"AKA extinct species? Like, oh, Neanderthol (sp)? Fossils can only form under specific circumstances, as well. Especially for soft-bodied organisms."
Neanderthal man was shown to be an old man with severe bone/joint disease (arthritis?). The misshapen face is a result of acromegaly--the forehead and other bones thicken with age.
"Hmm. I'm pretty sure this is incorrect simply because I've seen pictures of primitive whales. They -don't- look like modern whales, and have several land-based features. That's microevoltion, but the point stands."
No "transitional form" in the fossil record has stood the test of time. Each one has been shown to be something other than what it was first thought to be. Have you seen photos of the skeletons? Or just drawings of the fleshed-out artist's conception? Need I remind you of Java man and his history?
"Time factor. Also interesting that you claim to know the odds, but say we don't know what the early earth was like. If we don't know what the early earth was like, we *can't* get any real odds. Just wild guesses."
The odds I gave are just a statistical probablity of assembling 1/5 of the typical enzyme chain found in our simplest organisms (50 instead of ~250). At 100 trillion "attempts" per second, using a factorial system (which assumes wrong combinations are not re-used, something not true of true random chance), it would take 30 trillion trillion times longer than the universe is posited to have existed to
ensure the correct combination. (The odds were about 1/10^64.) That's generously assuming all the correct enzymes already exist and assuming an agent to try different combinations. Not to mention that enzyme chains are pretty finicky things--you can't just mix and match them in any order and get useful things.
I don't think
you understand the vastness of 10^55 (the limit of improbability}. Given 30 billion years (the approximate proposed existence of the universe), you have to try 1.057*10^37 combinations
per second. That's simply an enormous number, far beyond human comprehension. And that's 9 orders of magnitude below the origin of one component of a "simple" life form.
The truth is, there are no "simple" life forms; single-celled organisms are far more complex than we understand. As you've said, each cell has a built-in defense system, power plants, feeding system, etc. The odds of all of those parts evolving simultaneously (as you say must have happened) would be much, much higher than what I've posted here.
"How many [comets] did we start with?"
Short-period comets only have a life-span of 10,000 years.
[edit starts here--I clicked Add Post instead of Alt-Tabbing.]
"Lesse..heat out there would have to be from radioactive decay and/or pressure. Radioactive decay heat drops exponentially. At the start they would cool much faster than at the end."
So, in ~4.6 billion years at the present rate, they should be done cooling by now, and you're saying that the rate of cooling would exponentially increase as we go further back in time? I'm not understanding how this helps you out.
"Volcanic activity creates more land area, as do a few other things IIRC. The continental drift maps that show the continents the -exact same size and shape- as today are weird, though."
Volcanic "spewing" doesn't account for enough new mass to make up for it, though. AFA the continental drift maps, why is Africa actually shrunk? What about all that dirt in between the continents on the ocean floor? The continents don't actually float, you know.
"You might as well state that the oldest human isn't more than 100 years old, therefore the earth can't be more than X years old."
No, it's just odd that no living creature on earth would be over 4500 years old, which would be expected if creation/the Flood were true.
"Which happens to blow the literal creationist 6000-year viewpoint out of the water if true, but hey."
Except for the Flood. Besides, it also would be a lot closer to 6,000 than to whenever the Last Ice Age (or whatever other massive climate change would have drastically altered the earth's topography) ended allowing the Mississippi to form.
[ December 18, 2002, 18:43: Message edited by: Krsqk ]