Feedback for January 2005

After you have collected the documentation you need, you should read about the organizations devoted to science education in your State. A good source of this information is Panda's Thumb scroll down to the "State Science Groups" in the right margin. Also check out the Civil Liberty Groups listed by the National Center for Science Education.

Good luck.

2. Yes, we can provide evidence that the earth is billions of years old. In fact we have an entire section giving some of that evidence and debunking some arguments who deny the age of the earth. Also see our section on creationist Flood "geology". As for carbon dating, it is not used to date things billions of years old and thus is not relevant to determining how old our planet is.

3. And yes, there is an enormous amount of evidence for evolution of one form to another and that all known forms of life share a common ancestor. 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent documents some of evidence for this. Also see Plagiarized Errors and Molecular Genetics.

What are you, ten years old?

"You guys are a bunch of chickens [while flapping arms bent at the elbow], bwak, bwak, bwak!"

Do you double-dog-dare us to face the great and powerful Hov?

To let the readers in on some inside information, when we get these feedback messages there is a reference in the header to what page the sender was on when they chose to click on the "feedback" button. This is a very useful feature given that people sending feedback often don't quote or site exactly what in the Archive they are responding to, which can get confusing at times. But with this bit of information we can usually go to the page they clicked from and figure it out.

In this case the (anonymous) writer clicked on the feedback button from a page in the Archive titled Kent Hovind's $250,000 Offer by John Pieret. This article details the manifold reasons why "Dr." Hovind's reward offer is little more than a cynical ploy on his part. I suggest that the writer (and any interested readers) try actually reading the page that he/she clicked on the feedback button in. If they do they will learn why there is no chance of anyone, regardless of what evidence they provide, ever claiming this fictional reward.

There are no "safe bets" to be had there. Its heads he wins, tails you lose.

For more on Hovind's "Offer" see the following:

Kent Hovind's Bogus Challenge (off site)

As for our supposed dread of "Dr." Hovind, it exists only in the wishful thinking of his fans. Speaking only for myself, I would like nothing better than to have a written debate with Hovind. But alas this will not happen because Hovind avoids written debates like they are The Black Plague, SARS, and the West Nile Virus all rolled into one. He has all sorts of lame excuses for why he won't do written debates, but the real reason is that he knows he'll get his ass handed to him in a debate where he cannot use his patented fast talking, "Gish gallop", throw-as-much-crap-against-the-wall-and-hope-something-sticks, technique that he uses in live formal debates.

Kent Hovind Refuses to Debate!! (off site)

Broadly, you are right - Darwin did not "discover" evolution, nor even natural selection, but he was the fellow who put the two together and several other hypotheses that made evolution a scientific, rather than a philosophical, hypothesis.

Thanks for your question.

First, I suggest that you use the search function, the browse function, or the page devoted to Frequently Asked Questions. And then, I suggest that you read one or more articles found there. The notion of a "missing link" is a leftover from the 1800s and every new fossil is hailed as the discovery of another "missing link." So, I guess we will never be rid of the idea.

Second, your next comments seem to be about the origin of the universe (cosmology), and not the origin of species (evolution). The theory of evolution is largely independent of cosmology. If you are interested in cosmology, I recommend you read the materials available on the web at Ned Wright's Cosmology Tutorial , NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), or this page by the Berkeley Cosmology Group. They are all excellent sources of information.

And finally, we answer the questions we have answers to, and we research those questions that we have yet to answer.

But this is a lot farther back than the origins and subsequent evolution of life, for which we have theories of origination from prior existing things (whether chemicals or older living things). This question relates to the origination of all that there is, in other words, the universe.

Now causation is something we have learned from experience of successive events within the universe. What warrant do we have for extending that to the entire universe itself? It can't be because we have prior experience of the properties of parts of universes extending to the entire universes, because we only have experience of one universe. And the truth is, we really do not know if universes must have causes. Perhaps universes spontaneously form in the normal course of things.

Note, however, that even if we do think universes need a cause, it need not be a god that is the cause. On a theory known as Ekpyrotic Theory, our universe is caused by two other, pre-existing universes, colliding on a dimension that we do not ordinarily experience. This is only a conjecture, of course, but it goes to show that logically, you do not need a God to cause our universe. And if that is true, then perhaps every universe was caused by a prior universe, ad infinitum.

Evolutionary theory itself makes no claim as to the existence of a deity, or the cause of the universe (or all universes, called the Multiverse). It deals only with what happens when living things can reproduce themselves.

In order to demonstrate the ill effects of Darwinian thinking of some kind, you would need to show that more people, pro rata, who accepted Darwinian evolution engaged in immoral and murderous acts than any other set of beliefs. And you cannot show this, because in fact since 1859, the murder and violence rate of most countries has dropped dramatically (wars and pogroms aside). In fact again, it is the countries like the US, with a high proportion of churchgoers, that have the highest murder rates. Non-theist nations like those in Europe, or Canada, Australia and New Zealand are much safer than nations where religion is part of the public culture.

Anecdotes like the one you mention from Darrow are not indicative. If I found a single case of a Christian who murdered their children (by, for example, cutting off their children's arms because the Bible said so), I could equally justifiably conclude that Christianity causes such behaviors. But anecdotes aren't evidence of rates. And it is rates that matter here. As it happens, there is limited evidence that states that teach evolution have lower crime rates, but correlation does not imply causation.

As to the question of immorality, this is what logicians refer to as a petitio principii, better known as "begging the question" (for those who don't know). In terms of Christian morality, the abandonment of Christian morality would, indeed, be a movement to immorality so defined. But the question is whether on some common grounds of moral behaviour, like looking after each other and feeding the poor and so forth, there is a correlation between the rise of Darwinian acceptance and immorality all can accept. I doubt it. If I do not agree with you that homosexuality is wrong (and if you do, I don't), am I immoral? Well, I pay my taxes, obey the speed laws, and help little old ladies on public transport. I don't think I am immoral, and certainly not because I accept that Darwin was mostly right about evolution. Oddly, neither was Darwin...

People have moral systems no matter what they think about evolutionary biology. They treat other people nicely whether they agree that this is the Law of God, or just a jolly decent idea. In the end, you will behave how you will - the moral cause is varied and often ad hoc.

That said, while The Future is Wild shows they have used actual scientists to play out the conjectures, there is a trend towards replacing learning with entertainment, the awful "infotainment" that goes along with "advertorials" as messing around with our ability to engage in critical thinking. All I can say is, "keep your wits about you in everything".

One thing that bears infinite repetition is that real evolution has no "direction". We cannot predict it, because it is a complex and largely directionless walk through the space of possible organisms. So always tell your friends and children to remember that it is just conjecture...

Perhaps you might want to reread Genesis. Gen 1:1 clearly states that the earth was created at this point in the narration, and that the spirit of God moved across the waters (of the earth).

If the Sun was not created until the fourth day of creation, how is it that plants could have survived being created on the third day? Gen.1:12 "And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 13 And the evening and the morning were the third day."

Metaphors or not, the account in Genesis (both of them), while they may have made sense to the ancients, are formless and void by today's evidence.

As far as the verse from 2 Peter 3:8, this was in reference to the lack of the return of Jesus "in this generation" as promised, not a statement concerning the "days" of creation. Thus, the analogy is rendered false.

Let us not try to shoehorn religion and science. It doesn't work too well for science and is embarrassing to religion.

The mainstream view is not the best because it is mainstream - it is mainstream (among biologists) because it is the best. It has been tried and tested, and found not wanting. The reason why we adopt a mainstream view is that no other view when tried and tested has not been found wanting. There is no fallacy in adopting the best basis for one's conclusions.

It is in the nature of science that it has gaps. This is because we have not as yet found everything out. When (if) we ever do, then there will be no gaps in our knowledge. However, it is not in the nature of theological doctrine to be incomplete on the matters in which it is authoritative. So if creationism, which is a theological view conflicts with evidence, then it is not good theology. And in fact it is not good science either. There is no theory as such other than the claim that God acted somewhere. As soon as it has in the past gotten specific, it has been falsified. This is not true of science; some of it gets tested and shown false, and so it is abandoned in favour of something that is better.

What God is to data is something I cannot say. But I can say what science is to data, and if you want to make creationism a science, then you must attend to the data and only the data.

Seriously, thanks.

As for the specifics of Hovind's (and other young earth creationist's claims) see:

How Good Are Those Young-Earth Arguments? by Dave Matson (and for more Hovind specific links see the Kent Hovind FAQs page).

As for polystrate fossil trees, roots growing through the underlying strata is only part of the explanation (and simply stating that an explanation is "really weak" is not exactly a killer rebuttal). There is also the fact that this YEC argument depends on a caricature of how geologists interpret individual layers of rock strata, i.e. that every individual layer of rock is thought to have taken thousands or millions of years to be deposited. This is false, and no geologist in the last two hundred years has claimed such a thing.

Individual sedimentary layers can be laid down in annual flooding events along rivers and in flood plains. A few years of this and trees can be buried in several layers. This sort of thing is seen happening today all around the world. See:

Polystrate" Tree Fossils

"Polystrate" Fossil (off site)

Yes this site is "one sided". We do not make any secret of the fact that we are coming from the mainstream scientific position. However we do link to well over a hundred antievolutionist sites (a favor rarely returned).

And finally does there being "NO transitional fossils" say something? I suppose it might if it was true, but it is not. See:

Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ

Taxonomy, Transitional Forms, and the Fossil Record (off site)

Transitional Fossil Species and Modes of Speciation (off site)

600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms is a very large number. However, the Sun's mass is about 2x10³⁰ kilograms, three thousand times larger yet. The calculated mass loss over 4.6 billion years is only one-thirtieth of one percent of the Sun's mass -- a negligible portion. Making the Sun one-thirtieth of one percent heavier would not "[pull] the Earth into it."

The number (four million tons per second) sounds impressive, but even when added up over a very long span of time, it is a drop in the bucket compared to the immense mass of the Sun. This is one of Kent Hovind's innumerate arguments, and it is easily refuted by a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation such as the one above.

So the primary answer is that water was one of the abundant molecules in the pre-solar nebula, and was one of the original ingredients that the sun & planets were made out of. The heat generated by planet formation doubtless drove out a lot of water, but the Earth still has a lot of water in it; water is often the most abundant gas in a volcano plume (see Volcanic Gases and Their Effects). But much, maybe even most, of the surface water on Earth is currently thought to have been deposited by comet impacts.

You might find the commentary about the Dover PA actions over at our sister site Panda's Thumb interesting. A particular Dover example is "This just in: ...".

What I find odd is that despite the fact he is looked at somewhat askance by other, "more serious", creationists (like Answers in Genesis), he seems to be as popular as sliced bread with the creationist in the street (or rather in the pew). It's like the popularity of a creationist is in inverse proportion to his credibility.

The less scientifically credible he is, the more popular he is.

Anyway, I'm sure I can speak for all of us here at the Talk.Origins Archive when I say that I'm glad you're not going to tell us we're the "spawn of Satan". After all, even evolutionists have feelings.

As for seeing God's love and sharing that with the world, I'm afraid you've fallen into the old "accepting evolution = atheism" trap. Yes many of us T.O. volunteers are indeed heathens of one sort or another (atheists, agnostics, deists etc.), however some of our numbers are in fact Christians and I would imagine that they feel that they already see and share God's love.

So, peppered moths, did "the man that came up with that theory" confess to gluing the moths to the tree in order to take pictures of them and did he then go to jail for it?

Yes and no.

Yes some scientists who worked on industrial melanism in peppered moths have "admitted" that they glued moths to a tree when doing experiments to see if birds would try and eat the moths sitting on the trees. They admitted it right in the papers they published to tell other scientists what the results of the experiments were. However to the best of my knowledge the scientist who did the first major work on this subject ( H. B. D. Kettlewell) did not use dead specimens in any of his experiments.

And no, they did not go to jail for doing so (I can't image what the charges would've been. Criminal bird teasing?).

So, yes, you were misinformed and may now consider yourself corrected.

See the following by two world experts on peppered moths:

Fine tuning the peppered moth paradigm (off site)

The Peppered moth: decline of a Darwinian disciple (off site)

You say you've seen "variation" and that this is not evolution, and that you "believe in macro evolution, not the other". You say that insects developing resistance to pesticides is just variation not evolution, sort of like someone getting used to the taste of onions or a hot bathtub.

Wow.

OK, I don't want to have to explain your own position to you but if you go to some creationist web sites or read some of their books I think you'll find that you wanted to say that you "believe" in microevolution not macroevolution. Of course those sites and/or books will likely give you a false or misleading definition of those terms.

Microevolution is the word you're going to want to repeat without understanding, not macroevolution.

Not to come down to hard on you but do you see why we might have a problem taking your idiosyncratic definition of what evolution is seriously? You don't even have a firm grasp of antievolutionist rhetoric about the distinction between micro and macro evolution and yet you feel qualified to tell us what is and is not evolution?

How about learning what evolution actually is before you decide whether or not you accept it?

Variations are the differences in individuals within a population. Like how you are different from your siblings, cousins, friends, or neighbors. Variations are caused by genetic mutations and the reshuffling of existing genes (through various processes). Those variations that are important to evolution are the ones that can be passed on to offspring. If the variation is helpful within a particular environment then it tends to increase in the population. If it is harmful it will tend to decrease. This is a process that Darwin called natural selection (off site).

Mutation and Variation (off site)

Natural selection and variation (off site)

Microevolution is evolution within a species (like what happened with the peppered moths).

Microevolution (off site)

Macroevolution is the evolution of new species from preexisting ones. Antievolutionists often mischaracterize this as meaning something silly like dogs giving birth to cats but that is not the sort of changes predicted by evolutionary theory. Rather evolutionary theory predicts that only slightly different species will arise through macroevolution (speciation events); changes more on a scale of horses giving rise to zebras, or coyotes giving rise to wolves. It takes numerous such speciation events (over an enormous about of time) to lead to more drastic differences like those between cats and dogs.

What is macroevolution?

What 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent

Finally neither variation, or microevolution, or macroevolution is like getting used to onions or a hot bathtub. Individuals do get used to some things but they do not evolve. Evolution takes place within populations and happens over many generations. That is why Darwin called it descent with modification. Children are slightly different from their parents and so on.

There is a whole lot more to it of course but you really need to stop listening to the likes of Hovind and stop simply repeating what they say without even understanding what it is you're talking about. It doesn't do you credit.

Introduction to Evolutionary Biology

The argument from authority is noted. Since the reader makes a point of invoking the authority of Kent Hovind, let's put that claim into contention. Mr. Hovind's purported doctoral degree is a joke. I've seen the document that Hovind submitted as a dissertation; it is not a scholarly document. Please see Karen Bartelt's review of Hovind's dissertation. More information on Hovind.

As for the claim that "all evidences[sic] of evolution has[sic] been proven wrong within the last 25 years", that's a simple falsehood. Hovind represents himself as an expert on evolution, which means that he is a liar, either about this claim which an expert would know to be false or about his supposed expertise. Take your pick. But the fact is that the past twenty-five years has seen a veritable explosion of research delivering loads of empirical evidence concerning evolutionary processes. This includes things like the discovery of fossil intermediates in the evolution of whales. The ability to sequence genomes of organisms has gone from a vision to a commonplace in the past quarter century. No, Hovind's claim is as laughable as his dissertation.

See the Quote Mining Project for documented cases, particularly Quote #14.

Probably people like … Joel Bickel who by the way mentioned the Piltdown man hoax and the response was "oh that was an orangutan jaw not a pig jaw". The fact remains that it was a hoax along with a lot of other cover-ups and lies that evolutionists try to cram down our throats.

You talk about there being some sort of "evidence" to support evolution. I hope you are not referring to a human skull with a pig's jaw that is passed off as a caveman.

No, the evidence of which we speak is not a human skull with a pig's jaw. And assuming you are referring to "Piltdown Man", it was an orangutan jaw not a pig jaw.

So you see Mr. Bickel asked (sarcastically I'm sure) if Piltdown was the evidence for evolution that we talk about, and I informed him it was not and corrected him as to the specifics of the material that made up the Piltdown man hoax.

It is pretty pathetic state of affairs when we defenders of evolutionary theory often have to take time to explain to antievolutionists their own criticisms. I mean if you're going to try and use Piltdown Man again us you should at least know what the hell it was.

Mr. Borders claims that there are "…a lot of other cover-ups and lies…" that evolutionists have perpetrated. What exactly are those? I've seen countless lists of alleged "evolutionist frauds", and most include Piltdown which indeed was a hoax (but perpetrated against scientists, who later exposed it), but most of the other supposed frauds usually listed are not frauds at all.

Sometimes they are simply mistakes (like the short lived Nebraska Man), or slight exaggerations (like Ernst Haeckel's embryo drawings), but mostly they are completely legitimate and still currently accepted things like Hyracotherium (an early "horse" fossil), Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy and her relatives), Java Man and Peking Man (both examples of Homo erectus), or the case of the peppered moths (see this peppered moth link also).

So what exactly are these other "cover-ups and lies"? Why waste our time with vague allegations? Why not be specific?

[And yes we've already heard about "archaeoraptor"]

Why did you bother making these unsupported assertions? Are we just supposed to take your word for it?

As for your argument from the appearance of age see the following links:

Index to Creationist Claims: Claim CH220

The Return of the Navel, the "Omphalos" Argument in Contemporary Creationism (off site)

John W. Burgeson's review of OMPHALOS: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot by Phillip Henry Gosse (off site)

Your statement that most scientists are admitting that evolution didn't take place is flatly counterfactual. You've been badly misinformed and should think thrice about trusting the word of whoever told you this on anything to do with science (or anything else for that matter).

You might want to keep these words from Augustine in mind:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field in which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although 'they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.' [I Tim. 1:7]

There are a few points to consider. First is instruments at the extreme of their abilities are less reliable. The calculated range of accelerator carbon isotope detection could allow the method to be applied to material as old as +60 thousand years. But that leads us to a different dilemma which is the modification of the sample by diagenic processes.

There is a TalkOrigins FAQ Carbon-14 in Coal Deposits that directly addresses your question. Enjoy 'cuz.'

If somebody needs a spare body for production of a TalkOrigins Archive FAQ, we'll be sure to let you know.

See:

Arguments we think creationists should NOT use

Maintaining Creationist Integrity: A response to Kent Hovind

You also might want to send off a stern rebuking to The Biblical Research Society (a creationist group in the United Kingdom) who had this to say about Hovind's (and others of his ilk) behavior regarding the Paluxy Man nonsense.

Baugh, Patton and Hovind have shown no interest in publishing their "findings" in a scholarly way. This has meant that peer review of their claims has been by-passed, and their popular literature, videos and web site materials create the impression that creationists are a bunch of deluded amateurs who specialise in sensational reporting and have no commitment to scholarship or science. Furthermore, some significant breaches of ethical conduct have taken place in order to prop up the façade of championing truth.…We have passed the stage where the activities of Baugh and his friends [Hovind being one, T.B.] can be tolerated or ignored. Their activities are a cause of dishonour coming upon on the name of Christ and the need now is for repentance, confession and reformation.[Emphasis mine]

Source: Dinosaurs & human trackways at Paluxy

See Mark Isaak's Index of Creationist Claims and my own essay on Population Size and Time of Creation or Flood.

Some of the "layers in the ground" you mention are of course formed when minerals are shaken up in water and allowed to settle. This is a typical "experiment" we use in California to teach geology to 4th grade students. Other layers are formed by volcanic flows, some by wind, some strata form in high energy events like landslides, others in low energy events like the slow accumulation of plant matter in a swamp. Each kind of soil forming event produces a different kind of layer, or strata. What tells us that the accumulation of the Earth's sedimentary rock was a long process is that there are layers stacked upon layers, upon layers which resulted from a series of wet and dry and wind and volcanism and wet and dry, and marine and terrestrial and all over again and again.

Your (I put this nicely) question about the airplanes buried in ice is discussed in Index to Creationist Claims Claim CD410: Airplanes Buried in Ice. Since you wouldn't want to ignore any relevant facts, I am sure that you will read this short item.

Stories come from around the world about floods because there are floods that happen around the world. You have no actual point to make by this observation, nor is it one that has been ignored. I think that if you will read "Flood Stories from Around the World" by Mark Isaak you will learn much that you don't seem to know about flood stories. The next errors you made (in that sentence alone) are that there is geological evidenece of a global flood (there is none) or that a global flood could have produced the stratagraghic column that does exist (it could not). You will want to pay close attention to Glenn Morton's article The Geologic Column and its Implications for the Flood . I also reccommend his article titled Why I left Young-earth Creationism .

I'll skip the "bigot" crack.

Perhaps you could give an example of belittling, deriding and ridiculing.

Did you notice that Talkorigins links numerous articles to Answers in Genesis? Can you say the same for AIG linking to TO? What might they be afraid of in the interest of full disclosure?

Until Christian Creationists' sites actually start linking their articles to opponents for critique, I, for one will take the talkorigins high road as far as independent and free exploration of views are concerned.

But his views on species mutability are well-known. He did think that, by and large, species were immutable, but he didn't think they were absolutely so after he saw himself a new species form by hybridisation.

Linnaeus was at one time a special creationist – that is, he believed that each species was created specially by God. He wrote:

"There are as many species as the Infinite Being produced diverse forms in the beginning." (Species tot sunt diversae quot diversas formas ab initio creavit infinitum Ens, Fundamenta botanica No. 157, 1736).

However, in 1744 he was forced to allow that some species are the result of hybridisation, at least in plants, because he observed it happening. A species of plant he placed in a genus Peloria (from the Greek pelor, meaning monstrosity) was in stem and leaf structure part of the Linaria genus, but the flower was clearly different (Hagberg 1952: 196f; Glass 1959b). Still, he thought that genera were real and the possibilities for change limited. According to Larson (1967), Linnaeus imagined in the Fundamenta fructifications "that God created one species for each natural order of plants differing in habit and fructification from all others. These species, mutually fertile, gave birth to as many genera as there were different parents, their fructification somewhat changed" (p317).

In the Pralectiones (1744), Linnaeus went further:

The principle being accepted that all species of one genus have arisen from one mother through different fathers, it must be assumed:

1) That in the beginning the Creator created each natural order only with one plant with reproductive power.

2) That by their various mixings different plants have arisen which belong to the mother’s natural order as they are similar to the mother with regard to their fructifications, and are, as it were, species of the order, i.e., genera.

3) We may assume that plants have arisen within the orders, i.e. by genera of one order, may mix with each other. In this way there will arise species that should be referred to the mother’s genus as her daughters. [quoted in Larson, loc. cit.]

Linnaeus thus employed the Great Chain of Being in a rather unusual way. Most “chainists” accepted what was later called the Principle of Plenitude (the lex completio), which stated that God would create everything that could be created, since he would not make an incomplete creation (Lovejoy 1936; Glass 1959b). This usually meant that species graded into each other in a series of varieties. Linnaeus instead represented species using the metaphor of countries adjoining each other (in the Philosophia botanica sect 77). In his early writing, all the territory is pretty much filled – as he said, nature does not make jumps – but the countries are discrete and distinct from one another. In the later work, this strict fixism of the first edition of the Systema Naturae has been modified. All hybrids did was fill in a rare empty bit of territory in God’s time and plan. The borders were set by the genera, and all genera arose from a single species created by God.

At the end of the 1750s, says Hagberg (1952: 199), Linnaeus was in a state of perplexity with respect to species. In 1755, he published Metamorphosis plantarum, dealing primarily with the development of plants, but also with monstrosities and varieties. Such later hybrids he called the "children of time" in an anonymous entry in a competition at St Petersburg in 1759 (Hagberg 1952: 201f). Hagberg says, "Linnaeus never succeeded in pin-pointing his new conception of species. But the old one, that formed the basis of Systema Naturae, was utterly and irrevocably abandoned." But these ideas of his were not influential.

Actually, a strong stomach, a sense of humor, and a quantity of adult beverage are basic requirements when debunking Hovind. That and a sound mind.

And then he GETS NUTS.

Interesting.

I don't see the problem.

You might do well to see the God and Evolution FAQ here. Also, be sure to check out the religious statements in Voices for Evolution.