When it comes to dinosaurs, we also have to consider that like humans, in post-Flood conditions, they would not be able to grow to the size that they did prior to the Flood. I've seem some reports that indicated that in reality there may only actually be 1/3 of dinosaur species that we identify today. The reason for that is many of the fossils may simply be young versions of the 'adults' we know and other still may simply not have been able to grow to the sizes that we are familiar with.

With the examples wolf gave, Loch Ness would not be a full scale pleseasaur. It is proof? I can't say that, but 11,000 confirmed sightings is hard to ignore. There's a big difference between one sighting here and there and 11,000. It is hard to ignore that nearly all major scientists and government funded projects must adhere to the evolutionary standpoint. The number of any of these scientists that discover evolution to be faulty and subsequently losing their funding is quite startling. So it is realistic to see attempts to squelch said sightings, because if Loch Ness is a real dinosaur living in the modern day, evolution loses everything. So any sightings won't be seen in mainstream media outlets. But as DK and Shantith said, using Loch Ness as proof is good for speculation, but little else. But as wolf indicated, Loch Ness is not the only case to explore. I do believe Loch Ness is more than an urban legend but until we have a body, it is good for logical speculation, but not as actual proof.

I can't say that, but 11,000 confirmed sightings is hard to ignore.

The trouble that I have with this logic, is that people were "trying" to see Nessie. Many of these sightings belong to tourists who travelled a long ways to the lake, in hopes of seeing the mythical beast. Therefore, if they saw a log out of place, or a stick sticking out of the water, or a bubble rise to the surface, they claimed to have seen the beast.

The number of any of these scientists that discover evolution to be faulty and subsequently losing their funding is quite startling. So it is realistic to see attempts to squelch said sightings, because if Loch Ness is a real dinosaur living in the modern day, evolution loses everything.

Do you think so? I don't. I don't think that evolution would lose everything if Loch Ness proved to be inhabited by some form of small aquatic pleisiosaur. Why would it? Evolutionists would merely say that Pleisiosaurs were able to survive in the loch, and therefore, did. Their whole theory is so well fortifiied, that one such "surprise find" isn't going to send their whole theory down the drain. If that were the case, then the coelocanth's rediscovery back in the nineties, would have disproven evolution.

Haha, I didn’t think my dinosaur comment would raise so much discussion, sorry for causing the thread to go a bit off-topic, it was more done out of a case for my “sadly” deserting humour.

In terms of the Lochness, I can say fairly confidently it is nothing but a myth, so probably not the best example to use.
Now onto Dinosaurs, the definition of them are very vague, such as “terrible” lizard, or “extinct” reptiles, and as DK also said, the discovery of a “prehistoric” creature would not disprove evolution, as evolutionists would say in very simple terms, “it hasn’t changed because it doesn’t need to”.
I believe if the crocodile went extinct many people would term that as a Dinosaur.

FencerforJesus, your post was a very good read, and I agree with a lot of what you said.
I am passive either way, both young earth, and old earth, and I know it is sitting on a fence, but I have not yet read/heard anything, that makes me believe either way, and until I do, I will just enjoy discussing it.

The micro-evolution your on about I think is termed adaptation, and is how all the different dog species, cat species etc. arose (due to variation). Evolution is when speciation takes place.

In terms of dinosaurs living with Man, I have no objections as to why not, I also have no objections to dinosaurs within the ark, however I once read a interesting theory by a man Derek Prince (a well respected bible teacher known for his down the line biblical teaching), in which he explained how dinosaurs, and even species not to dissimilar to that of man may have existed, it was based on the words (I think these are the correct two words) tora and bova (which are Hebrew, in which he was a scholar in), which appear in the first verse of the Genesis, are of great significance. I wont explain the whole theory as I am running from pure memory which is always dangerous, so I guess look it up yourselves if you want to , ( I will find the title of the book it is from some time)

I see where you are coming from with the stories about dragons, that where brought home by explorers such as Marc Polo, and also legends to do with dragons. However it is always difficult when evaluating historical texts, for example, a 14th century book, titled The travels of Sir John Mandeville (apparently a very popular book at the time), described lands in which Mandeville had supposedly visited, where people had the bodies of humans but the heads of wolves ? This wasn’t a one of , there quite a few stories like this during the time.
There is also the reasoning a dragon keeper could simple be an “alligator” keeper for example.

Questions of evolution and the age of the earth aside, as a scientifically-inclined person I have to be skeptical of the claim of 11,000 confirmed sightings of Nessie. What exactly constitutes a confirmed sighting, as opposed to those (as Digs notes) made by people eager to see what they "know" is there?

So it is realistic to see attempts to squelch said sightings, because if Loch Ness is a real dinosaur living in the modern day, evolution loses everything.

I'm afraid I must disagree. As Digs said, finding such a "living fossil" (as the coelacanth was quickly dubbed) wouldn't automatically disprove the model.

There's a distinction between a model/theory like evolution and a physical law; in the latter case verifiable observations that contradict the accepted theory can force a change. An example is the law of gravity. Observations of Mercury during a total solar eclipse didn't match predictions; the refinements of relativity were a result.

Ironically, other examples include the Big Bang theory itself (the name was coined by astronomer Fred Hoyle as a derogatory term!) as well as the currently-accepted model of the Chicxulub impact now credited with the mass extinction 65 million years ago.

We are taught from kindergarten through our lives that dinosaurs died 65 million years ago.

Now you're just makin' me feel real old.

The impact crater was discovered accidentally in 1979 (when I was at university! ) and the theory only became widely accepted in the 1980s after the discovery of iridium at the K-T boundary in many places around the world.

All this is not to say that there are no problems with the theory of evolution (or special creation for that matter) - just that we must approach the science aware of our own biases.

I've come into the whole dinosaurs and Nessie thing a bit late, but one thing that hasn't been discussed yet is the fact that we know more about space than we know about the ocean. In fact, we've only charted 5% of it!! Can you believe that? With all the technology we have, we've yet to lay eyes on 95 percent of the ocean, which makes up more than 70% of the entire earth's sirface! Yet, in that 5% that we have charted, we've discovered over 1 million different species of plant and animal.
Scientists estimate that there could be over 9 million more different species of animal and/or plant that exists in the uncharted portions of the world's oceans (according to discoveryeducation.com).

Take this for example, the Greenland Shark...bigger than Great Whites, these things can grow up to 24 feet long, and frequent icy waters of the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans, but have also been discovered in the riverways of Canada! They were only just dicovered in 1992. That's just under twenty years ago, and it's as big as a school bus!

If something that large wasn't discovered until that recently, isn't it at least plausible that one of the possible 9 million other unknown species could be much larger and much older? I'm just sayin...

DNA does reproduce itself. It has to replicate itself for a human being to exist, because as a molecule, deoxyribonucleic acid is very easily destroyed. It it held together by a few hydrogen bonds (which are very weak as far as intermolecular forces go), and while single stranded DNA is farily stable (with it's sugar-phosphate backbone), single stranded DNA isn't a whole lot of good in biological systems.

I believe you've mistaken replicating with duplicating. DNA can duplicate itself, (this is why children look like their parents), but this can only occur when DNA is already in existence. The point was, DNA can't write itself into existence (not that it can't reproduce after itself, all biological life does that, as God commanded) it can not, nor has it ever been able to form on it's own. Scientists can only create duplications by using existing samples, but they have never been able to make a single strand of DNA by combining other elements together, as evolution suggests. There is no possible way to explain how DNA came to be on the earth, other than intelligent design, because it can't write itself into existence, it's as simple as that really.

Stargazer, what do you say about man's hunger to create? We as humans desire to create all the time and we have -- cars, airplanes, computers, ect..
We as humans don't have to look far to recognize something which another human has built. Even an old arrow head, nothing more than a rock, we recognize as something built by a human. In that case, does it not make sense that our entire universe -- much more complex than a rock -- was also created by something? To be precise, something intelligent!

The micro-evolution your on about I think is termed adaptation, and is how all the different dog species, cat species etc. arose (due to variation). Evolution is when speciation takes place.

Actually, Fencer was spot on in his definitions (I can say this as a zoology majour ).

Micro-Evolution = Adaptation
Macro-Evolution = Speciation
Evolution = A change in allelic frequency (a fancy term that means the frequency of particular genes) in a particular population (NOT individuals) over a particular period of time.

I believe you've mistaken replicating with duplicating. DNA can duplicate itself, (this is why children look like their parents), but this can only occur when DNA is already in existence. The point was, DNA can't write itself into existence (not that it can't reproduce after itself, all biological life does that, as God commanded) it can not, nor has it ever been able to form on it's own. Scientists can only create duplications by using existing samples, but they have never been able to make a single strand of DNA by combining other elements together, as evolution suggests. There is no possible way to explain how DNA came to be on the earth, other than intelligent design, because it can't write itself into existence, it's as simple as that really.

I'm sorry if I've confused you, but aren't replication and duplication merely synonyms for each other. Perhaps if you could give me a defintion of each, I would be able to clarify my thoughts a little easier. In your opinion, what is the definition of replication, and what is the definition of duplication?

That being said, the whole "scientists have never made DNA" is really out of date. Whether or not it has been done, I'm not sure, but it would not be at all difficult to do. DNA extreme polarity of the phosphate molecules in it's sugary backbone, would make creating DNA a fairly simple thing to do. In fact, the recent advance (that I'm sure everybody heard about) in which scientists "created life" so to speak, involved artificial, man-made DNA. (Whether or not they actually "created life" is debatable, and is beside the point, but man-made DNA was used).

Either way, one's acceptance of the creation account versus the evolutionary theory should not come down to molecular mechanics/physics, but rather should come from one's acceptance of Christ as the Creator through faith. It's never going to work any other way. Even if man-kind were to create DNA (or to create the quarks and gluons that made up the subatomic particles that made up the protons, neutrons and electrons, that made up the atoms, that made up the molecules, that make up DNA) it is beside the point. Pinning our belief system on Christ as the Creator because of science's inability to do something, is very poor logic. Very poor logic indeed. One might just as easily sit down to dinner, believe that they were going to have lobster for dinner. They could wait for years, and the likelihood of a lobster appearing before them are very very slim (although, not impossible). Following your logic, the person could easily come to the conclusion that lobsters are extinct, because they haven't proven themselves.

I believe you've mistaken replicating with duplicating.

Part of the confusion might be definitions. In this context I'm fairly certain that duplication and replication mean the same thing (for what it's worth, dictionary.com uses 'duplication' as a synonym in its definition of replicate). As far as whether DNA can be created in nature, I'll let Digs address that area of expertise.

Stargazer, what do you say about man's hunger to create?

I agree that it reflects the nature of our Creator - but I submit that in itself that observation doesn't play into the science of origins.

Perhaps I should clarify - like Digs, I'm a scientifically-inclined person who accepts the existence of God and the occurrence of special creation. I believe that the creation declares the glory of its Maker. But in these posts I'm also addressing some of the scientific questions that arise in the discussion.

edit: I see Digs replied whilst I was composing this.

I'm sorry if I've confused you, but aren't replication and duplication merely synonyms for each other? Perhaps if you could give me a defintion of each, I would be able to clarify my thoughts a little easier. In your opinion, what is the definition of replication, and what is the definition of duplication?

They actually have very different meanings, both in the english language itself, but also in the musical, biological, and science fiction industries.

Duplicate: To make an exact copy of an original by taking pieces of the original to make another whole.

Replicate: To make a separate original, leaving the first intact.

Most people use these terms interchangeably, because the difference between them is small, however, there is one. DNA can duplicate itself, by taking from what already exists to create a copy. However, scientists have not been able to replicate an original DNA strand from what little elements supposedly existed at the beginning of the Big Bang Theory.
This is why it is still considered a theory, because it has yet to have any definite proof that this could occur.

That being said, the whole "scientists have never made DNA" is really out of date.

Actually, it isn't. Scientists in Switzerland built a machine to try and test the big bang theory three years ago, by creating the exact conditions, out of which, should spring life. They failed, of course, although they continue to readjust their computer program it runs on. As for their idea of creating life, seriously, there's no more "life" in their petri dishes than there is on Venus. They try and combine different elements to create an original form of life...however they fail to take into account that the elements themselves must have first been created.

Replicate: To make a separate original, leaving the first intact.

However, scientists have not been able to replicate an original DNA strand from what little elements supposedly existed at the beginning of the Big Bang Theory.

Then I have to ask the question, isn't replication of any kind impossible for anything according the definition that you have provided. Also, isn't it rather superfluous, because according to that defintion, scientists don't believe that the very first strand of DNA either replicated or duplicated, and therefore, this has been a superfluous waste of time

Your definition of replication almost sounds like a sci-fi scanning machine, in which a body is "scanned" and an exact duplicate (which usually ends up being an evil twin in most cases ) appears on the other side of the lab.

Actually, it isn't. Scientists in Switzerland built a machine to try and test the big bang theory three years ago, by creating the exact conditions, out of which, should spring life. They failed, of course, although they continue to readjust their computer program it runs on. As for their idea of creating life, seriously, there's no more "life" in their petri dishes than there is on Venus. They try and combine different elements to create an original form of life...however they fail to take into account that the elements themselves must have first been created.

What does the big-bang theory have to do with DNA formation. The two are separated (evolutionarily) by billions upon billions of years. Big-Bang-Theorists do not believe (in the least bit) that there was an explosion, and out of that explosion came millions of perfectly formed little things that had the opportunity to evolve over billions of years.

The big-bang theory is actually fairly scientific, and very likely explains the physics that God used to create this world, in that he pressurized a very high energy state of matter until it exploded, resulting in plasma (the highest energy state of matter). After the temperature cools a bit, and the energy is removed from the system, plasma would settle down into lower energy states (perhaps gases or even dust particles) that could accumulate due to the tiny amounts of gravitational force that they could exert on one-another, until they became nice pockets, which grew and grew and grew until it was a large mass. This large mass then pressurized itself to form a star, and the solids that were left in the mass pressurized themselves into planets. This is the model that I believe God used to create earth, as well as the model that is observable in astronomy today.

*Cue the beautiful picture entitled "The Pillars of Creation, in which the above mentioned process actually happens cumulating in the birth of a new star:

That's very intersting DiGoRyKiRkE, about the Big Bang Theory. You actually think God used physics to create the world! Why then doesn't the first part of Genesis read: God created physics and then created the world!

Actually, it isn't. Scientists in Switzerland built a machine to try and test the big bang theory three years ago, by creating the exact conditions, out of which, should spring life. They failed, of course, although they continue to readjust their computer program it runs on. As for their idea of creating life, seriously, there's no more "life" in their petri dishes than there is on Venus. They try and combine different elements to create an original form of life...however they fail to take into account that the elements themselves must have first been created.

If you're referring to the Large Hadron Collider, their intention was never to attempt to create life. The experiments in which they're simulating conditions at the moment of the Big Bang are intended to hopefully prove the existence of particles that would have been created in such conditions. If by 'They failed, of course, although they continue to readjust their computer program it runs on' you mean they continue to run these tests and use the LHC (which is for a vast variety of experiments, not just one), well that's just common sense. You don't spend billions on a vast machine only to give it up when one experiment doesn't work, or abandon years of research because what you were looking for didn't turn up straight away.

Watz - I never took it as necessary to assume that God must have created the world contrary to any laws of physics. Surely he created them?

Love that Pillars of Creation picture, Digs! It's widely considered one of the Hubble's best images.

However, scientists have not been able to replicate an original DNA strand from what little elements supposedly existed at the beginning of the Big Bang Theory.

Such an experiment would be doomed to failure; no scientists argue that any of the DNA components existed right after the Big Bang. All but the lightest elements, the theory says, require stellar fusion to be formed - conditions not present during the earliest years of the universe.

You actually think God used physics to create the world! Why then doesn't the first part of Genesis read: God created physics and then created the world!

I wasn't sure if you meant this as tongue-in-cheek or not. Physics is, loosely speaking, the study of matter and energy and how they interact. Surely studying the creation points us to its Maker - this was the rationale used by many of the classic medieval 'hall of famers' of science, such as Kepler. I don't think it's disrespectful to God to use the tools He's provided to learn about what has been made; indeed, it honors Him. Science, in and of itself, does not need to be feared or mistrusted.

Regarding the LHC, it's worth pointing out that there's a distinction between Big Bang cosmology - the earliest hours of the universe, so to speak - and biological evolution on earth, no matter how closely the two topics may be linked in our minds. Its study of sub-atomic particles and the like ties to particle physics, not biological evolution/processes.

edit:

...however they fail to take into account that the elements themselves must have first been created.

It might be semantics, but scientists do take into account the fact that the elements had to be created. It's just that there's a disagreement over how that occurred - whether by the hand of God or by some physical process following the Big Bang (there's actually a great deal of discussion in the scientific literature devoted to this very thing: how did the universe get from the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang to what we see now).

Coming in on this late on this, but here's a few observations, and, or questions.
I recall reading somewhere, (probably a creation publication) that those big magnetic gadgets like the Large Hadron Collider did come up with an interesting bit of info. Turns out that when you try to make matter out of energy you also make an equal amount of anti-matter. So the question would be this, If god used the Big Bang, (or it was a cosmic hiccup without any God around), what happened to the anti-matter?
I read a book called Starlight, and Time,(also a Creation publisher) that suggests that if God did use a Big Bang ther would, theoretically, be an expansion of time outward. This of course makes the Earth the center of the universe, and I cannot remember how the author esplained the sun, and other planets. But it would fit with the statements in the Bible of how God "streached out the heavens", and how light from hundreds of millions of light years are still reaching us.
Now I believe I have said in the past that I do not question the faith of any Christian who believes in evolution. But I would say that at sometime their faith will be questioned by those who use evolution to question the Bible.

Coming in on this late on this, but here's a few observations, and, or questions.
I recall reading somewhere, (probably a creation publication) that those big magnetic gadgets like the Large Hadron Collider did come up with an interesting bit of info. Turns out that when you try to make matter out of energy you also make an equal amount of anti-matter. So the question would be this, If god used the Big Bang, (or it was a cosmic hiccup without any God around), what happened to the anti-matter?

Even without God in the picture, scientists believe that at the moment of the Big Bang there was a lot of antimatter. The reason there's barely any now is because when antimatter comes in contact with regular matter it sparks a reaction that destroys it (which is why a machine the scale of the LHC is needed to create antimatter, and keeping it around is even harder, although recently there has been developments in storing antimatter for longer periods of time).