Since I don't have a huge amount of time to type out responses to each reply to my original message (thank my final exams), I'm going to address them all at once here.

Before I start, I want to make it clear that I am not as "into" science as most of you are. I don't study quantum physics in my spare time for fun. I can't quote you a plethora of studies and proofs. I speak from personal observation. If that discredits me to you, then I can't do anything about that. I am not trying to "prove" that creationism = science. It doesn't. I'm not saying that if science can't explain it, then God must have done it and we shouldn't question it. I do think there are a lot of things that will never be certain. One of the things I know about science is that it isn't founded on taking things for certain too easily.

grem discussed a couple of different kinds of evolution, that of the universe and that of living organisms. It is the first I have been alluding to. That is why I said it happened once and really can't be observed. Yes, we can observe fossils, rock formations, etc., that *currently exist*, but we cannot observe the actual act. This is why I felt the astronomy example was different. What astronomy is based on is happening. We can't observe life currently being created from nothing, nor is there any solid evidence that can be unequivocally pronounced in favor of it.

I do believe in the second kind, in a manner of speaking. I believe life itself was created, but I believe small changes are always occurring. Natural selection, adaptation, mutation, what have you. I believe this accounts for things like species and skin tone. What I do not believe is that mammals evolved from amphibians and humans from apes. I think the natural selection theory has caused some confusion in the second kind evolution of life. This is most obvious to me when people tout finds like Cro-Magnon Man, half-ape, half-human. That's where I think the bias comes in. No one can prove that those skulls are a half-ape, half-human creature, because what sets a human apart is his mind (and yes, I realize that cannot be quantified by science). Fossils don't show that. All they show is something that could be an ape or human skull, depending on what sort of adaptation had occurred.

Second, Dave asked if my objection to relying on things which cannot be directly observed meant I don't believe in, for example, history. Of course I do. There are things that currently exist, like documents and photographs, which explain history in a very straightforward manner. Nonetheless, there are inaccuracies in the history we learn, of that I am certain. People remember things differently (thus recording different histories which must be reconciled) or may read passages of letters differently.

Scientists do the same thing when they interpret nature, which gremlinn kind of talked about in his post. Isaac Newton got hit on the head with an apple, took a guess about why it fell, and revolutionized science when his theories held up*. But you also get issues like ether, which scientists strove for decades to study, eventually realizing that it simple didn't exist. That's why it is so difficult for a scientific postulation to move from being designated as a theory to being a law: Scientists want to be damn sure that one individual's interpretation of what happened is correct.

Third, several people jumped to the assumption that by my call for teaching both creationism and evolution, I meant teach them in a science class. Dave said, "Teach ID in a class called 'Christian Theology' and you're cool. Teach it in 'Biology' and I take extreme exception to that."

Well, yes, I realize that would be impossible. However, you can't prove that fish turned into humans (nor is it really relevant to most biology classes, which are concerned with the current state of living things), but it gets taught as fact in science classes (at least it does around here). The whole system needs revamping, is what I'm saying, with a little less bashing viewpoints alternative to evolution. They are not as crazy as often thought.

I think it's outrageous for my college science electives to largely consist of classes titled, for instance, "Science and Nonsense," which, according to the class description, spends most of its time "debunking the Christian myth." Creationism may not be science--and I never meant to say that it is; merely to say that it is *compatible*--but that doesn't automatically mean it is nonsense.

My other favorite is to have to sit in a geology lecture and be told by my college professor what an idiot I am for believing in Creation. This is while being taught that geologists date rock layers by the fossils in them and, in another part of the semester, being taught that fossils are dated (partially) by which rock layer they are found in. And then learning that there is no place on earth where these rock layers are in their "correct" age order but are, in fact, often inverted in *exactly* the opposite order. Or found containing fossils "several million years younger" than the layers themselves are thought to be. And being told that there's ample scientific proof for why all these things occurred, but not being given the slightest explanation. But creationism is so ludicrous it's only believed by those with no brains. (Not that you guys would say that. That was the general idea of the teacher in the above class.)

Again, this is all from my personal experience. If what I know is incorrect, feel free to correct me.

LaZ

*Yes, I do know that it didn't happen quite that way.