Re: QuestionEvolution.com News

grinder2112@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> A little more than two years ago, someone in talk.origins noticed a
> site, provocatively named, QuestionEvolution.com.
>
> http://questionevolution.com
>
> QuestionEvolution.com is a collection of arguments meant to throw a
> stick in the spokes of the Theory of Evolution. Within those pages is
> a challenge for rebuttal, and the torch was quickly taken up --
> answering all of the "questions" within a few days.
>
> http://www.geocities.com/chastity403/questionevolution/
>
> To the webmaster's credit, he actually linked to those collected
> rebuttals from his website, and promised to review the arguments. That
> review has yet to come, and now I notice that the rebuttal links have
> been removed. I guess it was too much to ask for a creationist to
> produce more than a transient display of integrity.
">
> I've asked David Han***, the creator of the site, what has become of
> those rebuttal links, but cannot force myself to be optimistic that I
> will receive a reply, much less a credible explanation.

Here's the Solar System page from the site, with my comments:
"The Solar System

Why does Venus rotate backward, while Uranus rotates at a 98 degree
angle to its vertical plane?
The evolutionist needs to come up with special cases to handle these
two solar system misfits."

Why are special cases a problem? The solar system was, IIUIC, a pretty
exciting place in the early days. Many collisions, many bodies getting
settled into orbits. A choatic situation, in every sense.

"Why do 11 (almost 1/3) of the moons of various planets rotate
backward?
According to current views of the solar system origin, all should
rotate in the same direction and in the same plane. These backward
moons are difficult (though not impossible) to explain."

Why do they have to go in any particular direction? Asteroids and such
were and still are bouncing all over the place. Everytime I read about
another Cassini flyby I see the astronomers talking about how this moon
or that has its orbit influenced by the others.

"Why do many of those moons have inclined orbits?
The orbits of the satellites should be coplanar with the revolution of
the host."


Same reason. Asteroid A flies close to Asteroid B, which gets flung off
into space. After several thousand eccentric orbits around the sun, it
gets captured by Saturn, and there's another moon. I'm surprised that
so many of them are aligned with the plane of the solar system,
actually. I guess that shows that most of the stuff started orbiting in
the plane. Doesn't mean they stay there, though.


"Why aren't most of the planets composed of hydrogen and helium like
the sun?
Earth is composed mainly of heavy elements, while the sun has only 1%
of its composition that is not hydrogen or helium. Interstellar gas is
not composed of heavy elements, but is mainly hydrogen and helium also.
What stopped solar system gasses from falling into the sun?"

I suspect the Earth and the Sun started of pretty much the same, if it
makes sense to even speak of the Earth before it was a solid planet.
Most of the lighter stuff moved into the sun.

Let's see:
http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PLANETS/Geochem.htm
Yup.

"The sun makes up 99 and 6/7% of the solar system's mass. The 1/7 of 1%
of the remaining solar system's mass should have followed the rest into
the sun.
Why didn't that gas simply dissipate?"

No, some of the heavier stuff was already clumping together. Most of
the lighter stuff - especially the inner planets - did get drawn into
the sun. Which answers the previous "problem".

Dang. The web master is a college student? I hope to Hell he's a
business major.


"For gravitational attractions to be significant, the particles would
have to have been as large as small moons."

Um, why? If they attracting each other, and close, why would they have
to be "as large as small moons"? Small, close particles would be drawn
in as readily a larger, more distant particles. IT looks like
everything eventually fell together into clumps, settled into orbits,
or drifted off to Alpha Centauri or wherever runaway particles go.



"Where did the moon come from?

A July 28th,1997 article in USA Today indicated that perhaps a planet
about three times the mass of Mars could have crashed into the early
Earth and popped enough material into orbit to form the moon. They do
point out that this would have significantly increased the spin of the
Earth in a way that cannot be observed today, but something must have
made the Earth slow back down - perhaps another large object hitting
the Earth from the opposite direction. There has still never been an
adequate theory proposed to explain the moon's origin."

I typed that question into Google, and the first hit was a NASA web
site covering this issue. The situation is as yet hypothetical. but
something like the above seems to have mainstream support.

I'd want to see the math to explain why this guy see the Earth's
rotation as a problem. I won't hold my breath.


"How could the earth have had liquid water millions of years ago when
the sun was weaker?
(See July 1999 Astronomy Magazine for a discussion of this paradox)."

How "weak" was it? Who thinks so?

"Earth's spin is slowing at the rate of almost 1 sec/year. How fast was
it spinning 1 billion years ago?"

It is not slowing down that fast. The Earth's day was about 14 hours
4.5 billion years ago.


"Why are there any small (less than 100,000th of a cm.) particles left
in the solar system?
Solar wind, acting for billions of years, should have pushed out all of
these particles by now."

Why? Wouldn't the wind get slower and thinner the farther from the sun
it gets? I imagine that there's a point at which a balance is reached.
Surely particles are falling toward the sun all the time anyway; I
would guess that we are at some stable rate: [wind blowing them out] +
[new particles being generated] + [particles falling in from beyond the
limits of the wind's push] = current density of space dust.

"Where is all of the meteoritic dust on the earth?
Assuming only present accumulation (which should have been much greater
during early years of the universe) there should be a 182 foot thick
layer after 5 billion years. This dust is extremely high in nickel
content. There is no great significant amount of nickel in either sea
or land."

In my garden. Sheesh. It's only a few centimeters thick on the moon;
why would it be especially noticeable on Earth, mixed by wind and rain
with the results of natural erosion here?

"How big was the sun 1 billion years ago?
The sun looses 4 million tons of mass through fusion per second, and is
shrinking by about 1% each century (5 feet per hour). This shrinking is
responsible for a large amount of the energy that the sun gives off."

Stuff and nonsense. It's not shrinking, except negligible fission
reation mass loss. It was about as big as it is now. No creationist
would notice the difference. Let's look it up:
http://solar-center.stanford.edu/FAQ/Qshrink.html
Yup.

"Where do short period comets come from?
A short period comet would completely "boil off" after about 15,000
years. There is no known way for a comet to come into existence. They
have been thought to have been around since the start of the universe.
The Oort cloud was devised to try to explain this but, once again, it
is a case of trying to make the observed facts fit the preconceived
notions."

Who would God have to "explain" this? The Oort cloud is there; many
recent discoveries have been in the news in recent years. Comets jostle
each other; the solar system is *still an unstable place. A comet gets
moved into another orbit, and gets slingshot toward the sun. Voila! A
short period coment. What is so freaking confusing about this? I
wouldn't care if people simply didn't know or care about these things,
but they talk as though scientsts never thought of these questions.

And, or course, he is using "evolutionist" to mean apparently any
scientist.

Kermit

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