I can't defend the appalling behavior of your street-corner preacher, for "all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" and "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."

But C. S. Lewis had a good answer to your question about the square circle (or the more often heard question of "could God make a rock so large that he could not move it.")

"His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. There is no limit to His power.

... meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words, 'God can.'

It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God."

The poll questions, as well as your comments, reveal more about the misconceptions and prejudices of the speaker than about the actual beliefs of the respondents. A thoughtful YEC (Young Earth Creationist) could not answer "yes" to "do you believe humans and other species are unchanged from the beginning of time?" First of all, in the Genesis account of creation living creatures were created on the fifth and sixth days, not at "the beginning of time" (the first day). Second, no one in the YEC community believes that "species are unchanged". YECs allow for natural variation within created "kinds", which roughly correspond to the "family" in scientific classification. For example, a YEC would believe that most Felidae species descended from an original "proto-cat" (my term) through a designed process of limited adaptation. What a YEC does not believe is that inanimate matter plus chance plus time led to the great diversity and complexity of life that we see today.

I wish I had points to mod you up. This is the "Let them eat cake" philosophy of energy development. You can't afford coal? Here, use these expensive, unreliable, and inefficient technologies that only survive in our country due to massive government subsidies instead! (Hydro is an exception, but is not an option in most countries that don't already have it.)

It's just the opposite for me. I see such elegant and ingenious solutions as this, the bacterial flagellum, geared insect legs, octopus cromatophores, etc., as evidence for a brilliant Creator God.

Cutting costs not to go broke? Where have you been the last 40 years? Companies don't "cut costs" to avoid closing. They "cut costs" to appease wall street and the financial sector.

Exactly. What is all this angst about? Did IBM lose money last quarter? No -- they made $3.00 per share (which was in fact an improvement over the previous year) instead of their projected $3.05 a share. And for this they are laying off thousands worldwide. Employees, and even customers, are not a priority anymore. The only thing that matters is the stock price.

No unemployment? No homelessness? So all those people I saw living in tents by the railroad tracks the last time I was in Bs As were there just because... they like trains?

Ignore the trolls. I am a programmer on the reservation system of a worldwide hotel chain that handles millions of transactions a day. Large parts of this system use mysql on a Linux platform. Just yesterday I was working with a mysql table containing 1.3 billion (1,300,000,000) records. mysql is just as reliable as other commercial products that we use.

And whenever I come to work dressed somewhat fashionably I get weird comments, not compliments, they are actually making fun of me I think.

FWIW, AF, I am a male computer guy who would love to work with someone like you. In fact, I'll give you a compliment just based on your description...

<smiles> Hi AF, you look great today! </smiles>

A faster Xbox (ie a PC in a pretty box) with emulator software so it can 'be' every game console or gaming machine out there...