What do creation scientists believe

Great Debates
21

OUCH! Rough crowd. And here I thought I was simply making myself available to answer honest questions asked of me.

First of all, I would hope, Dryga_Yes, that even you would admit to not being an all-knowing, all seeing guru of all things scientific and would therefore begin by admitting that you do not know it all.

I do not believe anyone knows it all. But yes, you can know enough to make an intelligent decision about matters.

Thank you, Libertarian, for the welcome. It’s nice to be here. :slight_smile:

Apos, yes, your second look was correct. That is a quote from CS Lewis, not me. An unscientific opinion, unprovable one way or the other. However, I do agree with him. I did not use the quote in direct relation to the subject, however, as it is addressing atheism, and the discussion here is creationism and why I might believe it to be truth. It was simply an interesting quote I came across this morning and added to my post.

So, no, I do not believe you nor anyone else are trying to convince me of atheism. I think we are simply discussing why I believe what I do, correct?

Darwin’s Finch. Thank you as well for the welcome and honest questions. What you are referring to is variation of the species which is a proven fact of science, micro-evolution. This has nothing to do with full blown evolutionary theory.
No, I am never opposed to true science. It has always landed on the side of creation/flood, and has never been able to prove evolutionary theory.
Please explain to me what exactly you mean by materialism inherent in evolutionary theory so that I can better answer your question.
As for being an “animal”, that is a biological term as opposed to being a mineral or vegetable as far as I am concerned, and does not bother me in the least.
There are so many things that make more sense it would be very hard to hit them all, but I will list a few things.

Actually, mrsface hit most of it on the head for an example. So many people have been convinced that science proves evolution and that is simply not the case. When all the evidence is weighed the theory of evolution becomes laughable. Please do not take offense, I do not mean I personally laugh an any of you for believing it. I am specifically talking about the scientific premise.

Most people who believe that evolution is true do so on the basis of college professors who told them so. Not because they have looked at the evidence themselves. They simply believe what they are told, not even realizing that all of it is guesswork and supposition paraded as fact. But to really compare the two beliefs in factual, scientific evidence is to have a whole new world opened up.

In simple terms. I do indeed approach my scientific facts with the teaching of the bible as my jump off point. However, those who believe in evolution do so with unreserved belief in what people say as their jumping off point. It is believed, because someone said it was true - even while at the same time it is known to be merely a theory. There have been no facts to back it up. Everything that I have seen points to creation/flood told about in the oldest, most reliable book ever compiled in human history.

Evolutionary theorists keep saying they will prove it when the evidence comes in, but the evidence is getting further away.

Happy B-Day, Zoogirl, I love nature and especially horses. Your comments on the evolution of the horse caught my eye. Here are some interesting facts concerning that.

http://www.bible.ca/tracks/textbook-fraud-dawn-horse-eohippus.htm#horses

What informed scientists say about the horse series

George Gaylord Simpson, world’s foremost evolutionary paleontologist said, “The uniform, continuous transformation of Hyracotherium into Equus, so dear to the hearts of generations of textbook writers never happened in nature.” (George G. Simpson, Life Of The Past, p.119)

Simpson, after stating that nowhere in the world is there any trace of a fossil that would close the considerable gap between Hyracotherium (“Eohippus”), which evolutionists assume was the first horse, and its supposed ancestral order Condylarthra, goes on to say "This is true of all the thirty-two orders of mammals…

The earliest and most primitive known members of every order already have the basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately continuous sequence from one order to another known. In most cases the break is so sharp and the gap so large that the origin of the order is speculative and much disputed." (Tempo and Mode in Evolution, G. G. Simpson,1944, p 105)

This regular absence of transitional forms is not confined to mammals, but is an almost universal phenomenon, as has long been noted by paleontologists. It is true of almost all orders of all classes of animals, both vertibrate and invertibrate. A fortiori, it is also true of the classes, and of the major animal phylia,… (Tempa and Mode in evolution, G. G. Simpson, 1944, p 107)

“It is evolution that gives rhyme and reason to the story of the horse family as it exists today and as it existed in the past. Our own existence has the same rhyme and reason, and so has the existence of every other living organism. One of the main points of interest in the horse family is that it so clearly demonstrates this tremendously important fact.” (Horses, G.G. Simpson, 1961, p. xxxiii)

“When asked to provide evidence of long-term evolution, most scientists turn to the fossil record. Within this context, fossil horses are among the most frequently cited examples of evolution. The prominent Finnish paleontologist Bjorn Kurten wrote: ‘One’s mind inevitably turns to that inexhaustible textbook example, the horse sequence. This has been cited – incorrectly more often than not – as evidence for practically every evolutionary principle that has ever been coined.’ This cautionary note notwithstanding, fossil horses do indeed provide compelling evidence in support of evolutionary theory.” (The Fossil Record And Evolution: A Current Perspective, B. J. MacFadden Horses, Evol. Biol. ISBN: 22:131-158, 1988, p. 131)

“…over the years fossil horses have been cited as a prime example of orthogenesis [“straight-line evolution”] …it can no longer be considered a valid theory…we find that once a notion becomes part of accepted scientific knowledge, it is very difficult to modify or reject it” (Fossil Horses, Bruce MacFadden, FL Museum of Natural History & U. of FL, 1994, p.27 )
“Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin, and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded …ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information.” (Dr. David Raup, Curator, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, “Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology”, Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, Vol. 50(1), 1979, p 25)

“There have been an awful lot of stories, some more imaginative than others, about what the nature of that history [of life] really is. The most famous example, still on exhibit down-stairs, is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps fifty years ago. That has been presented as the literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that that is lamentable, particularly when the people who propose those kinds of stories may themselves be aware of the speculative nature of some of that stuff.” (Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist British Museum of Natural History, Harper’s, p. 60, 1984.

The sequence in the series which presents transitional forms between small, many-toed forms and large, one-toed forms, has absolutely no fossil record evidence. (Moore, John, N., and Harold S. Slusher, Eds., Biology: A Search for Order in Complexity, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1970, p. 548)

“In the first place it is not clear that Hyracotherium was the ancestral horse. Thus Simpson (1945) states, ‘Matthew [1926] has shown and insisted that Hyracotherium (including Eohippus) is so primitive that it is not much more definitely equid than tapirid, rhinocerotid, etc., but it is customary to place it at the root of the equid group.’” (Kerkut, G. A., Implications of Evolution, New York: Pergamon Press, 1960, p. 149)

"In some ways it looks as if the pattern of horse evolution might be even as chaotic as that proposed by Osborn (1937, 1943) for the evolution of the Proboscidea, where “in almost no instance is any known form considered to be a descendant from any other known form; every subordinate grouping is assumed to have sprung, quite separately and usually without any known intermediate stage, from hypothetical common ancestors in the Early Eocene or Late Cretaceous’ (Romer 1949).” (Kerkut, G. A., Implications of Evolution, New York: Pergamon Press, 1960, p. 149)

“Much of this story [horse evolution] is incorrect …” (Birdsell, J. B., Human Evolution, Chicago: Rand McNally College Pub. Co., 1975, p. 169)

“Because its complications are usually ignored by biology textbooks, creationists have claimed the horse story is no longer valid. However, the main features of the story have in fact stood the test of time…” (Futuyma, D.J. 1982. Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution, p 85)

“All the morphological changes in the history of the Equidae can be accounted for by the neo-Darwinian theory of microevolution: genetic variation, natural selection, genetic drift, and speciation.” (Futuyma, D.J. 1986. Evolutionary Biology, p 409)

“The fossil record [of horses] provides a lucid story of descent with change for nearly 50 million years, and we know much about the ancestors of modern horses.” (Phylogeny of the family Equidae, R. L. Evander, 1989, p 125)

Eohippus, presented as the ancestor of horse which has disappeared millions of years ago, resembles extraordinarily to an animal called Hyrax which still lives in Africa today. One of the evolution researchers, Hitchings comments as follows: "Eohippus, supposedly the first horse, doesn’t look in the least like one, and indeed, when first found was not classified as such. It is remarkably like the present-day Hyrax (or daman), both in its skeletal structure and the way of like that it is supposed to have lived…

Eohippus, supposedly the earliest horse, and said by experts to be long extinct, and known to us only through fossils, may in fact be alive and well and not a horse at all a-shy, fox-sized animal called a daman that darts about in the African bush." (The Neck of the Giraffe?, Francis? Hitchings, [Title and first name are not certain])

Whew! Long post. This is really a fascinating subject to discuss. I have lots more information of fraud concerning the theory of evolution in man, but this post is really long already so I’ll wait and do it later if someone would like to read any of it.

22

Could we have some detailed examples of this?

23

Valerie

With any luck, you will find one or two Finches who have the wherewithall and patience to address your points. I have neither, I’m afraid. Most people will refer you to a site, Talk Origins that they believe rebuts most, if not all, of your arguments.

It’s pretty impolite to call views that people honestly hold “laughable”. When you do that, you open a door to hostility and disrespect. I recommend that you strip your debate of inciteful rhetoric. I recommend also that you keep an open mind. God is the Love Everlasting; He is not the king of an anthill.

24

Oh, I just discovered what you meant by materialism. No, that does not bother me. Science can only deal with materialism as far as science understands it. This is normal, as all things must be proven for science to be true. However, true science grows gradually if it really seeks truth, and what might have been considered magic centuries ago can now be proven scientifically, so it can be a little relative depending on how you are looking at it.

25

Libertarian,

I am sorry I have offended you. Please forgive me. I was addressing a scientific theory, not a personal viewpoint. But I can appreciate that it did not sit well with you. I did not join the board to make points, but to answer any ?'s anyone had.

If no one desires to know, or if you feel I need to be addressed with a rebuttal, I understand completely. I don’t have a pressing need to convince anyone of anything. Just here to offer a viewpoint.

26

valerie, would you mind going to the top of this page, hitting the search button, and typing in the word “Creationism”? What you have offered so far has been offered(and rebutted) many times before. Also, you bring up stories of fraud concerning evolution-would you mind if we remind you of the many documented cases of fraud but forward by those who call themselves “creationists”?

27

But if we can’t believe in thought until we’ve proven God, then using thought to prove God is circular reasoning. Moreover, there is no reason why God had to have designed our brains for logical thinking. So I have to make one unprovable assumption: my thoughts are logical. You have to make two: God exists, and your thoughts are logical. Occam’s razor favors my position.

You might as well claim that an apple falling off a tree and being attracted to Earth has nothing to do with the Earth being attracted to the sun. The distinction between “microevolution” and “macroevolution” is completely arbitrary; I have not seen any well defined criterion for distinguishing between the two other than micorevolution is what is obvious and even creationists have to admit exists, and macroevolution is what creationists think they can get away with claiming does not exist.

I don’t believe in evolution because someone else told me so. What Darwin’s Finch presented is evolution. You call it “microevolution”, that doesn’t change what it is. It is evolution, and unless you don’t believe that organisms possess inherited traits that affect the probability of them passing on those traits to the next generation, you believe in evolution. Do you believe in “full blown evolutionary theory”? No. But once we have a mechanism for the origin of life (evolution) why go fishing around for an alternate explanation? To me, “full blown evolutionary thoery” isn’t simply a wild guess about what happened, it’s a the default explanation for any organism. If I see a round red object on an apple tree, I’m going to assume it’s an apple. Not because anyone told me it was an apple, but because the default explanation is that it’s an apple. Sure, someone could have made an object out of wax that looks like an apple and attached it the tree, but unless I have areason to believe that’s what happened, I going to go with the “it’s an apple” explanation.

BTW, the use of the phrase “only a theory” just shows that you don’t understand scientific nomclamature.

28

Hi, valerie, and welcome to SDMB and Great Debates!

My stance around here is that of a devout Christian who nonetheless accepts evolution as the explanation of how creatures came to be the way they are – on the basis that the evidence read from the world God created by competent scientists seems to confirm it.

I’d like to begin with a bit of a nitpick, with a point behind it: you used “bonified” to describe your stance, and that’s not the past tense of a verb “to bonify” but the Latin phrase bona fide brought into English, along with its meaning, “in good faith” – not “faith” in the religious sense, but with the meaning “valid, trustworthy, with no ulterior motives.” I think it’s important to keep that in mind – there’re strong differences in views in GD generally, but they’re almost all sincerely held by people as a part of their understanding of the world. Many people misunderstand the stances of people such as you as willful clinging to ignorance about the world, rather than as a thoughtful evaluation of various forms of evidence. I disagree with you, but I can respect your presumable idea that the Bible ranks above scientific interpretation of data in what you can give credence to.

The key point to me is that the Bible does not require rejection of evolution to be understood validly, and the creationism/evolutionism debate is not one between atheists and believers, but between those who hold to one view of Scripture on the one hand, and to those who try to take an educated and thoughtful view of the whole gamut of human learning on the other.

Genesis 1 is the story of how the world came to be, through God’s work of Creation. However, the key word there is story. It’s written in a simple, repetitive style reminiscent in some ways of Goldilocks and the Three Bears – you know by the fourth day that God’s going to say, “Let there be…” {something} and that {something} is going to come into existence, and He’s going to look on it and call it good. This is not the earmarks of a detailed historical narrative but that of a storyteller intent on making a point – that God made it all and called it all good.

Now, the six day thing. I’ll draw to your intention the longstanding importance of the Sabbath in Jewish belief and practice. We have a small contingent of Orthodox Jews who are members here, and they won’t be posting on this board until after sundown tonight, because to key in thoughts and send them by electronic means is “work” forbidden them on the Sabbath. Jewish teachers said that the Sabbath was one of the eternal things that “existed before the Universe,” they considered it so important. From the perspective of a Jewish storyteller, then, having God do His creative work in six days and set aside the Sabbath as a day of rest, not only for us but for Him, is emphasizing how important it is.

In short, what I’m saying to you is that the truth value of the Creation story is not dependent on the literalness of the story. That it must be read as the literal truth is a human theory; Jesus’s parables are “true” as insights into the human character and how God’s Kingdom works, despite being stories he made up for the purpose, something like stories told as sermon illustrations. And it’s interesting to notice that only a few verses after describing the creation of the heavens and the earth as taking six days, the story goes on to say, “Now in the day in which God created the heavens and the earth…” If you read this as literal, then it took one day, not six – and you are faced with a contradiction. (Old joke: “God didn’t take six days for creation; he goofed off for five, and then pulled an all-nighter!” :D)

Now, to me, if you can read the stories as either literal or “story” – figurative, poetic descriptions of how he worked that make a mighty effort to drive home the point that He did it, sequentially, by His Word (hear John 1 echoing here), and called it all good – and if the world He created seems to hold evidence that contradicts the literal reading, then, for me, to hold to the literal reading is to call God a liar – because either He lied in giving the six-day account or He lied in planting false evidence of 4.6 billion years of geology and over a billion of living things. My God is not a liar!

And therefore, to me, the literal reading is thrown out of court, because it’s the misunderstanding of human beings as to how God worked.

It doesn’t require atheism to hold that God’s world bears evidence of how He made it; it takes faith – faith that an Infinite Mind and Goodness can work through the complexities of cosmological astrophysics and evolutionary development to achieve His Purposes.

Actually, I think you’ll find that that is false here – I’ve never seen a more thoroughgoing bunch of independent thinkers who insist on reviewing the data and forming their own conclusions, rather than listening to authority, than the habitues of this board! :slight_smile:

First, Condylarthra has been thrown out as a separate order of mammals for some time. (See Michael J. Benton, Vertebrate Paleontology, 1997, p.324, for the reasons.) The attribution of Hyracotherium to that order as opposed to Perissodactyla, the horse-tapir-rhino order, is something I’ve never seen outside Simpson. Discoveries since 1994 and re-evaluation of previously known fossils have indicated a real sequence of development of ordinal characteristics over time.

There are a lot of refutations of this; one of my favorites is the sequencing of the origin of the whales from large land animals to their current totally-aquatic body style during the Eocene, most of which has been discovered within the last 20 years. The sequence from small dinosaur through Archaeopteryx to more “normal” birds is another one with the discovery of most transitional forms a relatively recent development.

A very valid statement – Atheist evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould goes into substantial detail in one of his essays for Natural History as to what the sequencing of horse fossils and their interrelationships are, and what it says about evolution.

Have yourself a merry Merychippus! :slight_smile:

Highly improbable, to say the least. While body size is similar, the bone structure of the Hyracotherium, from teeth to ankles, is that of a Perissodactyl; the specializations of the Hyracoidea are very much similar to other fossils found in North Africa and along several coasts, ranging from Moeritherium to sea cows and Desmostylus (the fossil, not the poster!), save for a few specific to that order and useful to a herbivore living among rocks or in trees, as hyraxes do.

In short, IMHO the overwhelming evidence of the fossil record supports the gradual variation of creatures by small skips (punctuated equilibrium) in accordance with natural environmental pressures – i.e., Darwinian evolution.

To accept this does not require that you accept a no-God, totally-by-chance scenario to accompany it, though many people do. It merely means that you accept the most reasonable explanation, requiring the fewest bizarre leaps of assumption (not “leaps of faith”!), as to how the world’s creatures came to be the way we find them today, and how there came to be fossils preserving elements of their presumable ancestors.

29

A great post, Poly! Thanks. :slight_smile:

30

Evolution isn’t a belief that needs to be affirmed; it’s just an idea based on examination of the evidence.

When I was a creationist, I would often make statements to the effect “Evolutionists decide in advance what it is they wish to prove and go in search of evidence supporting it, discarding anything to the contrary” and “evolution makes no sense at all when you look at all the evidence”.

I believe that I was completely wrong in those views.

Firstly the practice of selecting that which agrees and rejecting or ignoring the contrary is far more prevalent amongst the creationist camp than anywhere else (although of course examples of scientists clinging doggedly, in the face of much disproof, to their pet theories can always be found). I believe that a psychologist might well have held me responsible of ‘projection’ in the case of this statement.

Secondly, the plain fact is that I had not examined very much evidence at all; I was merely reciting a line I had read someplace or other; I was quite comfortable to uncritically accept the view of evolution as presented by creationst authorities.

…then I stumbled across the SDMB.

I certainly don’t mean to try to put myself across as qualified or even competent in the field of biology, paleontology, anthropology etc; I’m just an interested armchair thinker. I will say though, that creationism was, for me, a mental prison.

31

valerie–I, for one, appreciate your willingness to discuss this subject. Yes, this can be a tough room–many people here do have very strong backgrounds in science, and many others have studied this subject long enough to have a remarkable understanding of it.

My best suggestion would be to get to the talk.origins archive and do some serious reading. They have a great collection of must-read articles that provide a good background and may help clear up misconceptions you may have about the subject.

I would ask this–what sources have you used to study creation science from? What specific websites, books, authors, etc., have convinced you that evolution is bankrupt?

Dr. J

32

nomenclature,

Valerie, the point your missing is that ‘microevolution’ carried out over a periods of tens of thousands (in some cases)/ hundreds of thousands/millions/billions of years is the same as ‘macroevoltuion’ as you cannot expect that a series of accidental (don’t confuse accidental with improbable) beneficial variations would not continiously change a species into something completely different. however I strongly suspect that you are a young-earth creationist or simlair in which case you would say that those time periods have not happened, but it would also mean you would have to contend with cosmology and geology too.

Also zoogirl people have not really changed in the past few thousand (i.e. less than 4 thousand) years as the result of evolution, changes in stature are more to do with diet, disease and other simlair considerations.

33

I need to expand on this because it looks rather slanted on re-reading…

To the creationst(of which I am aware there are several varieties, so let’s say a literalist YEC), the Bible must be correct; any evidence must affirm scripture; therefore anything which looks like it doesn’t (such as geologic columns that couldn’t have been laid down quickly enough) must be either discarded or an explanation must be quickly cobbled together to ‘patch’ it into place in accordance with what the Bible says.

To the scientist, any piece of firm evidence that disproves a theory requires him to discard or re-work his theory in order to include the new data; the theory of evolution is a result of this process, not the starting point.

34

I think this statement of Mangetout’s deserves emphasis. The folks at ICR and the other “creation science” groups are very much notable for the selectivity of their examples. People who in good faith put their trust in a literal reading of Genesis 1 are very much inclined to accept unquestioningly the evidence that they put forth – but they are scientists (or claim to be) who know better than to “high grade” their data and use only that which serves to support their preconceived theories. (And this fault is, alas, not limited to “creation scientists” – as the husband of a student of palleoanthropology, I’ve seen a lot of evidence of just that in a field where even the most reputable scientists tend to formulate theories and then evaluate the evidence on the basis of whether or not it backs their theory!)

35

It is true that scientists approach the world from the point of view of current theories.

Good scientists look for weak areas in those theories because one excellent route to becoming a distinguised scientist is to either shore up the weak place in a theory or use that weak place to replace the theory with a better one. You get absolutely no scientific reputation by saying “Same on this side.”

There are a lot of minds examining the work in all fields, and most of them do it with a critical eye toward the existing paradigm for the reason cited.

36

Lot’s of posts, but no creationsist has answered my simple questions from the OP. We have lots of threads with creationists trying to poke holes in evolution, and evolutionists defending themeselves. Can’t we turn it aroud for once? If biologists and gologists have the dates and mechanisms all wrong, then what are the “right” dates and mechanisms?

37

In fact I’ll state that it is impossible for a (YE)Creationist (and possibly other varieties) to apply the scientific method (specifically step 4 as presented here):

  1. Observe phenomenon.
  2. Create a tentative description (hypothesis), that is entirely consistent with that which has been observed.
  3. Make predictions based on the hypothesis.
  4. Test the predictions by experiments and further observations, modifying the hypothesis in the light new data.
  5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until no discrepancies are found between hypothesis and experiment and/or observation.

The ‘science’ int ‘Creation Science’ then, should be taken to mean something different to what it might mean if you see the word in a different context.

38

Well there is the appellation “competent technician”, but that’s not very nice.

39

Oh, you ain’t seen nothing yet! So far, folks have been unusually restrained. But, speaking for myself, I’ll say that I appreciate your willingness to walk into the lion’s dens, so to speak.

I’m not going to try to rebut all the specific arguments you bring up against evolution. Others have pointed you to places where such responses have been made. I tend to approach this whole issue on a broader more philosophy of science and society level (even though I am actually a physicist). I.e., I tend to find that those who believe in creationism have a very strange view of what science is about and how it works.

This statement gets to the heart of what I find so troubling about the creationist point of view (and which we find repeated in other attacks on science, e.g., from deniers of the science of global warming, for example). To me, the “true science” is that which appears in refereed scientific journals such as Nature, Science, and the more specialized journals in various fields.

Science cannot “prove” anything. It is inductive by nature, unlike pure mathematics. So, what happens is that ideas such as Darwin’s original hypothesis of evolution get proposed and then other scientists test these ideas. As various evidence accumulates in support of the hypothesis, it becomes accepted as a theory and eventually as a fact. (And, of course, it gets both modified and fleshed out in this process.)

Note that the way things work in science, there is much less tendency toward adherence to dogma as in other social systems like religion. I am not claiming that there is none, but there is a strong incentive for a scientist to show that other scientists are wrong. For example, in my own PhD work in physics, we showed that certain model systems behaved in a way that was unexpected by others in the field; if these systems had behaved in the expected way, it probably wouldn’t have been interesting enough to be a thesis. Talk about having incentives to prove other folks wrong!!!

This is what has made science so successful in explaining our natural world.

Yes, an unfortunate fact of our modern world is that most non-scientists have to accept much of science on a certain amount of faith. Heck, even us scientists have to accept on faith lots of science from other fields that we don’t personally have the knowledge to investigate. However, it is a faith in the process and in the conclusions of those who have followed the process and are very well-versed in their respective fields.

And, as a scientist, I do feel that even if something is outside of my own field, I know how to detect what is real science from what is belief or propaganda masquerading as science. And, very important in that is turning to authorities in the field (such as the National Academy of Sciences which convenes panels to study various issues of science that impact on society and public policy) and the current state of the discussion in the refereed literature in the field.

By the way, I would be curious as to whether you deny only evolution of human and animals or if you are also a young-earth creationist who wants to tell us that not only is basically all of modern biology wrong, but basically all of modern geology, cosmology, astronomy is also wrong (and, by extension, much of chemistry and physics since it is basically impossible to get all these other things wrong and still have physics and chemistry be right)?

40

Actually, Valerie, they’re being pretty nice to you, aren’t they?

Welcome to the boards.

Take in good faith the words and cites offered to you here. Then, sit back and watch. We all learn every day. Doesn’t mean we compremise our faith by listening to different ideas. And yes, non-religious Dopers, a thinking person can still have faith in God. It isn’t always credulity.

As for the continuing lack of answers to the OP, I don’t think many YEC’s are here on the Dope. If their were, someone would’ve answered. Trust me. They can be very vocal about things, IRL and on the web.

(Darn that Polycarp, he tends to make sense.)

Hi, Buckner! How’s the weather in the Continuum?