...What I want from you is a list of those distinct groups....
How about dogs vs cats, elephants vs giraffes, Falcons vs crocodiles and on and on and on? You can make your own list. None of these creatures are able to breed together.

(... from the article you referenced...)
[...It frequently includes the following conditions: rapid and permanent burial/entombment; protecting the specimen from environmental or biological disturbance; oxygen deprivation - limiting the extent of decay and also biological activity/scavenging;....]

Isn't that what I said, a rapid, not ages long process is involved? Nothing at all is said in the article how the decay process is prevented. Burying something in mud and water does not kill microbes. Neither does high-pressure. There are microbes living at the bottom of the oceans. The fact is that we find not only vertebrates fossilized, but millions of snails and worms and other such softbodied lifeforms. You just cannot get around it, but you have to sterilize the dead body very quickly and then bury it in a sterile environment.

(....There is no evidence that a single big flood ever happened....)
The existence of fossils, millions of them, all over the earth, even in polar regions is evidence for a universal water catastrophe. The biblical account tells us that the fountains of the deep broke open. The interior of the Earth is hot and thus superheated water gushed forth, killing and sterilizing masses of land and sea creatures in seconds.

(....volcanic eruptions and all that other sudden stuff to give you the fossils...)
By seismic studies of the Eurasian landmass (Russia mostly) evidence has come forth that the mantle of the Earth contains several times as much water as the oceans. Look at a cross-section diagram of the Earth sometime to note how thick the mantle is compared to the thickness of the crust of our planet. If you are interested in learning more about this, you can start here:
http://www.physorg.com/news90171847.html
Scientists do not know what forced all or a significant portion of this superheated water to the surface, but there is enough water down there to cover the surface of the earth including all continents several times over. However next time, God promises to cleanse the earth by fire, not water.

(....It is a theory, not absolute truth,...)
But of course the theory of evolution is absolute truth.

(...That doesn't change the fact that science has build up a pretty damn good and detailed explanation...)

Observed experimental facts is what science is all about, not necessarily the explanation of them. All explanations have gone through the worldview filter of whoever is making the explanation.

(...Do you have an alternative theory that works on clock changing....)

Not one that I have come up with, but others have. There is evidence from the quantized red shift and the speed of light measurements, that the clocks based on the electrical force, basically the atom, has changed dramatically since time began, in relation to the clocks based on gravity. The Earth's rotation around the sun is governed by gravity. One such rotation is defined as a year. Radioactivity and other atomic phenomena is the clock that the billions and billions of years of atomic time are measured by. In the beginning, atomic time and gravity time, or as it is sometimes called, dynamical time, were vastly different. Now they are the same, and because they are, the assumption is made that this was always so.

Red shift data from the most distant, and therefore most ancient objects give evidence that certain "constants", such as for example the speed of light and its inverse, Planck's constant h which governs atomic processes, was as much as 100 million times bigger than it is today. Scientists have slowed the speed of light to a crawl in the laboratory. Lenses work by the fact that the speed of light through them slows down. Basically, what it amounts to is that the speed of light is governed by the medium it travels through.

Space is not an empty nothing, but has definite electric and magnetic properties. Space is also filled with unbelievable amounts of energy, called the zero point energy. If you're curious, just Google that. The erroneous assumption is that these properties have always been the same since the beginning of time.

The bottom line is simply this: nothing in a nature is as constant as change.

(...the best explanation we have...)
There is a big difference between scientific observations and measurements and human theories trying to explain these.

(...Christianity doesn't spontaneously arise in areas where it wasn't brought by mass indoctrination...)
And other religions do? How do you separate culture from religion? In most cultures religion is at the very heart of them.

(...in spreading the ideas behind it...)
Do you really think that Islamic or any other terrorism makes those philosophies more attractive to people?

(....Science is about explaining stuff...)
No, science is first and foremost about observing and experimenting, then secondarily trying to make sense of the results. Nobody has ever observed or caused anything to evolve in the sense of an alligator becoming an eagle. All experiments without a single exception, trying to make evolution happen, have been a failure. All that has ever been observed is the adaptability of living organisms.

(....but when it comes to how the world actually works nothing beats actual observation...)
You are exactly right about that. The problem is that nobody has, nobody ever can observe evolution taking place. Until we invent time travel, nobody can observe the past.

A bicycle has never been observed to evolve into a motorcycle and a monkey has never been observed to become human. We cannot travel back in time, but the biblical records we do have about the past, fit rather well with the physical records left by nature and humans.

Anything that you as an individual or humanity collectively wishes to accomplish takes two things: energy and intelligence. Without those two together, both of them, nothing ever goes from the simple to the complex. We observe this every day in man's activity and it is also true in nature.

...the bloody revolution that comes....
when governments cease to enforce the protection of its people impartially and with justice. Revolution comes when certain people are classes of people are treated badly in comparison to others. The Royal classes treatment of common people of France and Russia are a an example of this. The protection of the government of people from one another as to extend to everybody, not just the privileged few.

The revolutions of France and Russia and even the American Civil War did not take place because the people had no education, but because certain segments of the respective societies were mistreated or at least felt they were.

(....fundamental wouldn't be functional otherwise...)
There is no way a government or anybody else can supply the higher services, such as education, transportation, communication and redistribution of wealth, unless it is able to keep by persuasion or force law and order. Force only works if and as long a significant fraction of those governed is willing and able to apply this force to the others.

...to allow anyone to have a gun - let protection take its own course....

That is of course one solution, but would you really prefer that? Of course guns are a great equalizer, in that even the weakest and least physically able, can pull a trigger on a gun and kill a Goliath. I prefer a specialized group of people, (police, courts, and prisons) to efficiently deal with antisocial members of our society.

(... it must also provide education...)
Throughout most of human history, and still in many places today, education was provided by the parents to their own children. That of course is much less of an option in our industrialized, computerized world. There will always be a trade-off between individual and governmental responsibilities.

In our modern world, people have come together to accomplish certain purposes by the mechanism of the Corporation. In a sense, especially the very big ones, carry on many functions that used to be done by governments.

The bottom line is to determine the main functions of government. I happen to believe that it is to rein in human selfishness which manifests itself in many ways including crime.

....classify those categories by observation....
There is, but it's not always what we call species. Basically, there are distinct groupings or as the Bible labels them, kinds, that are observed distinct. Their genetic lines cannot be crossed. That is a fact that has never been altered by countless human attempts to do so.

(...Well, yeah, thats the reason why fossils are extremely rare...)
I am not sure about whether you are facetious here. There is practically no place on earth where fossils and fossil fuel do NOT exist. You dodged the question of how you would make a fossil.

(...For a recent example of fossil formation see Pompeii...)
That was a sudden catastrophe, where in this case volcanic heat prevented decay. Most fossils however are found in sedimentary rock which was laid down by water, in some cases scaldingly hot water suddenly bursting forth from the depths of the earth. All fossils, are the result of sudden catastrophe, not gradual deposition over large amounts of time. To make a fossil requires that they dead bodies of plants and animals be prevented from decaying. The article you cite does not mention how that could take place by any gradual mechanism. The oxygen in the atmosphere would also prevent fossilization, implying sudden burial of the dead bodies even of marine animals. A sudden worldwide water catastrophe, such as described in the Bible in the flood of Noah, is much more plausible, given the evidence we have.

(...because it servers exactly no purpose...)
You assume that in the same way that the medical establishment assumed that the tonsils and appendix have exactly no purpose. Just because ignorant humans cannot discern God's purposes, doesn't mean there isn't any purpose.

(...all that stuff points to that 13.7 billion years number....)
Which is all based on the assumption (belief by faith) that the clock by which we measure this has never changed in all of time. Scientists base this on pure belief in the fallacy that you can extrapolate the present linearly into the past. If reality were only that simple! Many things in nature are highly nonlinear.

(...see this nice map....)
That interesting map shows that Christianity is both the biggest and the widest dispersed faith on the planet. The other faiths are mostly regional, but there is no continent that Christianity has not touched. Also the some of the map is false, because there are many Christians in India. I happen to know some of them.

(...unless you indoctrinate people with it...)
I suppose the others, such as the Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists etc. don't indoctrinate their children? Religion has always been very important and still is to most human beings. Even atheists and evolutionists have a religion in a negative sort of way. Every person on this earth has a worldview.

(...Resources wasted on religion aren't that big of a deal...)
The fact that *any* resources are wasted, at least according to the evolutionary doctrine, shows that there is more going on than what evolution can explain.

(...And of course ideas spread ..)
The spread of germs could be explained in evolutionary terms by the survival mechanism built into germs. What survival mechanism for humans drives the spread of ideas, good or bad, especially ideas not directly involved with the ability to survive and reproduce? How do, especially non-Christian ideas, help in the survival of mankind or an individual human being? How does flying airplanes into buildings or blowing themselves and others up, help the survival of the human species? How does the unreasoning hatred of Iran and the Arab nations for the tiny nation of Israel fit into evolutionary doctrine? How does the Christian moral teaching of selflessness and helping others fit into evolutionary theory founded upon the survival of the fittest?

The Biblical teaching of God, human sin and rebellion with resultant selfishness, but also the idea of helping others, are much better and to me much more satisfying and holistic explanation of reality than evolutionary theory.

....the military and police are paid for from our tax dollars...
The question to ask first is: What is the primary function of any government? Why do societies, even primitive ones, form governments? Is it not to protect the members of that society from each other (police) and from outsiders (military)? These two functions are the essence of and are completely necessary for every government.

Everything else any government may do, roads, railroads, post office, communication systems, schools and so forth are functions of convenience for society, but are not fundamental to government.

Redistributing wealth, is at the bottom of this list of conveniences in that it benefits only a smaller portion of that society, rather than everybody.

In societies of the past and some today, taking care of the poor was a voluntary individual task. Instead of having beggars in the streets, modern societies have chosen to have everybody in the society, rather than only the generous and big hearted people take part in this activity.

Many societies in our world today have decided that health care is a fundamental right for its members. However, living in a healthful lifestyle is still in individual responsibility.

...non-productive stuff like sociology...

You add to that the armies of lawyers we add to our society every year.

....Please explain the difference between "safety" and "security"....

Two identical houses, may be equally insecure. One of them is in a "nice" neighborhood and the other one in the crime-ridden section of town. The house in the nice section of town is no more secure, but it is safer than the one in the crime-ridden neighborhood. Because Mac owners in general are more affluent, they tend to keep their pricey computers out of the bad neighborhoods of the Internet. Also most criminals, by far, still target Windows. So even if it were true, and it may be, that Macs are less secure, Macs are safer because the attacks are orders of magnitude less.

If a Mac does get infected, it is easier to clean up. For one thing it lacks a convoluted registry and the Byzantine file organization of Windows. Out-of-the-box, by default, Macs have fewer Internet facing services and its included browser, Safari, is not deeply embedded and part of the operating system. Fortunately, this is now also changing in Windows.

(....Ok, now you're a bit off the deep end. Macs are better because they're overpriced?...)
Of course not! By now you should know me better than that. It is simply a fact that humans tend to be more careful with expensive objects. It's not likely that someone would go hotrodding down a gravel or dirt road with a BMW, but may do so with a Chevy.

I am happy for you that you are willing and able to further your education. Knowledge is always a good thing! May Jehovah God, the God of your ancestors in whom you don't believe (yet) richly bless you in all your endeavors in the coming year.

...First, it doesn't address the problem with the iPhone...
Unlike a PC or Mac, the iPhone is an appliance, mainly a PHONE. It happens to do a number of things that general-purpose computers can do, but that is not the reason for its existence. If you don't need the phone with its attendant subscription expense, you can get an iPod touch. It also is not a general-purpose computer, but an iPod that likewise does things a general-purpose computer can do. If you don't like these two devices from Apple and their restrictions, you can buy some other phone, a PC or even a Mac and load them up with whatever good or bad software you can find on the Internet.

(...You mean the way they widely advertised the fact that Macs are just more secure...)

The Mac may not be more secure, but it is definitely much safer. So is Linux. Never, ever, has a virus or worm spread through the Mac community like fire through a barn full of hay. The Mac is like a house in a decent good neighborhood. It may not be any more secure than a PC in the slums. Because Macs are indeed quite a bit more expensive than many PCs, their owners tend to be more careful and take better care of them.

PS. What do you intend to study when you go back to school? Is it computers or something entirely different? Your parents evidently love you a lot. Count your blessings.

....My stance may change if another destructive technology is discovered...

Are chemical and biological weapons good enough for you? They are not as dramatic as nukes, but can snuff an equal or greater number of lives. Those kinds of weapons are cheap to build and harder to detect.

(...Who knows what the future holds?...)
Humans don't, but God alone does. He has told us in his Word the Bible, how history will end. This is not our planet. We did not make it and we don't control it. Originally, per God's plan, man was supposed to exercise wise stewardship over God's property under the direction of God himself. By controlling wild and domestic animals, as well as the weather with just a word, Jesus Christ demonstrated what God had in mind for mankind.

Humanity as a whole refused and still refuses to freely submit to God's rule. As a result of man's refusal, war and violence have characterized all of humans existence. God has said that he will leave mankind to their own devices until they are at the very precipice of total self-destruction. That is what is meant by Armageddon. Before mankind can wipe themselves off the face of the earth, Jesus Christ will return to rule over all mankind in justice and peace. We are told that people will learn the "art of war" no more, but will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. After the most terrible time ever, a glorious future awaits earth.

I believe what God has foretold will happen, so consequently I do not worry about natural disasters such as asteroid hits or radiation storms. Jesus has solved the biggest problem we humans have --- death. All those who believe and trust him will, just as he did, come to life again forever.

...but no one does on the iPhone...
which is absolutely great, because the iPhone is not intended for Slashdot geeks who like to tinker, but for ordinary folks who just want a reliable device. By dodgy software I mean the kind of stuff that has plagued and still does plague millions of Windows users, such as viruses, worms, Trojans and the like. Apple has pretty much guaranteed that such garbage will not affect iPhone users. Power users like you who don't like that restriction are not forced to buy an iPhone. Meanwhile, sales figures indicate that everybody else is pretty much satisfied with Apple's products.

(...Except, of course, incredibly more limiting...)
That's why I said the iTunes app store should be OPTIONAL for regular Mac users and the possible upcoming whatchamacallit from Apple. That way it can be ironclad for certain, that an ordinary computer user will never get their computer infected as long as they download only software from Apple. Apple should widely advertise this feature.

...if that is true...
It is true that all land in the US that is not owned by a nonprofit or by some branch of government is subject to tax. For most local jurisdictions such property tax is a major source of income.

...The second you want to do something Steve Jobs didn't think of, or doesn't approve of, things get very rough....
It is very true that Mac computers are not as good for those who like to tinker with them. They are more like an appliance. There will always be trade-offs between flexibility and ease-of-use for ordinary users. The UNIX underpinnings of OS X do allow for quite a bit of tinkering by skilled users.

(...I tried installing Linux on that Powerbook...)
I have Linux, Windows XP and Windows 7 installed in three separate virtual machines on my Mac Pro. I put Ubuntu on there mostly out of curiosity, but I have several programs that I use regularly, but that only come on Windows. Because OS X underpinnings are based on UNIX, Macs have much in common with Linux.

(...it's got a better case,...)
Most importantly, for me, is that it had to fit into a very tight spot in the cabinet which the TV sits on. It also had to have the faster 802.11n networking speed so that large movie files can be transferred to it quickly. Since this computer is never turned off, unlike the TV, it is important that its power consumption be small. There is no other computer that does what the Mini does and yet suck only 14 W on standby. A true Windows server is considerably more expensive and Linux can't run QuickTime or iTunes.

(...They also wanted $1200, insisting that they had to replace basically the entire machine...)
Unfortunately, Apple isn't the only manufacturer that will try to get out of warranty repairs based on physical evidence of damage. I once had a titanium PowerBook on which the frame broke near the hinge. I have to pay for that repair myself, but it was only $300.

(...until fairly recently, I was employed...)
I do hope you get another job before long, one that you like. Unlike you, I am old, married and retired, but I have a fairly decent income. I have communicated with you quite a bit already. You seem more like a friend than a random stranger on Slashdot.

...that would only be within the reach of big governments ...
Do you really think that somebody like Hitler would not have used every single nuclear weapon if he had them? You are thinking like a rational human being, totally unlike a madman like Hitler or those who flew the airplanes into the World Trade Center. I doubt that neither Hitler nor the religious nuts that caused the destruction of the World Trade Center were ever in want of food or entertainment.

During the Cold War, both sides were ruled by men who were largely rational and had a certain respect for human life. That is why the MAD doctrine prevented the use of nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately, there are nut cases in this world and one or more of them will get control over a government. There are some in Iran right now working hard on obtaining nukes. The nutcase that is running the show over there right now has repeatedly expressed hatred toward and the destruction of Israel and all Jews. A nuclear slugfest between those two countries would have far-reaching effects for all of mankind. I am sure you have heard of Armageddon. This is a Valley just north of Jerusalem where the final battle of the last war of mankind is prophesied to take place. It is written that ALL nations of the earth will be involved in that in some way.

Jesus Christ, being asked about the time of the end, told his disciples about a coming time so terrible, such as never has been nor will ever be again and if that time were not cut short by divine intervention, no living thing would survive. Until weapons of mass destruction became available to mankind, this prophecy could not be fulfilled.

...And anyway, where do you draw the line?...
Neither I nor anybody else draws these lines. There are certain categories within which living creatures can interbreed, but these categories are fixed and completely outside of our control.

(...it that would merely be anecdotal evidence...)
You seem to disparage this. How many times do such anecdotal observations have to be made before you consider them valid?

(....With fossils you have actual evidence...)
The only evidence we have is that fossils exist. Nobody has ever made a fossil, nor has anybody ever seen the fossil being made. No fossils are being made today, because normally organic matter such as dead animals and plants are broken down into elementary parts by microorganisms. Explain to me how you would make the fossil.

(...doubt the very science...)
I don't doubt the fossil record, only its evolutionary interpretation. There are scientific facts, observations and experiments. That is real science, but the evolutionary conjecture is a belief and interpretation. I believe that fossils came about by a sudden worldwide catastrophe involving water -- the flood of Noah. However, that is a belief, just as evolution is a belief.

(...They had new abilities not presented in the original bacteria...)
So what? They are still bacteria of the same kind, in this case E. coli. If I teach my dog new tricks and abilities, does that mean he's no longer a dog? I have trained my cat to follow me around all over like a dog would. Does that make him no longer the same cat? New capabilities and abilities do not make a new organism, but it's the same old one with, well, new abilities and characteristics.

(...a clear separation between species...)
What we have classified and labeled as species is entirely arbitrary. The Bible uses a similar arbitrary word, the word "kind". Living things multiply after their kind. To me, that simply means that living things are confined into breeding categories which cannot be crossed. That is exactly what we find in nature.

(...like the blind spot...)
How do you know that this is a design mistake? For the longest time people have thought there were vestigial organs, apparently useless, such as your appendix. Medical science has since learned that the appendix is part of the immune system and is not at all useless. The same thing was thought of our tonsils which once upon a time were routinely removed by surgery

I am able to see this computer screen just fine even with the so-called blind spot. The human eye is capable of registering a single photon, but is not destroyed by a sunny day at the beach or in the snowy mountains. There is no human made light sensor that is able to operate over such a wide dynamic range.

(....If you could find proof for the 6000 years...)
The 6000 years and billions of years are both based on belief. To measure time, you need a clock. The clocks available to us tick at different independent rates, depending on which force controls its motion. Gravity and the electric force are the only two forces or interactions which are available to us for timekeeping. We assume, we believe by faith, that neither of these forces have ever changed, thus affecting clocks based on it. There is evidence from astronomy and other measurements that this assumption of constancy is wrong in the case of the clock based upon the electric behavior of atoms.

(...for all we know somebody could have stolen the body through the backdoor...)
The accounts of the resurrection of Jesus Christ have been minutely examined by many scholars and critics. What you assert is nothing new. The enemies of Christ, those who had him crucified, would have loved nothing more than to produce the body, squelching once and for all those pesky resurrection rumors. It was the fact of the Resurrection, with those early disciples seeing, touching, and eating with the risen Christ, that enabled them to turn the Roman world upside down. Critics and skeptics have tried unsuccessfully to find fault in the resurrection accounts as they are written.

(...How come that the location where people live is so closely related with the religion they have?...)
That is patently false. There are Christians in every part of the world today. Long before travel became easy and common by land and air, Christians took their faith to every continent. There is no culture or civilization anywhere on this planet, that does not have some sort of religion or beliefs. Even atheism is a belief in a negative sort of way.

Evolution supposedly is driven by the mechanism of the survival of the fittest. How does the expending of vital life resources on religious shrines, cathedrals or offerings help survival? Some pagan religions even sacrificed their children! Some religious people even fly airplanes into buildings killing themselves and others. How does that help survival? This universal religious human activity goes completely against fitness and survival by "wasting" a lot of human effort on religion and faith.

....From the surrounding environment....
If you were right, then a new automobile should self assemble from the parts in the junkyard. Among the many myths that evolution propagates is the idea that birds come from reptiles. That is totally preposterous. The requirements of flight are very exacting. That is why we still don't have flying cars or roadable airplanes. The information and requirements to build an airplane are very much different than that of building an automobile. In the same way, the information content in birds is very different than that of reptiles. The same holds true for the totally foolish idea that monkeys or apes are the ancestors of humans. Maybe your ancestors were monkeys, but certainly not mine.

Living things are very adaptable and this adaptation is taken to be evidence for evolution. All that Darwin or any other evolutionist ever has observed is adaptation. Within that framework it is true that information gets shuffled around, but no new information is generated. Your examples, without exception, fit into the adaptation category. Shuffling information around does not create anything new, any more than shuffling marbles in a bag of marbles creates new totally different marbles.

When you organize your room you supply the energy to move stuff around, but you also supply information as to where to move it. In our human experience, information only comes from a mind. All information both in the hardware and software of that computer you are using came from human minds.

Living things, are many orders of magnitude more complex than any human device or creation. They are self repairing and self reproducing. No human designer has ever come up with a machine of even small complexity that will do this. Anybody that propagates a theory that says that all this information and complexity came from anything other than a great mind exercises a large amount of faith. I have chosen to believe in God being responsible for creation, especially life. Apparently, you have chosen to believe in time and chance instead.