Pericles,
What exactly was built over those six days? Everything.
Mankind created from earth? A man could be described as an arrangement of earthen chemicals and elements.
An ark 300 cubits long made of Gopher wood? A cubit is a measure roughly from the elbow to the finger tip.
Noah lived to be 950 years old? That is what was recorded.

Apart from these four questions, may I ask one of my own concerning natural selection. Did you read Ogg's long list of links, and from within them did he provide any observable evidence of new genes arising creating new forms and functions?

Ammonite,
You say I don’t have any working of evolution. Presuming that you do, could I ask you to answer the same question that I put to Pericles (and previously put to you.) You seem to have dodged it.

You misunderstood my question, Dan S de Merengue. My apologies for being so obscure.

The intent was to draw your attention to the vast discrepancy between our present-day understanding of physics, chemistry, biology and human physiology, and the description of the creation of the universe that is contained in Genesis.

Simply saying "it happened" doesn't really come close to meeting your claim that you will "defend the Biblical account of origins."

But if that is all you are prepared to offer on the matter, so be it.

Dan S, I probably shouldn't be buying into the evolution discussion, and it is a pity that a zoologist or paleontologist hasn't tuned in. But I will throw in my tuppence worth, as best I can.

Natural Selection is an attempt to explain the process of the evolution of life, but it is not the whole of the theory of evolution.

Dan asks: "The foremost evolution controversy is whether the process of natural selection could possibly form a man or a melon from lower life forms." The theory of evolution does not put it this way, but it says yes, this is what has happened - through many millions of years of evolution.

The theory of evolution puts forward that, from a primordial "soup" around 4 billion (4 thousand million) years ago, and some 2 billion years after the formation of the Earth from the collision and subsequent adhesion of large cosmic masses (supposedly from the big bang, or similar), a chance collision of organic particles resulted in a spontaneous coalition to form a simple living organism. (The "soup" having been formed from methane and other gases present in Earth's atmosphere, residual from it's creation, dissolving in the Earth's newly acquired oceans of liquid water.) (An alternate theory suggests a meteor may have introduced this first simple life - but from where?) This first life had to have been similar to our current bacteria, and containing the simplest form of DNA. We can still see some of the simple life forms which have evolved from this beginning - single-celled organisms like amoeba or paramecium, through to colony organisms which are an interacting cluster of individual single-celled organisms, and thence to multi-celled organisms. Chance coalescence of single celled organisms, resulting in the joining of separate DNA strands, has then been the means by which early multi-celled organisms developed. Many accidents of DNA coalescence provided a profusion of different simple life-forms, some of which survived and thrived under the influence of natural selection, and in later development produced the cell specialisation which we see in higher multi-celled organisms today. TBC...

Dan S, Continued:

So as to abbreviate this explanation, proof of the process of evolution is demonstrated in the development of the human embryo, commencing with a single haploid cell (containing half the mitochondria which define a human organism), fertilised by another haploid cell, the sperm, thence by cell division (from the cell's own splitting of the full mitochondrial complement to form precise duplicates, which then separate and form individual new cells). The embryo then develops into a form similar to some reptile embryos, with a notochord, which later is covered by bone to become the spinal column. Study of the development of the human embryo shows marked similarity to the development of embryos in reptiles, amphibians and other mammals, each of whose DNA complement determines the resultant cell specialisation to form the various organs, and thence the complete living entity. This is held to demonstrate that all life has a common origin - hence, the origin of species.

Other proof is provided by the absence of any humanoid fossils earlier than some 4 million years ago, whereas there have been fossil remains found of simple mammals living before the extinction of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. It can be demonstrated that reptiles evolved to provide us with birds, commencing with flying reptiles which later evolved feathers, and early small mammals evolved to give us mammoths and elephants. Etc..

I hope this has been helpful.

Thanks Salty.

However, Dan has been given this information over and over again.

Do you think that because you are a Christian explaining evolution to him will make any difference? There are other Christians on OLO who have attempted to explain.

We all have our blind spots, however, the best we do is ensure our children do not grow up equally blinkered.

John Nixon on Facebook :
"Arguing with a creationist is like playing chess with a pigeon.
They knock over the pieces, defecate on the board, and then fly back to their nest claiming victory."