Hi Jeanie

The critter you’re talking about is the Large Hadron Collider or LHC. I’m really looking forward to seeing what they learn from it. Pity that it broke down and will take some months to fix. It can recreate the conditions of the universe just a tiny fraction of a second after the big bang to study how the universe formed. They’re, among other things, trying to push back our understanding of the big bang closer to the initiating event of this universe.

It’s a fairly common view that god used the big bang to create the universe, there’s no evidence for it but equally no evidence against it as, even in theory, we can’t glean information before the time of the big bang so we can’t ever know what happened then at least not without new theories that go beyond those we have today.

The seven day creation idea does indeed contradict all the physical evidence from a huge range of scientific fields so I have to agree with her on that.

She’s wrong about Darwin however, Origins is about how species formed and split of from older species and how all of those species share one or a few common ancestors that began life on this planet. By any reasonable definition that is macro evolution.

Quote
It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

The final paragraph of “The Origin of Species” - Chapter 14: Recapitulation and Conclusion - by Charles Darwin

Darwin clearly believed in Macro Evolution though that was not the term he used to describe it.

Her biggest complaint was those Christians who actually try to refute evolution, though, by writing books when they don't truly understand the science behind it : )

LOL yes that is very common, just read any of the creationist websites. Not that I wish to tar them all with the same brush but all of those I’ve seen suffer from this problem. It is very hard to find anyone who actually understands evolution in any depth and does not accept it so the creationists have a problem in that regard.

I like science nerds, they're great people generally if you can get through their shells and find out what really interests them.

All the best

Russell