> I don't see how millions of years is compatible with creationism, while hundreds of millions of years isn't. God is omnipotent and immortal, so He could have decided to wait hundreds of millions of years before zapping life into existence.

True He could have, but the point of early life was to 1) transform the environment and 2) provide biodeposits as abundantly as possible. The Bible (Genesis 1:2) seems to imply that God was busy doing something valuable in the early oceans, and creating first life quickly is an obvious interpretation of that. Therefore, an old earth creationism model would reasonably predict life as soon as the earth could possibly sustain it.

I agree that hundreds of millions of years of nothing would not necessarily falsify creationism completely, but it would add more complex 'why' questions. Why would God wait so long?

> I don't see how this would be out of character for a deity who spent 1/7 of his creation time resting. (From an old earth perspective, that's hundreds of millions of years, right?)

For one thing the days are not necessarily the same length, for another thing, most OECs see the seventh day as being in progress now (Hebrews 4 implies that we are still in God's rest). This seems to be corroborated by the record. Throughout the last tens of millions of years, quite a few new unique species came into existence. But ever since modern humans arrived (which I would say began God's "rest"), there has been relatively little formation of new species, and those that have formed could probably be explained through evolutionary theory (which I do not entirely reject). In other words, while God was creating, new species that would have a hard time evolving were introduced; now that God is at rest, evolution is all we have to go on for new species.

And that is also something that can be studied and falsified. Will future studies show that during the last 100k years, the speciation rate was about the same as for the previous 10 million? If so, that poses a serious problem to a creation model. If future discoveries continue to back up what I said, the Biblical creation model gets stronger.

> In other words, hominids shouldn't share any of our DNA.

Actually, common DNA and other biology are about the same between humans and nonspiritual animals simply because this is the design that works. God doesn't have to do too many crazy things like that to prove His existence (I think He has already done more than should be necessary for that.

> Your crucifixion example: you think it's true because people believe in it...

That's not at all what I said. I said it has been referenced by numerous sources of the day. There is at least as much historical evidence for it as there is for many other ancient events which no one doubts.

> If the part about god creating the world in 7 days in false, one wonders what else is.

It's not false, it's just that the "days" *can* mean eras of time. That is absolutely a literal definition of the word translated to 'day' in Genesis 1.

I believe absolutely that Genesis is literal history, but we have to dig into what is actually said. Most people stop after a cursory glance and figure they know the full meaning.

As a Christian, I would respond that morality is not arbitrarily handed down by God, nor does it transcend Him. Morality is defined by the very nature of God. The Bible says that God cannot lie or be tempted by evil. In some peoples' minds that might make Him not fully omnipotent, and maybe that is true. God cannot violate his moral character. So when we humans do something that violates His moral character, that is sin.

> One could imagine a religion that could accomodate facts alongside religious tenets.

I suppose you're writing that with implied understanding that Christianity could not possibly be such a religion.

If that's the case, you may want to take a look. Forget clowns like Kent Hovind and go to apologists like CS Lewis.

I strongly hold to a historic Christian worldview precisely because I see it as matching reality better than do other religious or philosophical worldviews.

And this is essential. Believing a religion if it didn't jive with known truth would be silly.

We see the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Chris as the central truth of all of history. Bullcrap you say? Well the crucifixion is recorded in quite a few historical sources. While the resurrection is not directly cited by secular sources, those sources do describe the behavior of the early Christians that indicated that they believed with all their heart that the resurrection was real. They paid the price for this belief, being thrown to lions, etc. And many of these people are the very ones who would have seen the risen Christ.

Regarding scientific facts, although I agree that young earth creationism is bullcrap, belief in it is absolutely NOT required to be a Christian. No less than 11 verses in the Prophets talk about God being responsible for stretching out the heavens. This is exactly what is occurring -- fine tuning so extreme that it absolutely *has* to have an intelligent Being behind it. For example, from the Astrophysical Journal (Krause, I think, back in 1999), the fine-tuning of the dark energy density has to be to one part in 10^120 for any life to exist at any time or place in the universe.

Much more I could say but that's enough for now.

That's true about most young earth creationists and the wider ID community.

There is an organization called Reasons to Believe whose mission is to produce a scientifically testable/falsifiable model for Biblical creationism, from an old earth perspective.

They believe that God designed the universe for the maximum benefit of human civilization and to fulfill God's purposes for the universe as quickly and efficiently as possible, and build a model on that. For example, to sustain civilization, humans need 4 billion years of biodeposits. RTB predicts that life appears on earth as quickly as could possibly be allowed under the conditions, and that is what we see. There is evidence of life existing 3.8 billion years ago, just millions of years after the Late Heavy Bombardment. A way to falsify this would be to show that life emerged over hundreds of millions of years, as most evolutionists have tended to assume.

They also predict that future observations in astronomy will show more and more evidence of the fine-tuning of the universe.

Another prediction is that since humans are created specially in God's image, there should be no clear genetic links with hominids. It also explains the sudden burst of such things as advanced tool use, jewelry, and religious artifacts on the scene about 50,000 years ago.

They have a lot more predictions, many of which are articulated in their book "Creation as Science" by Hugh Ross.

> Big Macs cost the same everywhere

Yes but they are not really indicative of the cost of food for "normal" people of the area.

In the US, McDonald's is on one of the cheapest places to eat.

In Ecuador, where I lived for a while, McDonald's is one of the more expensive places to eat. The cost of most McWhatevers in US$ (which Ecuador uses as currency) is a good bit higher than in the States.

But you can walk down the street there and get a nutritious almerzo (local lunch with rice, meat, juice, and maybe even desert) for $1.50 or less.

Yeah but Oregon is a marginally blue state, so it's not in the same category as Feinstein in California. Smith was lucky to hold on as long as he did.

I've been surfing the web for at least 12 years. I've probably hit dozens of ad-infested pages per day during that time. I've probably seen tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of ads.

I can't remember a single time when I actually purchased something because of a web page ad.

I may have been influenced a bit due to a few of them, but actual purchase that I wouldn't have made otherwise? If so I have forgotten about it.