I think if this discussion is going to aquire a serious tone, we much change the focus a bit. Obviously most people here do not take creationism seriously. Obviously the few creationists(one?) don't take science very seriously. So, instead I think we should be focused on how science is being misinterpretted by creationists.
For example: Creationists routinely tell me that evolutionists believe men evolved from monkies. Not true. I don't know a single evolutionary biologist who asserts this. Darwin himself didn't even say that. He proposed that men and apes share a common ancestor. Thats an important distinction, and one even some people with PhD's are failing miserably to note properly.
The other area I see a problem is that creationists both misrepresent the nature of tools used to determine the age of things, and the fact that astonomy, biology, and geology have all arrived at the extreme age numbers independantly of one-another. While there is some overlap between biology and geology in the chemical analysis department, both have plenty of evidence of a more than ten thousand year age. Not just by a little either.
Furthermore, I don't think one could really enter into this debate without questioning the origins of the bible itself. This entire discussion boils down to the accuracy of historical record. On one hand, the literalists of the bible argue that it can't be looked at any other way but their way, and that their church is "the" church. On the other hand, there are a variety of other parties, some of which are less militant creationists, and some of which are evolutionists AND Christians. There are others obviously though, and I think the origins of the Bible, the Koran, Book of Mormon, and a number of other religious texts can be fairly be called to close examination. If they are the basis of the assertion that the universe is only about 10,000 years old, then it is just as valid a target as things like the supposed expansion of the universe.
One of the most obvious points would be that there's no record in the bible of the actual time passed between the creation of man and woman, and the eating of the fruit off the tree. The bible clearly states that they did not know death before eating the fruit, so how can we know that they didn't exist for billions of years before the snake finally seduced them?
Also, before Adam was 130, his son Cain somehow not only had a wife, but also had enough people to found a city. Where did all those people come from? Even at an absolutely absurd reproduction rate, to found even a modest city of a couple thousand people(anything less and calling it a city is a real stretch) would be hard to populate if you took every single one of Adam's offspring, and the offspring of each of his offspring. That would be assuming ALL of his offspring went to the land of "Wandering" and settled in Enoch. This would mean that many people purposely left the presence of the lord to go live with an outcast who by his own word was a hated man, and according to God, was cursed. Now if Adam was immortal prior to eating the fruit, then his age would not have been recorded would it? The bible is not clear on this. So at 130 he bore a son, but was it 130 years following the death of his spirit? The bible doesn't say. Literalists will not concede the point because they do not want to, it would be too damaging to their entire cause. So, with the very foundation of their entire system of calculating the age of the world under terrible threat of not making sense, we can move to the next point.
Who wrote the bible we see today? Scholars, who do nothing but study the bible day in and day out, have largely come to a conclusion that there was a book to the bible that was written prior to the current compilation which is now referred to as the "quelle"(source) or Q gospel. This book no longer exists, but many other works evidence it's existance. Furthermore, the gospels of Matthew and Luke show a great deal of evidence of simply being revised versions of the chapter Mark. This shows two things. It shows that first of all, the gospels were translated several times. Secondly, it shows that changes in the course of translation were significant enough to cause people to mistake that they were in fact, translations of the very same work. There were no apostles named Mark and Luke anyway, and the original work of Mark was written anonymously, with the name only being applied to it in the second or third century by the increasingly dominant church started by Peter.
Further complicating the entire picture is the Gospel of Thomas, which early Christians of the sect that eventually became dominant chose to ignore and downplay. Many believe the entire purpose of the verse that shows Thomas as a doubter was intended as an attack on his collection of quotes. The Gospel of Thomas may in fact be the only Gospel even written directly by someone who actually knew Jesus. With the Gospel of Judas now surfacing for the first time in public sight, we gain a more clear picture of just how unclear the story of early Christianity really is.
We know that most of Christ's followers were worker-class citizens, fishermen, carpenters, etc.. Given the nature of the world at that time, they would not have been literate, even in Hebrew or Aramaic. Of the apostles, only Matthew would have been certain to know any form of writing, as he was a tax collector and would have needed to read and write at least on a basic level for his job. Jesus also would have at least been literate in the native languages, probably significantly so, since he had studied so much with the religious leaders as a child, and was experienced with the old texts and religious law. So we are stuck with the problem that none of them knew Greek, which was the international scholastic language of the day, moreso than even Latin. This means that their written message was not very portable to begin with. Likely notes were taken by people like Matthew and Thomas, in Latin and probably Aramaic, and then later were translated into Greek, pieced together, and formed into both the Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of "Mark"(which as stated before was originally anonymous. Right out of the gate we have a questionable origin, and translation challenges.
Further, there is suggestion that there may have been two people named "Thomas", since Thomas means "Twin" in Aramaic. The Gospel of John refers to a "didymos thomas", which literally is two words for twin, one from Greek, one from Aramaic. So why would they call someone "Twin Twin"? Quite possibly because one was named Thomas, and he had a twin who was referred to as the other Thomas. This would especially make sense if one Thomas joined Jesus and then later drew the other one in. They might have referred to the original as "The Twin", but then when his twin joined as well, they were stuck with a challenge of what to call him, so they nicknamed him "Twin Twin". There has been a lot of debate about this, but it definitely shows how murky even the very origin of the list of the apostles is. Many had nicknames, some may not have even been known, and their names later replaced with popular names of leaders from the early church.
Looking at the Gospel of Thomas, we find the following passage:
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">The disciples said to Jesus, "We know that you are going to leave us. Who will be our leader?"
Jesus said to them, "No matter where you are you are to go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being."<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Now this is important, because it shows that the church, as we later see it, did not, in fact, have Peter as it's first leader. It is important to note though that the last part about "for whom heaven and earth came into being" is not literal, but actually an old Jewish affectation denoting that a person is very important in the eyes of God. It is also important to note that this passage clearly states that the apostles knew that Jesus was going to leave them, well in advance of his crucifixtion.
Now one may say that I am quoting a chapter deemed heresy by the early church, PETER'S church. We have no clear way of knowing if the church which James, brother to Jesus, was head of, actually is one in the same. In fact, evidence suggests there is not a clear connection between the two. So who, in fact, is the heretic? Thomas, or those who denounced him? What of the Gnostics, or Mandaeans, who both paint a much different picture of Jesus? Little is known of their origins. Again, we have the word of a church founded by a man who never met Jesus, quite possibly didn't have sanction from those who actually ran the church Jesus founded that the Gnostics and the Mandaeans were heretics. Can you say sketchy? We need Perry Mason in here!
Further evidence can be found in the nearly complete lack of any discussion about Christ in Roman or Judaic texts of the time. There's no Roman account of the crucifixion and the supposed supernatural effects that followed it. Also, even the bible itself paints Jesus as so obscure that Judas Iscariot had to point him out to the authorities so they could arrest him. This right next to a city where Jesus supposedly entered like a king and caused uproar in the market outside the temple. If he was so high-profile, why was he not more easily identified? If one factors in the new text that has surfaced, he quite possibly had every intention of being put to death. It would explain his praying away from the disciples(who somehow recorded every word...). It would explain why he was outside of the city at the time, but still managed to get caught in an extremely obvious trap.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. This DOES apply to this discussion because it strikes right at the heart of the entire legitimacy of the opposition to the theories regarding the origins of the solar system, and all existance for that matter. The bible is of such questionable origin that the church at the time of the Council of Nicea had to threaten anyone who didn't turn in Christ-related works with death, and then destroyed anything that they decided shouldn't go into the bible. It was so controversial at the time that the entire function of the Council of Nicea was to stop conflict between the existing Christian sects over the truth of each group's teachings. The origins of the religion, even a couple hundred years following it's very founding were already murky to the point of causing violence. This is the basis of creationist arguments? This is the book that is supposed to represent absolute truth? Even the old testament books have more clear-cut origins, and even their origins are somewhat unclear in many cases.
Furthermore, Jews don't make the same sort of fuss about creationism that Christians do, despite the more clear origins of their religion. Christianity was also tiny and unpopular until it hit Rome, and even then didn't become widespread until Constantine rammed it down everyone's throat as a last-ditch attempt to knit the crumbling Roman empire back together again under his rule(which worked for a little while).
If the origins of astronomy's conclusions and theories is fair game, all this is too. In fact, I can't really see how we could have a "God Did It" discussion without making diving into the theology prompting such perspective....
"Regret can only change the future" -Me
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." Frank Herbert, Dune 1965
