Well, if you actually read my post, you would realize that I provided ways evolution could be falsified.

As for your paper, yeah, it's non-scientific. It begins with a lit review, which you do in any high-level humanities course in college, such as english or history (no one in these fields would call them "scientific"). Then, it launches into a bunch of educated guesses and assumptions, with values attached to them. It actually reads like a climate computer model. You know, the ones that predict that a 1 degree rise in temperature will cause the oceans to boil off in a run-away greenhouse effect. I suppose you'll point to the fact that it was peer reviewed somewhere. Big deal. History and literature articles also undergo peer review.

That's not to say that the paper could not be rewritten to be scientifc. Instead of taking its arbitrarily assigned values as givens, it could actually try to propose ways for nailing down the actual data. It doesn't though, and as we are actually begining to find out how common planets are in the universe, and getting a good idea of their compesition, those "generous" probabilities are looking pretty pessimistic in comparison to actual data. Plus, some of these criteria are just rediculous (e.g. age of the planet? At some point in their life span, a planet will be neither too young nor too old: it's impossible to skip middle age). Of course, that the probabilities for life may turn out to be much better won't affect his conclusions at all. He can simply state that it's so remarkable that physical laws allow life to be so common that it must be proof of design. After all, that's what he began his article by stating before talking about how improbable Earth's existence was.

And no, testable is not synonomous with falsifiable. Tests can be constructed that can only bolster a theory's credibility without risking invalidating the underpinnings.

I would beg to differ with your concept of faith.  Faith is what you work with after the evidence and reason is expended.  Blind faith works without evidence and is foolishness.

On top of the Empire State building, stack; one
12-inch ruler (on end), on that, place a dime, on that dime, place a
postage stamp (flat).

Start from ground level.

The Empire State building is the duration of the Earth's existence before animals.

The Ruler marks the beginning of animals,

the dime is the beginning of the existence of hominids, and

the postage stamp thickness is the length of time that man has been recognizable as... man.

While these are demonstrable durations with good, scientific
support, no one I know of is actually going around spouting that they
know exactly how all this came to be...

Personally, I find it impossible to believe it's a coincidence,
happenstance, or whatever.

I agree that is part of it, but the reason that my little part of the world is so intent on debunking ID is not because I want people to turn away from Christ (Before undertaking such a task I would stop going to Church regularly), but because ID tries to pass itself off as science, and in doing so creates serious confusion as to what science is. If you want to teach that the reason we're all here is because God created us, fine, teach that, but do it in religion class (if you're a private school) or a philosophy class (where it can be taught right along side other competing views). Keep it out of biology classes because it is not at all related to biology.

Forgive me, but I find it hard to believe all living creatures suddenly went from immortal to mortal thanks to the first human screw-up. Don't forget that not everything in the Bible is to be taken literally, and the record of creation is not likely to have been made by a first-hand source. Even accepting that God directly told the recorder of the events, is it even remotely possible that a human could understand those events as they truly happened? Whatever else, never forget that the Bible is transcribed by humans, and is thus susceptible to human limitations. The message may be perfect, but its recorder may not.

www.rhjunior.com/CC/ Great comics with a hefty dose of Christian and anti-nutjob goodness.

"With your mind as high as Mt. Fuji you can see all things clearly. And you can see all the forces that shape events; not just the things near to you." -Miyamoto Musashi

1) Why did some forms not evolve (mosquitos, turtles, etc).

Evolution is driven by environmental pressures. If there is no need to evolve, then a species will stay unchanged for thousands of years. Sharks are a good example of this.

2) Why are there NO transitional forms in the fossil record.

Well, the fossil record isn't something found in a library. Not every creature that dies becomes a fossil, so it's a painstakingly difficult task to find them. Vast teams have to spend years digging through the earth in remote places in hopes of finding just one. Still, even with the small amount we have, we still have some transitional forms:

http://evolution.ber...

3) Why are there NO transitional forms in the biological record.
Evolution should be like a constantly moving escalator, with thousands
of transitional forms, constantly changing, constantly evolving. Where
are all the transitional forms that bridge the gap between apes and
man?

Again, you're assuming that evolution is a constant change, which is not the case. In fact, a few study has recently opened up called epigenetics, which is quite intriging. Its based on the discovery of a superset of molecules which controll if a gene is turned on or off. These molecules are influenced by enviornmental factors such as what we eat, drink, put on our skin, inhale, etc. Nova did a great series on this (http://www.pbs.org/w...) and it's believed this is the first step in environemental pressures on gene structure.

4) Why would an organism defy logic and significantly decrease it's
chance of continued existence by taking on two distinct sexual
identities. Tell me, how did we become male and female? Did an organism
accidentally evolve into a male and he had to wait around a million or
so years for another organism to accidently become female, so they
could get together and propogate their new species?

A very good question. The answer is genetic diversity. If we had only one sex and we reproduced by copying ourselfs, we would be highly vunerable to diseases and infections that could destroy our entire race. Think about how some people get sick while others don't. They may have an ability to resist infection that their fellows don't. There are still asexual entites on the planet (see bacteria, mushrooms), but the most sucessful have been sexual creatures, which far outnumber the asexual branch. As far as how the sexes became viable, I believe that is an unaswered question, but if we look a certain species of fish a frogs, they have the ability to change sex during their lifetime depending on the ratio of males to females. So it seems that our common genetic ansestry doesn't see sexual differentiation as that big of a challenge :).

5) How did life begin in order to start evolving?

Ahh, now THAT is the biggest question there is. And, indeed, it is that question that keep scientists in the labs and out in the field, working tirelessly to find just a piece of the answer to that question. Evetually, we may know, but if science has one constant, is that when we answer one question, it raises ten more! It's the nature of curiosity and the joy of discovery that keep scientists going. And a question like that is too intriguing to just accept that God did it.

Remember, just because a theory can't answer every question doesn't mean it's wrong. Scietific theories are constantly changing (evoloving, if you will) with new discoveries. There are no absolute truths in science, only better and better ideas, vetted through scrutiny, testing and time.

It takes a lot of faith to believe that a fish became a bird if you have no evidence that such a process could occur. It also takes an awful lot of imagination and thinking outside the box. Commanding or molding something into being, however, well, that takes a lot less mental power to envision. After all, humans have been doing that for thousands of years: potters mold clay to make pots, and Pharoes command people to build pyramids. But who the heck would build something by only establishing some really basic rules that don't seem to speak towards the end product? That's something you don't get humans doing until, well, the past few decades thanks to computers, and then only in imitation of evolutionary theory. As I tend to think God is at least slightly smarter than human beings, I don't see the need to limit Him to using only those means which we can come up with on our own.

And sure, matter had to be created somewhere. That, of course, has nothing to do with ID, which doesn't deal with where the matter came from, but how the matter took the form of a person.

Noooo, it's science if you can test it, prove it and review it.