[ Up ] [ Einstein-conspiracy ] [ Global Warming hoax ] [ Scalar energy ] [ Universal Seduction ] [ Morgan / Bearden ] [ Scientific Dictatorship ] [ Bright skies ] [ Free energy ] [ Geo science ] [ The weather ] [ Suppressed archaeology ] [ Young world ] [ Origins of oil ] [ True geology ] [ Education ]

[ Einstein-conspiracy ] [ Global Warming hoax ] [ Scalar energy ] [ Universal Seduction ] [ Morgan / Bearden ] [ Scientific Dictatorship ] [ Bright skies ] [ Free energy ] [ Geo science ] [ The weather ] [ Suppressed archaeology ] [ Young world ] [ Origins of oil ] [ True geology ] [ Education ]

The young world theory isn't necessarily my belief, but include it here for interest.

along with following refutations by a couple of esteemed usenet geeks.

* * *

Evidence for a Young World
by D. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D.
http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=1842 

Here are fourteen natural phenomena which conflict with the evolutionary idea that the universe is billions of years old. The numbers listed below in bold print (usually in the millions of years) are often maximum possible ages set by each process, not the actual ages. The numbers in italics are the ages required by evolutionary theory for each item. The point is that the maximum possible ages are always much less than the required evolutionary ages, while the Biblical age (6,000 years) always fits comfortably within the maximum possible ages. Thus, the following items are evidence against the evolutionary time scale and for the Biblical time scale. Much more young-world evidence exists, but I have chosen these items for brevity and simplicity. Some of the items on this list can be reconciled with the old-age view only by making a series of improbable and unproven assumptions; others can fit in only with a recent creation.

The stars of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, rotate about the galactic center with different speeds, the inner ones rotating faster than the outer ones. The observed rotation speeds are so fast that if our galaxy were more than a few hundred million years old, it would be a featureless disc of stars instead of its present spiral shape.¹ Yet our galaxy is supposed to be at least 10 billion years old. Evolutionists call this "the winding-up dilemma," which they have known about for fifty years. They have devised many theories to try to explain it, each one failing after a brief period of popularity. The same "winding-up" dilemma also applies to other galaxies. For the last few decades the favored attempt to resolve the puzzle has been a complex theory called "density waves."¹ The theory has conceptual problems, has to be arbitrarily and very finely tuned, and has been called into serious question by the Hubble Space Telescope's discovery of very detailed spiral structure in the central hub of the "Whirlpool" galaxy, M51.²

2. Too few supernova remnants.

According to astronomical observations, galaxies like our own experience about one supernova (a violently-exploding star) every 25 years. The gas and dust remnants from such explosions (like the Crab Nebula) expand outward rapidly and should remain visible for over a million years. Yet the nearby parts of our galaxy in which we could observe such gas and dust shells contain only about 200 supernova remnants. That number is consistent with only about 7,000 years worth of supernovas.³

According to evolutionary theory, comets are supposed to be the same age as the solar system, about five billion years. Yet each time a comet orbits close to the sun, it loses so much of its material that it could not survive much longer than about 100,000 years. Many comets have typical ages of less than 10,000 years.⁴ Evolutionists explain this discrepancy by assuming that (a) comets come from an unobserved spherical "Oort cloud" well beyond the orbit of Pluto, (b) improbable gravitational interactions with infrequently passing stars often knock comets into the solar system, and (c) other improbable interactions with planets slow down the incoming comets often enough to account for the hundreds of comets observed.⁵ So far, none of these assumptions has been substantiated either by observations or realistic calculations. Lately, there has been much talk of the "Kuiper Belt," a disc of supposed comet sources lying in the plane of the solar system just outside the orbit of Pluto. Some asteroid-sized bodies of ice exist in that location, but they do not solve the evolutionists' problem, since according to evolutionary theory, the Kuiper Belt would quickly become exhausted if there were no Oort cloud to supply it.

Each year, water and winds erode about 20 billion tons of dirt and rock from the continents and deposit it in the ocean.⁶ This material accumulates as loose sediment on the hard basaltic (lava-formed) rock of the ocean floor. The average depth of all the sediment in the whole ocean is less than 400 meters.⁷ The main way known to remove the sediment from the ocean floor is by plate tectonic subduction. That is, sea floor slides slowly (a few cm/year) beneath the continents, taking some sediment with it. According to secular scientific literature, that process presently removes only 1 billion tons per year.⁷ As far as anyone knows, the other 19 billion tons per year simply accumulate. At that rate, erosion would deposit the present mass of sediment in less than 12 million years. Yet according to evolutionary theory, erosion and plate subduction have been going on as long as the oceans have existed, an alleged three billion years. If that were so, the rates above imply that the oceans would be massively choked with sediment dozens of kilometers deep. An alternative (creationist) explanation is that erosion from the waters of the Genesis flood running off the continents deposited the present amount of sediment within a short time about 5,000 years ago.

Every year, rivers⁸ and other sources⁹ dump over 450 million tons of sodium into the ocean. Only 27% of this sodium manages to get back out of the sea each year.^9,10 As far as anyone knows, the remainder simply accumulates in the ocean. If the sea had no sodium to start with, it would have accumulated its present amount in less than 42 million years at today's input and output rates.¹⁰ This is much less than the evolutionary age of the ocean, three billion years. The usual reply to this discrepancy is that past sodium inputs must have been less and outputs greater. However, calculations that are as generous as possible to evolutionary scenarios still give a maximum age of only 62 million years.¹⁰ Calculations¹¹ for many other seawater elements give much younger ages for the ocean.

The total energy stored in the earth's magnetic field ("dipole" and "non-dipole") is decreasing with a half-life of 1,465 (± 165) years.¹² Evolutionary theories explaining this rapid decrease, as well as how the earth could have maintained its magnetic field for billions of years are very complex and inadequate. A much better creationist theory exists. It is straightforward, based on sound physics, and explains many features of the field: its creation, rapid reversals during the Genesis flood, surface intensity decreases and increases until the time of Christ, and a steady decay since then.¹³ This theory matches paleomagnetic, historic, and present data, most startlingly with evidence for rapid changes.¹⁴ The main result is that the field's total energy (not surface intensity) has always decayed at least as fast as now. At that rate the field could not be more than 20,000 years old.¹⁵

In many mountainous areas, strata thousands of feet thick are bent and folded into hairpin shapes. The conventional geologic time scale says these formations were deeply buried and solidified for hundreds of millions of years before they were bent. Yet the folding occurred without cracking, with radii so small that the entire formation had to be still wet and unsolidified when the bending occurred. This implies that the folding occurred less than thousands of years after deposition.¹⁶

Natural radioactivity, mutations, and decay degrade DNA and other biological material rapidly. Measurements of the mutation rate of mitochondrial DNA recently forced researchers to revise the age of "mitochondrial Eve" from a theorized 200,000 years down to possibly as low as 6,000 years.¹⁷ DNA experts insist that DNA cannot exist in natural environments longer than 10,000 years, yet intact strands of DNA appear to have been recovered from fossils allegedly much older: Neandertal bones, insects in amber, and even from dinosaur fossils.¹⁸ Bacteria allegedly 250 million years old apparently have been revived with no DNA damage.¹⁹ Soft tissue and blood cells from a dinosaur have astonished experts.²⁰

Radiohalos are rings of color formed around microscopic bits of radioactive minerals in rock crystals. They are fossil evidence of radioactive decay.²¹ "Squashed" Polonium-210 radiohalos indicate that Jurassic, Triassic, and Eocene formations in the Colorado plateau were deposited within months of one another, not hundreds of millions of years apart as required by the conventional time scale.²² "Orphan" Polonium-218 radiohalos, having no evidence of their mother elements, imply accelerated nuclear decay and very rapid formation of associated minerals.^23,24

Uranium and thorium generate helium atoms as they decay to lead. A study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research showed that such helium produced in zircon crystals in deep, hot Precambrian granitic rock has not had time to escape.²⁵ Though the rocks contain 1.5 billion years worth of nuclear decay products, newly-measured rates of helium loss from zircon show that the helium has been leaking for only 6,000 (± 2000) years.²⁶ This is not only evidence for the youth of the earth, but also for episodes of greatly accelerated decay rates of long half-life nuclei within thousands of years ago, compressing radioisotope timescales enormously.

With their short 5,700-year half-life, no carbon 14 atoms should exist in any carbon older than 250,000 years. Yet it has proven impossible to find any natural source of carbon below Pleistocene (Ice Age) strata that does not contain significant amounts of carbon 14, even though such strata are supposed to be millions or billions of years old. Conventional carbon 14 laboratories have been aware of this anomaly since the early 1980s, have striven to eliminate it, and are unable to account for it. Lately the world's best such laboratory which has learned during two decades of low-C14 measurements how not to contaminate specimens externally, under contract to creationists, confirmed such observations for coal samples and even for a dozen diamonds, which cannot be contaminated in situ with recent carbon.²⁷ These constitute very strong evidence that the earth is only thousands, not billions, of years old.

Evolutionary anthropologists now say that Homo sapiens existed for at least 185,000 years before agriculture began,²⁸ during which time the world population of humans was roughly constant, between one and ten million. All that time they were burying their dead, often with artifacts. By that scenario, they would have buried at least eight billion bodies.²⁹ If the evolutionary time scale is correct, buried bones should be able to last for much longer than 200,000 years, so many of the supposed eight billion stone age skeletons should still be around (and certainly the buried artifacts). Yet only a few thousand have been found. This implies that the Stone Age was much shorter than evolutionists think, perhaps only a few hundred years in many areas.

The usual evolutionary picture has men existing as hunters and gatherers for 185,000 years during the Stone Age before discovering agriculture less than 10,000 years ago.²⁹ Yet the archaeological evidence shows that Stone Age men were as intelligent as we are. It is very improbable that none of the eight billion people mentioned in item 12 should discover that plants grow from seeds. It is more likely that men were without agriculture for a very short time after the Flood, if at all.³¹

According to evolutionists, Stone Age Homo sapiens existed for 190,000 years before beginning to make written records about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. Prehistoric man built megalithic monuments, made beautiful cave paintings, and kept records of lunar phases.³⁰ Why would he wait two thousand centuries before using the same skills to record history? The Biblical time scale is much more likely.³¹

*Dr. Humphreys is an Associate Professor of Physics at ICR.

* * *

Refutations for 'Evidence of a Young World' (Humphrey article - above)

Based on work of Kevin R. Henke,Ph.D. (compiled by Bob Officer)

You do realize each of his objections can be explained away easily.

1. The so called winding. The Galaxy were not made all at once but are accumulations which are still gathering and digesting small galaxies. They suffer disruptions by being passed by other Galaxies.

2. Lack of SNRs. Most of them are Cold and the Gases and Dust are redigested into new stars rather rapidly over a relative short period
of galactic time period. SN1987a showed us that SNR are fragile, and often do not form where they would be visible

3. The use of improbable is very wrong and while the number of comets may have dropped substantially over the life of the lifetime of the
Solar system that improbable is considered very high.

4. This one is easy.  he is ignoring the billions of tons of raised seabeds around the world. Carole most of Australia was one Sea bed as
was most all of the america Southwest and the gain plains of Middle Europe and South America. Subduction is only one way Nature recycles.
The mud compresses and become silt stone that even compresses more and becomes Sedimentary rock, The sedimentary rock compresses and become Metamorphic Rocks.  As a person bores a hole in many place they will find Limestone Grading into Marble as the bore goes deeper.

5. There are vast deposits of Salt from old sea beds. Also there is salt locked in Nodules on  the sea floor just as there are other
mineral deposits which would fully account for any missing salt.

6. Magnetic decay has been recorded before in the past and even more surprising Magnetic reversals. The Magnetic field is not constant,
never has been. (the evidence is found in dozens of places for reversals and fades and increases. And Russel Humphreys is know to be
a creationist, and dismisses or ignores those that and evidence which contradict his preconceived notions.

7. Strata bent too tightly. The problem he has is he thinks of rocks having always been no flexible. Most of these bent strat have
undergone Metamorphic Heats and pressure where the Rock become more plastic like. If one looks carefully using ESM  one can see the sub
visual clues which show the deformation due to pressure as the Rock formations bent ever so slowly.

8. I need a trip to the library because I do not have a online subscription to Nature to refute Items [references] 17-21.

9. Likewise these articles sited are no in any publications I have on have.

As I went down the list I kept seeing the same few names and the presentations in Creationism Conferences. Humphreys figured rather
prominently so a little bit of looking around and I found this web site which refutes most all of D Russell Humphrey's conclusions.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/helium/zircons.html

<cite>
"Therefore, a small group of YEC PhDs associated with the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), the Creation Research Society (CRS) and
Answers in Genesis (AiG) formed the RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth) committee (Vardiman et al., 2000; Humphreys et al.,
2004, p. 3).  Simply put, their activities included combing the scientific literature and designing laboratory "experiments" that would somehow verify what they have already concluded, namely that a "literal" interpretation of Genesis is "The Truth" and anything that conflicts with their biblical interpretations is "wrong."  As AiG personnel dogmatically admit in Section 4, #6 of their Statement of Faith: "By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record."
</cite>

That Carole, is the very definition of the fallacy of the preconceived notion.

I also Note: nothing by Humphreys et al, has been published in any Peer reviews publication. Not one iota of his data has been reviewed
for manipulation. However other people using the nearly same sources of samples have come to different conclusions. And they have
published their data.


<Cite>
The vast majority of the errors and unsound assumptions in the Humphreys et al. documents are not the "mountain of minutiae" as
claimed by Humphreys (2005a), but serious mistakes that completely invalidate any confidence in his work and claims.  Some of the major
flaws in the Humphreys et al. documents are discussed below, including additional errors recently discovered by Loechelt (2008a; 2008b; 2008c; 2009a), Whitefield (2008), Isaac (2007; 2008a; 2008b) and others.  In particular, Loechelt (2008c) corrects many of the equations and parameters in Dr. Humphreys' documents.  He further demonstrates that Dr. Humphreys' data actually support an age of about 1.5 billion years for the Fenton Hill zircons, which refute Dr. Humphreys' claims for a "young" (6,000 years old) Earth and his need for "accelerated" radioactive decay.
</cite>

There there is one of Humphreys fellow contributors which disagrees with Humphreys' claims as to what the rocks actually were and the
type of rock that they came from.

<Cite>
Even after being presented with evidence from the literature, Humphreys (2005a) still refused to admit that he and his colleagues
misidentified gneisses as "granodiorites."  He continued to insist that most of the Precambrian sections of the Fenton Hill cores are
"granodiorites."  In contrast, YEC R. V. Gentry readily admitted in Gentry et al. (1982a) that the Fenton Hill cores consist of a large
number of different rock types, including gneisses and other rocks that provided his zircon samples. 
<cite>

I could continue on citing sections which Show Humphrey seems to have committed one major fallacy after the other.

I do hope Carole can follow along the Math on that page isn't that complex, but Does show the interesting points are all based in
fallacies of one type or another. As are most of the arguements on her wab page.


--

Refutations - version 2 
by steelclaws

1. The problem with this is that it rests upon the unstated major premise that density waves are physical parts of galaxies that contain a
set of stars that is unchanging. That way, the differential rotation will cause them to wind up into a featureless disk. This is simply not
the case. Galaxies are not like figure skaters.

Another problem is a timescale here. Russel Humphreys may be correct when he places a maximum age of a few hundred million years on his
fallacious understanding of the theory of spiral galaxies. However, many others, including the one quoted above, will say many millions of years,
or even thousands of years. 
http://pseudoastro.wordpress.com/2008/12/21/creationist-claim-spiral-galaxies-wind-up-too-fast-for-an-old-universe/

Those time scales are way too short. The sun takes about 250 million years to orbit around the galaxy once. There is no way that even given
their faulty understanding of the model galaxies would wind up within less than 1% the time it takes a star half-way from the center (about
where we are) to complete a single orbit. This is actually a fairly good example (like comets) about how creationists often don't understand the
timescales involved with astronomical phenomena.

2. SNRs (supernova remains) can only be observed in a small proportion of our Galaxy - our view of most of the Galaxy is blocked by large
amounts of dust and interstellar matter. Only some younger, radio emitting SNRs would be visible through this dust (Sramek et al. 1992;
Gray 1994). This largely explains why there has been no observed Galactic supernovae in the last 300 or so years (Clark et al. 1981;
Dawson & Johnson 1994; Hatano et al. 1997), even though we would have expected perhaps 5-10 to have occurred (McKee 2000).
It is also difficult to identify much older remnants as they either have faded beyond our ability to detect them (they may have merged with the
ISM), they have merged with other remnants, or they have faded into the general background "noise" (Nousek et al. 1981; Matthews et al. 1998;
Braun et al. 1989; Landecker et al. 1990; Normandeau et al. 2000). 
Younger SNRs, or SNRs which are still interacting with gas expelled by their progenitors are much more likely to be detected (Jones et al.
1998; Slavin & Cox 1992). Shull et al. (1989) carried out a statistical analysis of SNRs, and found that with isolated SNRs, less than 1% last
for longer than 100,000 years, and only 20% are still intact after 50,000 years.

The make-up of the local ISM that the supernova occurs in is critical to the observability of the resulting SNR (Dohm-Palmer & Jones 1996). SNRs in regions where the density of the ISM is low (Henning & Wendker 1975; Gaensler & Johnson 1995b) or there is little ionised gas present (Heiles et al. 1980) may not be readily visible. Indeed, it may be the case that as few as 15-20% of supernova events cause observable SNRs (Clark & Stephenson 1977; Clark 1979; Kafatos et al. 1980).

Some young SNRs can be intrinsically faint at radio wavelengths and thus unusually difficult to detect (Gray 1994; Duncan & Green 2000).
SNRs are obscured by and can be indistinguishable from other interstellar emission nebulae, and their spectra can be similar to powerful distant radio galaxies and quasars (White & Becker 1990; Inglis & Kitchin 1990; Caswell & Stewart 1991, 1992; Williams et al. 2000). In
other words, there is a lot of clutter out there, and finding SNRs is often a tricky and difficult task. Indeed, only a minority of SNRs are
visible at optical wavelengths (Long et al. 1990).

The limits of the equipment used to detect SNRs (usually radio telescopes) impinge upon our ability to observe supernova remnants
(Green 1991; Kassim 1992; Frail et al. 1994). As this gets better in the future, the numbers of SNRs detected will rise. This can be illustrated
by the way astronomers have detected more and more SNRs in our own galaxy over the last few decades - in 1984, there were only 174 Galactic SNRs known, and back in 1971, only 113 (Downes 1971).

Not all the sky has been surveyed to the same degree - there are still large areas of the sky (mainly in the southern celestial hemisphere)
waiting to be surveyed with more powerful instruments (Case & Bhattacharya 1998).
As a result, Humpreys vastly overestimates the actual number of observable SNRs. Berkhuijsen (1984) suggested that there might be 1,000
to 10,000 SNRs in our Galaxy (depending on the lifetime of SNRs), but this is the only estimate I'm aware of that provides a figure anywhere
near Davies', but even then, Berkhuijsen's estimate is for the total number of SNRs, and not for the observable SNRs.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/supernova/

3. Comets have a lifespan of about 10,000 - 40,000 years, depending on the size of the comet. However, there is the Oort cloud - which
creationists dismiss on the rather ironic reason that nobody's ever seen it - which sends new comets to the solar system due to disturbances to
it.

4. There are three sources for sediment found on the ocean floor:

Terrestrial sediment transported from continents by rivers (only on continental margins).

Deposition of the shells of dead plankton falling through the water column (to form silicious and calcareous oozes at medium depths in areas
too far for terrestrial sediment to be transported).

Volcanic ash and meteoric debris (in the deepest oceans furthest from land).

Direct precipitation (shallow water).

Material eroded from continents generally does not make its way to the deep ocean, but remains on the continental shelves and continental
slopes forming thick layers of sedimentary debris. 
The weight of the sediment causes the layers underneath to sink further down into the earth (via isostacy) leaving more room for new sediment to be deposited on top.
Thus the oceans do not fill with terrestrial sediment, because almost all of it remains trapped on the continental margins.

5. Looks like Humphreys figured this up this up without properly estimating the amount of sodium lost in the alteration of basalt. They
omit sodium lost in the formation of diatomaceous earth, and they omit numerous others mechanisms which are minor individually but collectively account for a significant fraction of salt.

6. This one is based on the erroneous concept that the earth's magnetic field decays irreversibly. It has weakened, strengthened and changed
polarity several times dring the earth's history. There is evidence for this available:

"The Earth's magnetic field is slowly changing and appears to have been changing throughout its existence. When the tectonic plates form along the oceanic ridges, the magnetic field that exists is imprinted on the rock as they cool below about 700 Centigrade. The slowly moving plates act as a kind of tape recorder leaving information about the strength and direction of past magnetic fields. By sampling these rocks and using radiometric dating techniques it has been possible to reconstruct the history of the Earth's magnetic field for the last 160 million years or
so. Older "paleomagnetic" data exists but the picture is less continuous. An interlocking body of evidence, from many locations and times, give paleomagnetists confidence that these data are revealing a correct picture of the nature of the magnetic field and the Earth's plate motions. In addition, if one "plays this tape backwards" the continents, which ride on the tectonic plates, reassemble along their edges with near perfect fits. These "reassembled continents" have matching fossil floras and faunas. The picture that emerges from the paleomagnetic record shows the Earth's magnetic field strengthening, weakening and often changing polarity (North and South magnetic poles reversing)."
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/faqgeom.shtml

7. Cracking does not occur in the manner described when material is under pressure. Additionally, the existence of water is inconsequential
when strata are bent under pressure.

8. There are some errant claims here. First, research does NOT suggest that Mitochondrial Eve is possibly as young as 6,500 years old. In fact,
the lowest estimate is 120,000 old.

Also, while traces of organic material were preserved, there was certainly no sign of cells and no DNA was retrieved. This point resides
on a misrepresentation or false material.

9. The entire thesis is built on a compounded set of assumptions. He is unable to demonstrate that concentric haloes in mica are caused uniquely by alpha particles resulting from the decay of polonium isotopes. His samples are not from "primordial" pieces of the Earth's original crust, but from rocks which have been extensively reworked. Finally, his hypothesis cannot accommodate the many alternative lines of evidence
that demonstrate a great age for the Earth. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/po-halos/gentry.html

10. The conclusion reached by the RATE project as to the reason for the increased amount of Helium is that sometime in the past few thousand
years there was a period of increased radioactivity (DeYoung, 2005, 78). A fundamental problem with this hypothesis, however, is that the amount of energy released during the accelerated decay proposed by RATE would potentially be enough to evaporate the oceans and melt the Earth's crust. http://orgs.usd.edu/esci/age/content/creationist_clocks/helium.html

For a very thorough debunk see http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/helium/zircons.html

11. New C14 is formed from background radiation, such as radioactivity in the surrounding rocks. In some cases, C14 from the atmosphere can contaminate a sample. Some things that can contaminate the sample: Sulfur bacteria, which commonly grow in coal, Secondary carbonates from groundwater that form on fracture surfaces, and Whewellite, a carbon-containing mineral, that often forms as coal weathers.

12. Bone decays, and depending on the soil it can decay very fast. Acidic soil is known to decay bone much faster than alkaline soil, also
high water content soil decays bone faster than dry one.

Humpreys does not allow either for known burial practices that do not leave skeletons, such as cremation.

13. Why is it implausible that humans lived for a long time without agriculture? Agriculture allows higher population densities, but it leads to an overall decrease in the quality of life over that of hunter-gatherers (Diamond 1987). In particular, agriculture requires much more work for a lower quality, less dependable diet, and it increases disease. There was no pressing reason to adopt agriculture in the first place.

The end of the last ice age about 10,000 years ago may have facilitated the origin of agriculture at that time. The changed climate may have
made agriculture possible in more areas, and/or it may have led to a human population increase which required agriculture to sustain.

It is possible that agriculture has been discovered several different times over the last 180,000 years. Climate change, even over relatively
short periods of a few decades, has caused the collapse of agricultural societies in historical times, and the climate has changed dramatically
over the last 180,000 years. Agriculture in the distant past may have been lost repeatedly.

The assumption that humans have not changed in intelligence over the past 185,000 years is unsupportable and many not be true. A team of
geneticists has found evidence that human brains have evolved adaptively recently (and may still be evolving). Two genes associated with brain
size have genetic variants whose high frequencies indicate that they spread under strong positive selection. A haplotype (genetic variant) of
the Microcephalin gene arose about 37,000 years ago (95 percent confidence interval of 14,000 to 60,000 years) (Evans et al. 2005). An
ASPM haplotype arose only about 5800 years ago (95 percent confidence interval of 500 to 14,000 years) (Mekel-Bobrov et al. 2005). It should
be emphasized that the effects of these haplotypes is currently unknown; the evidence for strong selection indicates only that their effects are important, that humans have evolved recently in some way. It may be significant that they occurred around the same times as the introduction of modern humans to Europe and the origins of art (about 40,000 years ago) and the rise of agriculture and writing (about 10,000 to 6,000 years ago). It is also possible that these genes are not relevant to the origins of agriculture but others are. The larger point is that there is evidence that humans continue to evolve in subtle ways. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CG/CG041.html

14. Humphreys uses here a fallacious argument from personal incredulity. Writing evolved, and the process is very visible in the development of
Sumerian cuneiform, and it evolved from clay tokens used for record keeping of domestic animals, barley, dates etc. Why it did not evolve
before is not known, but my guess would be there was not much need for writing before the birth of complex, agriculture-based societies, oral
transmission having been the main system for pre-agricultural societies.

The Vanishing Case for Evolution

by Henry Morris, Ph.D.*
http://www.icr.org/article/4342/

Adapted from Dr. Morris' article "The Vanishing Case for Evolution" in the June 1986 edition of Acts & Facts.

* Dr. Morris (1918-2006) was Founder of the Institute for Creation Research.

Cite this article: Morris, H. M. 2009. The Vanishing Case for Evolution. Acts & Facts. 38 (2): 17.

Links

In the interests of a balanced argument, see also 

How Old Is The Earth, And How Do We Know?
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html 

Young-Earth Arguments: A Second Look
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/age.htm

Index to Creationist Claims
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html
CA: Philosophy and Theology
CB: Biology
CC: Paleontology
CD: Geology
CE: Astronomy and Cosmology
CF: Physics and Mathematics
CG: Miscellaneous Anti-Evolution
CH: Biblical Creationism
CI: Intelligent Design
CJ: Other Creationism