 correlation chart (Bailey, 1989, p.100) show that objects with true ages between 4200 BC and 5400 BC would receive a carbon-14 date making them appear 500-900 years too young.

So...younger than they are?  Interesting indeed.

Anywho, if you get some free time you should give that a read...it's a little long, but explains a great deal.  It is a rebuttal to the creationist argument, so be prepared for that.

~Zoo

Sorry Ock, been gone all day.  Just got on earlier and then left until now.  Why is this a trick question? 

 I would say it would all be included. 

We see it says on the first day God created the heaven and the earth.  The word heaven is plural in Hebrew.  The first day we see light. The Holy Spirit moved (vibrated) upon the earth.  From this vibrating energy source started to flow our energy waves of head and sound magnetism; the created universe was energized.  The earth now rotating on its axis also began at this time.  Both energy and matter were present in the space, mass, time framework.  The three basic types of force fields were now in effect, gravitational, electro magnetic and nuclear.

 The second day was the separating of the waters (1:6-8).  The third day was the creation of plant life (1:9-13).  These verses alone totally refute the theistic evolution (ID) which says life begans aeons ago out of water.  To the contrary Moses tells us life was supernaturally created on the third day and began on dry ground.

The fourth day we see the creation of the sun, moon and stars (1:14-19).  On the first day God created physical light.  He now creates special light sources to rule the day and night.

Why would you think the earth is created before the sun, stars and moon? 

It's a legitimate question AND I was curious why you guys were limiting your carbon dating discussion to objects on the earth.  Other non terrestrial objects have been tested, after all.  Remember Neil Armstrong?  He and his buddies brought us presents from his famous travel abroad.  Naturally, they were dated.

There were some issues with dating the moon rocks, but they were overcome using other methods.  Specifically, one method for dating was testing for the presence of Tungsten 182 as an indicator of the radioactive decay of hafnium-182.  The problem was that cosmic bombardment of tantalum in the rocks was creating tungsten-182 also.  Meh whatever.  They just found rocks with no tantalum and tested those.

Carbon dating, from what I understand can't be used outside of the earth.  How reliable can it be outside of earth?  How can you come up with the same conditions?  THe earth and the universe have such different conditions

Carbon dating is a gold standard of dating but has problems when catastrophies enter in.  From post flood times this method is excellent but once something catastrophic happens such as a volcanic eruption or something like a past flood then it's not as reliable in measuring time. 

As far as I knew only the speed of light is used to date the universe.  And not knowing how God set that up in the first place, how can we know how old the universe is using that method?  From a Christian POV remember everything was created with maturity. 

The tree of life was not a root coming out of the ground.  It was bearing fruit. 

 

 

There's more than one way to date a rock. Carbon isn't the only way...besides carbon dating is only accurate to about 70,000 years. Radioactive elements are used beyond that...and radioactive decay is pretty darn constant.

~Zoo