Mr. Duran is concerned that

"through history ... appeal to authority figures for answers to questions

without careful analysis of their assertions had lead [sic] to silly dogmas

passed down through generations of students." Yet he fears students

and teachers being able to question and carefully analyze the "dogmas"

of evolution.

If he really believed in "careful

analysis," he would want students to consider the vast multitude

of evidence that contradicts the "silly dogmas" of evolution.

Since he admits that he is "extremely ignorant about many things

and in fact [has] no idea how to remedy this personal lack of knowledge,"

why is he so dogmatic that creationism is a "waste [of] precious

mental effort" and a "discredited idea"?

Since he quoted from "authority

figures," is "this ... always a good clue that [his] arguments

aren't based on facts culled from nature itself"? Is this a double

standard? Apparently, he thinks that a person cannot even use a neutral

dictionary as a source! What will we be debating next? What the word "is"

really means?

Mr. Duran questioned the veracity

of the Bible by implying that fitting "all the animals" in Noah's

Ark was impossible. He erroneously thinks that "all the animals"

went into the Ark, but that is not what the Bible says.

In Genesis 6:19-20, the Bible

says that Noah was supposed to take two of every kind of bird, land animal,

and "every kind of creature that moves along the ground." It

is significant that "kind" is used several times. For example,

wolves, dingoes, coyotes, etc., are all part of the dog "kind,"

or canine family.

Noah needed to take one pair

of canines, not all of the species on earth today. Similarly, he did not

have to take lions, leopards, panthers, jaguars, and saber-toothed tigers;

he just had to take one pair of the feline "kind."

Calculations have been done

to show that there were only about 8,000 actual "kinds" of animals,

including extinct animals. So only about 16,000 animals needed to be on

the Ark. Animals would have occupied only about 13 percent of the Ark!

There would have been plenty of space left over for food, supplies, and

Noah and his family.

I'll demonstrate that it was

possible to fit many animals into Noah's Ark. Mr. Duran obviously does

not realize how huge the Ark really was 450 ft. long, 75 ft. wide, and

45 ft. high (4-plus stories).

Using "junior high school

mathematics," I calculate this to be almost 1.52 million cubic feet

a capacity of approximately 522 standard railroad stock cars! Each stock

car can hold about 240 sheep; so the Ark could have carried about 125,280

sheep-sized animals. Noah likely took younger (smaller) animals rather

than older (larger) ones. The average size of a land animal is less than

the size of a sheep; in fact, only 11 percent are larger than sheep.

Mr. Duran's contention that

"careful measurements can reveal nature's secrets, and measurements

are far more useful than personal opinions, no matter who or what the

source" should be more appropriately applied to the computation of

the capacity of the Ark. Are his "careful measurements" only

ones that agree with his personal bias?

(By the way, when I gave examples

of dating methods that give inaccurate dates for items of known age and

that do not agree with each other, he implied that my examples are just

"personal opinions" because, once again, they do not fit with

his evolutionary bias. Notice that Mr. Duran did not try to prove the

accuracy of dating methods. Actually, he tacitly agreed that some measurement

methods are invalid while he ludicrously accused me of "switch[ing]

the topic.")

People often wonder if there

was enough water to cause a global flood. The Bible says that God broke

open all the fountains of the deep, and that act would have released massive

amounts of underground water. Based on the destruction that massive flooding

can cause today, we can theorize that a catastrophe the size of a global

flood would have caused massive tectonic activity, earthquakes, volcanoes,

tidal waves, etc.

Today, the earth's surface

is 71 percent water; if the mountains and the ocean basins were leveled

out to make the earth's surface more even, then there would be enough

water to cover the whole earth to a depth of 1.7 miles.

There is evidence to suggest

that the mountains were not very high before the flood; so there would

have been plenty of water for a global flood to cover even the mountains.

Sea creature fossils have been found on top of many mountains, including

Mt. Everest; this is good evidence that water at some time covered even

the highest mountains.

Mr. Duran stated, "The

church ...relied on Aristotle's claims ...." This shows the danger

of church leaders mistakenly relying upon the opinion of fallible scientists

instead of what the Bible clearly states. Regretfully, parts of the church

today are making the same mistake by trusting fallible scientists and

their theories about evolution more than the infallible Word of God.

Evolution is just as much a

religious philosophy as Christianity because it attempts to explain where

we came from (slime), who we are (talking apes), where we are going (nowhere),

and how to live ("If it feels good, do it!" and "survival

of the fittest"). It even has a holy book, "The Origin of Species

the Struggle for Life."

Religion has always been in

our classrooms because where there are people there will be religious

philosophies, but today Christianity has been replaced with atheism and

evolution. Is it any wonder that students murder, rape, and steal when

they have been taught that they are nothing but glorified pond scum and

can act upon any instinct that they have?

Contrary to Mr. Duran's "personal

opinions," Christianity is not unreasonable or illogical. We have

answers for people who ask questions!

Jeremy Conley

Peachtree City