Ah, I see what you mean. The theory basis itself on the assumption that all life ultimately derives from a single common ancestor, which is not necessarily true (gets into the various theories of arbiogenesis though, and I'm no expert there) .
Well, that's what's being taught in schools. Pretty much everybody who graduates from High School or College will be taught that they come from a single ancestor.
Yeah, yet the biology of pretty much any organism shows a distinct history of advancement.
Yes, we age over our lifespans, and have different capabilities at different ages. This is largely preprogrammed into our DNA.
To be honest, it's not the use of mutation I was challenging, but the idea that it's completely random. You can't for example expect a human to be born with a trunk or tentacles, there's a limit to precisely how far DNA can bend between generations.
DNA does not "bend" at all between generations. It selects from a gene pool.
Of course we don't have trunks: That information is not in our DNA.
And since that information is not in our DNA, we must somehow produce that information. Most scientists point to mutations as a source of new information, as normal variation only selects existing information and does not create new information.
That's the point. The day appears to go missing sometime between the early Greek translations and the official adoption of the religion by Rome
Which I care about - why? Yes, human translations are often imperfect.
In modern communication it isn't, but in the bible it's not as common.
I take it you haven't read Ecclesiastes, or the psalms or proverbs . . .
Describing the same thing in different ways is very much common in the Bible.
but to be honest the writing tends to veer wildly from the over detailed to what could best be described as 'hastily scrawled'.
Seriously, that's opinion. I'm not going to take your word for it.
The problem being the original myths predate the biblical account by around two thousand years, and the later accounts would have the flood occuring a few thousand years after Noah built the Ark.
If our dating methods are accurate.
If they were recording the same event, we would expect to find more agreement, even if just a narrower possible range, for the time of the flood.
The other problem is that, while flood stories can be found throughout the world, not everyone mentions a huge flood (which would be strange if it was worldwide), nor is there any agreement on the time it occurred
As you've said yourself, humans can often distort things - especially after the Tower of Babel incident. So are humans reliable or not?! Make up your mind.
Geez, after all that time trying to convince me that humans are
UNreliable, all the sudden they become reliable when talking about flood accounts?! What gives?
nor in fact enough water present on Earth to manage it.
How about on & in?
You'd likely be better off with some of the books dealing specifically with the historic and archeological record of the bible.
It's not like the conservatives haven't studied and written about the historic and archaeological records. This looks like it's going to turn out to quickly be a matter of interpretation.
The final problem is that there is no geologic evidence of a worldwide flood
Ever hear of "geological record"? You know, the layers of rock with fossils in them?
It goes kinda like this:
Old Earth believers: History of the Earth
Young Earth believers: Record of the Flood
This boils down to interpretation as well.
Anything which is possible (no matter how unlikely) must eventually occur if the universe is infinite, since it has infinite time to do it in.
Which I call "convenient."
In addition, this smells of the gambler's fallacy.
The problem is it's a rather compelling argument.
. . . except that it's not. AFAIK most theories about the age of the Earth/Universe center around a finite amount of time, even if it's a long period of time.
And it still sounds very convenient.
Even if you don't accept macro-evolution, micro-evolution would eventually lead to a species which is completely different from it's forebears over a sufficiently long timescale.
"macro" and "micro" evolution are very poor terms. It is well known that there are severe limits to how far you can push a species if you do not include mutations. You can only select information that is in the existing gene pool - you cannot create new information without mutations.
The bible never mentions the age of Earth, those who posit a young Earth theory base it on the geneaologies in the bible (i.e. they assume that Earth cannot be more than a week older than Adam).
Not an unreasonable assumption from a straightforward reading of the account.
The thing is, these people often also argue that people lived much longer back then due to a more pure genetic code. Kind of screws up the whole theory if Adam happened to be a couple of millenia old before he had kids
Okay, if we have a week long creation, how did we suddenly get a millennia??
