I was talking about rocks created during Creation week. I don't think anyone is suggesting God created rocks, during Creation week, with fossils in them.

I believe the evidence suggests that rocks were being formed with fossils in them before humans were dying. According to the Bible, that would give about 1,000 years of rock formation from the time of the Fall to the time humans started dying off in any significant number.

So you are suggesting sedimentary, fossil bearing rocks exist dating from the time before the Flood?

Well, why don't we find human fossils mixed in with dinosaur fossils?

They have.

A telling part of the testimony at Geoscience Research Institute:

1. Have scientists created life?

No. Scientists can produce some of the simpler chemicals of living cells, but they cannot combine them to produce a living cell. We do not possess the technology to do this, and probably never will. Scientists cannot even bring life back to a dead cell, even though the needed systems and chemicals are still present.

2. Could life begin by chance in a "primordial soup"?

No. Life depends on too many non-equilibrium chemical reactions. Proteins and nucleic acids are not produced in the absence of life. Life is based on chemical disequilibrium, but chemical reactions in nature spontaneously run to equilibrium. Further, there is no geological evidence that there ever was a "primordial soup."

What does it mean for a cell to be 'dead'? A cell is more a society than an entity. They fail in many ways - for instance, their pH balance can be far enough out of line for them to stop functioning, their membrane can rupture, they can lack O2, they can lack glucose, they can be too cold, they can be too hot, ...

Each of these can stop the cell from functioning - and (except for the rupture) they are all things that I fix in the back of my ambulance on a regular basis - arguably restoring the cell to life.

What do they mean 'chemical disequilibrium'? All reactions run to equilibrium in time. Cells are certainly in a complex equilibrium - although, of course, some of the reactions are slow enough not get to equilbrium before the environment changes.

Google yourself for the evidence for the soup.

Also Google for possible pathways to proteins and nucleic acids

/Bevin

Just an observation: part of the problem we have in this thread is a number of interweaving strands:

1. Fossils, age of the earth and the flood
2. Cells and the non-life/life 'gap'
3. Others?

Perhaps that stems from John's original questions... and maybe it's just me that's having trouble keeping it all straight in my head! I also hesitate to suggest the proliferation of threads... but maybe a 'non-life to life' thread would clarify things a bit.

The other possability is that sinless man lived in the Garden of Eden much longer that Genesis makes it seem. Although that would seem to contradict the Spirit of Prophecy. While that might explain the age of the rocks - we would still be left with the fossil delima.

David K - do you have a cite or link for dinosaur and human fossils being found together? They may well have been but I haven't heard about it, so I'd be interested to know.

But I don't think we have a good explanation for how the human eye evolved today any more than we had in Darwin's time. The eye actually appears far more complex, not less so.

The following is from an article found at: http://www.y-origins.com/article4.htm

...We began this article by mentioning the objection of the human eye as it was raised and addressed by Darwin. For most people coming to grips with the implications of materialistic evolution, complex structures like the human eye are not simply a hard pill to swallow but rather a chicken bone stuck in the throat. Intuitively, we struggle to imagine how such a structure could slowly develop over time and what use a half-developed eye would serve.

A careful reading of Darwin’s explanation in “Organs of Extreme Perfection and Complication” reveals that he never answers the problem. In fact, regarding how the eye got started, Darwin stated,

“How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated.”15

Did Darwin really believe the eye evolved bit by bit over time? Although his theory attempts to explain how it could have happened, many believe Darwin himself was unconvinced. Years after he had written his world-changing theory Darwin admitted to a friend, “The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder.”

(This last quote is taken from a letter to Asa Gray.)