Jack L This will be rambling and disjointed. It will not answer all your questions, and those I've addressed will no doubt disappoint you by their brevity. This comes as a result of your approximately three per night posts, with multitudes of questions. I don't have the time to try to make it easy, comprehensive, well organised learning matter for you. If there were no Copernicus there would be no heliocentrism ergo if the world is at the centre of everything this would imply a Creator which in turn would bomb-out Darwin and his theory. Rubbish Jack. If Copernicus hadn't discovered the truth, someone else would have. After all it was just sitting there waiting to be discovered. As soon as the requisite knowledge, and from that -- technology -- became available, and a capable enquiring mind came along, the discovery was inevitable. There is no reason to equate the 'centre of everything' with a Creator. To do so is highly presumptuous. How can you possibly know what an entity capable of creating the universe regards as appropriate? Essentially the same thing applies to Darwin. (You have heard of Alfred Russel Wallace I suppose?) Given the data, others would also have made the same connections. BTW real birds were found in a strata millions of years before Archy. In a later post you suggested Try Googling 'Protoavis'. so I did. Short answer -- what I found was a single person claiming to have found a single fossil which he claims upsets current thinking because, he claims, it is a more advanced bird in much lower strata. It turns out that it was a single example, not complete, indeed only scattered bones and probably from more than one individual, mixed in with a tangle of bones speaking of one of those local catastrophe events. The conclusions reached seem not to have any support among paleontologists at large. Particularly his conclusions about more advanced characteristics are seriously doubted. re 'Footprints in the sand'. OK -- I certainly concluded that some articulated multi limbed organism had passed that way. But there is no other conclusion you can draw from the data you provided. Two legs? Four? Six? Big? Little? Close together? Far apart? Deep? Shallow? Does this prove that God exists and that He is responsible? No it doesn't. If it did we wouldn't be trading references would we? In Subject 'Grand Canyon' you posed a brace of questions. I'm not going to address them all in detail -- that tactic would have me running from pillar to post quoting rebuttals only to face another brace of similar questions. I have other things to do in life. Suffice it to say that none of the issues you raise are new to me -- I've seen them all before. I've researched them all and found that they are the usual creationist standard questions adequately answered on numerous sites. Here is one that's relevant - Can you find an explanation for 'polystrate' fossils? http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/polystrate/trees.html gives a lengthy explanation which concludes - Malone, along with many "young Earth global flood creationists", have no idea that even data from the 19th century, presented by a creationist geologist is enough to demolish the "polystrate fossil trees" part of their presentation. "Polystrate fossil trees" are probably one of the weakest pieces of evidence YEGF creationists can offer for their interpretation. I wish they would stop using it. Specifically concerning the Grand Canyon and Mt St Helen's volcano though. The Grand Canyon I've already addressed previously but briefly. Again -- the creationist YEC Flood Catastrophe explanation proposed that sediments over a mile deep were laid down, exposed, turned to stone and eroded to a depth of a mile in one year. (Coincidentally, the world's coal was also laid down as vegetation and 'coalified' in the same time frame). If you believe that, you'll believe anything. There are numerous refutations. From 'A History of the Collapse of "Flood Geology" and a Young Earth ' (which Neville has already trashed -- he must be a fast reader!) I've selected a small quote which bears upon this - Conclusion As we have seen, the idea of a universal deluge was the settled interpretation of the church for nearly seventeen centuries, but that changed as a body of compelling evidence undercutting that interpretation gradually accumulated. The cumulative pressure of general revelation can be ignored only so long. Christians must always be ready to reexamine even settled interpretations when a wealth of external data call these interpretations into question. God may be trying to tell us something! (Emphasis added). The volcano occurred in the recent past, during my life time, and at a time that I owned a TV receiver. I watch the news. I saw the event. I'm also aware of Krakatoa and vastly greater events in the geologic past. What are you implying? You are critical of my not addressing macro evolution. Your comments in this area suggest to me that your understanding of the mechanism is rather different from mine. Perhaps if you spell out what you mean I might be better able to address the matter. Paul D Sick of deleting your inbox? Yahoo!7 Mail has free unlimited storage. http://au.docs.yahoo.com/mail/unlimitedstorage.html