Not pedantry at all, Boaz, simply an enquiring mind.

>>Your pedantry is your own worst enemy mate. But my 'kaboom' statement was connecting to the Big Bang. The first verse of Genesis is not a metaphor it is a statement..(of fact) So simple and refreshing<<

My question, which must have been too heavily disguised for you to notice, was this.

If you accept the first verse of Genesis as fact, do you treat verse 2 in the same way?

When does it turn from being factual, to metaphorical?

"And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven." Gen 1 7-8

Or later.

"And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth" Gen 1 16-17

Are we still being literal here?

The only point I was making was that you are as ever extremely picky when it comes to determining what is fact and what is metaphor.

You do it with your Bible, and you also do it with the Qur'an. The only difference is that you don't permit the concept that the Qur'an may be metaphorical too.

How do you choose? Just to suit yourself, I guess.

Incidentally, you didn't write 'kaboom'

You wrote *kaaaaaBOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM*

Cosmic Light
Space
Matter
All have an eternal dimension they were there in the beginning of space. Living forms have a more recent past. Certainly not 6,000 years as Bishop Ussher calculated and others who follow his teachings believe. It is spurious quoting what past views past generations or the Church has helds as evidence of Biblical revelation. The Bible no where held the Earth as flat, the oldest documents talk about the "circle of the Earth".

Assuming the population of humanity doubles every 100 years begin with two and multiply it 100 times this would put us near our present population. Now if evolution were factual we would not be starting with two but millions of similar ancestors. Or was there only Adam and Eve after all? No other huge population of ancestral species after all the huffing and puffing?

What happened to all our near human ancestors and their decendants? Human remains found preserved in the ice 3,000 years posess the same genes as humans today. Humans isolated for thousands of years like the original Australians, or isolated tribes in West Irian are equally human as any other human race. Isolation or land lock may develop some inbreeding characteristics that display some genetic mutated weakness but it has not developed a new or more advanced species which is the claim of evolution. Evolution relies on mutations and mutations is a loss of genetic information not and advance in genetic information.

Philo, some of the mutations result in duplication of genes. These new versions of the genes then change to give new activities. And who said evolution had to be more genetic information?

Species are not defined by a single gene. They become different because of reproductive isolation and separate selection. Species A evolves to cope with the environment it is in, Species B evolves to cope with a different environment. If they are separated for a long time (hundreds of generations), they can no longer interbreed and become separate species. There are huge numbers of papers in the scientific literature examining situations with recent speciation events.

Two websites may be of interest:

www.skepdic.com/creation.html

http://atheism.about.com/od.creationismcreationists/p/scientific.htm

Here something relatively recent -
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080417112433.htm

Also, anybody know the creationist explanation for the existence of blind cave-dwelling insects and reptiles discovered in long sealed off environments?

Were their ancestors cut off in a cave environment and "evolved" or were they already created without sight and somehow managed to find their way into dark places and seal themselves off?

I'd really like to know.

So that is the reason some animals like fruit bats and insect bats are nocternal. They lived in dark caves for thousands of years until they found a way to escape to only come out at night. How did they survive underground - obviously found underground fruit or insects? Where is the underground fruit sources today? Obviously they ate them all. Or were they never there at all? They were genetically formed that way?

Why is it Australian termites cannot cope with sunlight, when their environment is the hottest surface sunlit environment on the planet? Obviously they never adapted to working in the sun unlike ants. When did they and how did they and why did they become sensitive to sunlight? Or is it they were genetically created within the environment?