One Argument that Creationists Really Struggle With

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Human Chromosome 2 is a fusion of two ancestral chromosomes (that also happen to be found within other current apes).

http://www.evolutionpages.com/chromosome_2.htm

I have yet to see one Christian apologist come up with a clever "rebuttal" to the above.

I'm only a creationist in the sense, that life up to my birth has been simulated for me. Whatever evolutionary process that occurred during that span to produce the conditions in which I am and live now, have took place by evolution as everything in the universe continues to evolve and change.

It's a test! God made the universe to have irrefutable evidence of common descent so that people would have to disregard all that evidence in order to believe that He literally created man from dust on the ground!

By clever, I mean something that sounds so intellectually convincing that creationist apologists wouldn't be embarrassed to use it as an argument.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSxgnu3Hww8[/youtube][youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfZFsXfCy6s[/youtube]

NO! It is the DEVIL'S OWN HANDIWORK that made it LOOK like them chromey zones was connecteded!! !! !! !! !! !!

REPENT!! !! ! REPENT YE SINNERSSSS!! !! !

The genetic evidence is so strong that even if we had never found ANY fossils in the rocks we would have figured out evolution happens once we started studying DNA. Patterns of nested hierarchies such as the location of endogenous retroviruses produce the same tree of life indicating common descent as what we find in the fossil record. And Human Chromosome 2 is practically a "smoking gun" showing recent common ancestry with our great ape cousins. All these different pieces of evidence all point to the same reality, and most people who argue against evolution are ignorant of or badly misinformed about the evidence for it.

Besides human chromosome 2, I would also love to see a Creationist explanation for the patterns of nested hierarchies in comparing the DNA of different species. Common descent explains it nicely and is backed up by the fossil record. I have heard Creationists call this "ranking." They say it is all about how one "ranks" different species. They say the tree of life from common descent is just an arbitrary artificial creation of atheist scientists who hate God and want to deny their Creator. But then, that Creationist explanation fails to account for why all those patterns of different data from genetic studies MATCH and why they also match what we find in the fossil record as to which forms appear first and so on. The only other alternatives I can see are either a trickster God playing pranks to test our faith or that they are planted by the devil to deceive us. I lean towards the first if Genesis must be read as literally true, but I have yet to hear a fundamentalist Christian admit that their God must be a trickster mainly because they are either ignorant of the evidence, badly misinformed about it, or too stupid to understand it.

No need to get so technical, they can't even explain dinosaurs..

I saw the tail end of a fascinating TV documentary the other day. Apparently a particular sequence of DNA that had previously been considered to be junk has been found to be vital for the formation of the placenta for all embryo mammals to develop in. The deeply fascinating discovery is that this sequence of DNA actually comes from a know retrovirus! The author of the documentary was theorising that retroviruses play a pivotal role in driving evolution by mixing and messing with genes across different species. Apparently a significant part of our so called junk DNA is actually that of ancient bacteria! The retro viruses have been cutting, copying and pasting bits of DNA between organisms since the dawn of time and we are a complete mish-mash / hotchpotch of DNA from all over the place. It was suggested that a retro virus was responsible for the split of homo sapiens and Neanderthals from our common ancestor.

If anyone is interested in learning to use the tools that molecular evolutionary biologists use to research these transposable elements and how phylogentic trees are constructed from DNA, there is a MOOC on offer on Coursera.

https://www.coursera.org/course/molevol

One argument
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Eo5MdHMNcw[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmQZ4f9f_Yw[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W96AJ0ChboU[/youtube]

Haven't we agreed that creationism is false pseudo-science by now?

The creationists have not agreed.

Unfortunately people who believe the cosmos was created by an intelligent force have to bear the onus of Creationists who take the story of Genesis literally. I will call these folks Literal Creationists. The L.C. are totally refuted by the facts concerning the age of the earth, indeed the age of the cosmos (Billyuns and Billyuns of years, as Carl Sagan used to say). The Genesis account is a primitive account at best and there is no way it can be taken literally by a reasonable person.

Rational Creationism is in no way incompatible with the Theory of Evolution.

ruveyn

Considering that the entire creationist argument is based upon a belief in an imaginary omnipotent entity for which there is not a single shred of evidence to suggest even exists, do you really think that there is some intellectual threshold which an argument must surpass for creationists not to be embarrassed to use the argument?

I never thought I'd see the words "Rational" and "Creationism" in the same sentence.