mnrlboy replied: "Hi there, I am a grad student in geology and very much believe much of what science has to offer, but I also have a lot of respect for other people's beliefs, including yours. I want to address some of your questions in a totally honest way, and I hope you will read through them and think about them: 1. I do not blindly believe in science. Science is a process by which our observations about nature lead us to theories about how nature behaves. Most scientists will tell you that they do not blindly believe the things that science tells them. Instead, we simply accept certain things as being highly likely to be true because experiment has shown them to be true time and time again. Science is not about belief at all, it is about what we can learn by accumlating observations about the universe and attempting to exprapolate logical conclusions from these observations. 2. a. I believe I have great value, just like any other human being. b. I need to know in what sense you are asking this. I believe my body was created inside my mother's womb, but I also believe I have a unique mind and soul that has been around for much longer than my body. c. My body will cease to function, but my spirit will go to a poorly understood plane of existence. 3. Scientists don't claim that the big bang came from nothing, they claim that all the matter in the universe was once compact into one singularity, and that this singularity exploded into the universe we know today. 4. I don't understand why you think that an earth that is billions of years old must necessarily have a desert bigger than the Sahara. There is not currrently a desert bigger than the Sahara because there is no land region on earth that has the correct climatic conditions to support a desert larger than the Sahara. This does not imply ANYTHING about the age of the earth. 5. The Gulf of Mexico has not been completely filled with mud because the Gulf of Mexico has not been around for the entire history of the earth. 6. You seem to be assuming that specific processes that are occuring today MUST have been occuring for the entire time the earth has existed. This is not the case. Geologists do not claim that the Gulf of Mexico has been filling with sediment for billions of years or that oil has been pressurized underground for billions of years. We claim only that THE EARTH HAS EXISTED FOR BILLIONS OF YEARS. It is not fair of you to try to poke holes in scientific theories when you don't even have an understanding of what those theories say. You cannot put words in our mouths that were never there to begin with, and then tell us that we're wrong. 7. Again, you're assuming that humans have been around for the entire history of the earth. They have not... they have been around only for the past few million years. The balance between the growth of society and human reproduction with predators, diseases, food shortage, and other factors that kill us is what determines the population. If you are under the illusion that the fact that the world population is not 500 bazillion implies that the earth must be very young, than you have serious misunderstandings about evolution and population dynamics. 8. Again, you put words in our mouths. Scientists have never claimed that the earth, or any life, formed from nothing. 9. Matter is not evenly distributed because the four fundamental forces of physics tend to assemble particles into units called atoms, and then condense these atoms into discrete units of mass. You would need to talk to an astrophysicist to fully understand this, but rest assured that an uneven distribution of mass in the universe is NOT inconsistent with the big bang, evolution, or any other scientific theory. Please know that I really do respect your beliefs. I am actually someone who believes in God, and believes that God put us here for a reason. I suspect those are beliefs that we have in common. But I am also a scientist, and there are a multitude of observations of many varieties about nature that lead us to the conclusion that the earth has been around for about 4.6 billion years, and that life evolved on this planet to its present state over approximately the last 500 million years. If you wish to hold creationist beliefs and reject these scientific findings, than you have every right to do so and I will respect those beliefs. But again, it is not fair of you to try to poke holes in scientific theories that you clearly have no understanding of. None of your observations imply that the earth has only been around for a few thousand years. If you have further questions or would like to correspond about this further, please feel free to e-mail me at. I am a nice guy, and I love to talk to people and here their points of view. But I also don't like to see my discipline ridiculed for having faults that others perceive, but do not actually exist. Best wishes, mnrlboy Response to your "Additional Details" section: I'm glad that you read and gave consideration to everyone's response... I think that demonstrates a willingness to be open. I do, however, still think that you are not really understanding the points that I tried to make in my original asnwer. The excerpt from the science text you gave was from 1989, which is nearly 20 years ago. Science is a process of discovery and constantly developing a better understanding. It is very possible that physicists have changed their view of the early universe from the "nothingness" you talk about to the view that it was a singularity with incredible mass. What may be even more likely is that this textbook is simply describing the early universe as nothingness in order to help students visualize this bizarre concept better. In any case, the issue of whether the pre-big bang universe had mass or not does not invalidate the big bang theory, and comes nowhere close to invalidating evolution. You also point out that some answerers have given different dates for the arrival of man on the planet. This is simply because 1) the date assigned to the beginning of man depends on exactly how you define "man"... beings similar to us have been around for a few million years, but the actual species of "Homo sapiens" has been around more on the order of tens of thousands of years, and 2) Answerers on this site have varying degrees of familiarity with the evolution of humans, and are taking a ballpark guess because they don't want to take hours out of their day to look up the currently accepted timeline. It seems to me that you are trying to use very minor discrepencies and differences in wording between a few select statements in order to justify the complete dismissal of an ENORMOUS and carefully thought out body of knowledge. This is hardly any more fair than telling us what we believe, and then telling us we're wrong. Scientists are not perfect, and we do not claim to have all the answers. You will always finid disagreement and discrepency. That doesn't mean that you take hundreds of years of careful observation, painstaking data collection, reasoning, comparison of findings, peer review, calculation, experimentation, and integration of knowledge from many individuals in many different fields that miraculously coagulates into the exact same picture of earth's history, and just throw it in the trash because it's more comfortable for you to believe something different. You say that we have been "indoctrinated" by our science books. On the contrary, the definition of the way science is done is that we are not indoctrinated by anything... we observe what we can about nature and draw our own conclusions based on what we find. That's where all the things in those science books COME FROM. It is those of you that believe in creation, without being able to explain how you reached that conclusion, who have been indoctrinated. Again, I do respect your beliefs if you still choose them over science, but you are way out of line in telling us that we are "indoctrinated" while trying to point accusingly at minor blemishes on a massive and brilliant body of work that you have not even begun to understand. I hope you will continue to think about these issues and learn as much as you can about both your own beliefs, and the beliefs of those in the scientific community. It's quite a wonderful journey, and not as confusing as you might think. One final note.... I must leave soon to do some of my own research into things totally unrelated to evolution, but I wanted to thank you for your response to... well... my response! We may still not agree, but I think it's great that we exchanged messages about this. I certainly learned more about your perspective, and I think you learned more about mine (and that of most scientists). I can certainly see how the concept of life being suddenly generated at some point in earth's history, and the idea of our evolving from apes, may seem very strange. Although I am a geologist (and not a biologist), I may be able to give you a better idea what current science says about this. Scientists don't think that we mated with chimps at some point and became what we are today, they believe (and have evidence) that a subset of primates began developing larger brains and other more human-like attributes, and that because these things helped them survive better, the ones that had the traits continued to reproduce and develop into modern day human beings. You may still choose to not believe the evidence that exists for this idea, and that's fine. I guess I just wanted you to know that scientists don't just make this stuff up out of nowhere. These ideas develop after years of very careful measurement and study of a wide variety of different things, so please don't think that scientists are merely "guessing". There is certainly a lot we don't know and can't explain at this point, but there are certain things, like the age of the earth, that we are very confident of because there are many different lines of evidence for it. We are only trying to gather as many observations as we can, and assemble them into a picture that explains as many of those observations as possible. It may comfort you to know that myself, and many other scientists, believe in a God and believe that there is a purpose in our being here. As for the physical story of how our planet came to be the way it is today, I believe what science says because I think it's a powerful and logical way to gain information. But while science is very good at explaining to us "how", it says nothing about "why". To me, just because we were once a different form of life millions of years ago, does not mean that we don't have any value in the here and now, and doesn't mean that God doesn't have great plans for us. I think that many of your beliefs, and many of the things that science says about us and our history, are not really as contradictory as you might think. Just something to think about. Anyway, I really must go now, but again, it's been interesting having this correspondence over Yahoo Answers! I hope that nothing I've said has offended you... I haven't ever intended to be harsh, and the last thing I want to do is put down other's beliefs. I just really love science, and love to share it with people and have a tendency to stick up for it when I feel like people are misinterpreting what it says and how it works. But I think we've both learned from this and it's definitely worth doing. I'll be gone for a while, so I won't be editing this response again. Take care, mnrlboy"