The Kent Hovind blog, run by his son, Eric (I think), has a list of ten questions that I put in my hand at trying to answer. So far my comment hasn't posted, it may be too long, or just still awaiting moderation, or it may never show up. So, in that vein, I'm posting it here. Just follow the jump!
10 Questions to Ask Evolutionists:
1. Where did the space for the universe come from?
Non sequitur. The Theory of Evolution and the creation of matter are separate lines of research. You might as well ask the milkman how many grains of sand are buried under the ice of Antarctica. Ask a big-bang-onist.
2. Where did matter come from?
Non sequitur. The Theory of Evolution and the creation of matter are separate lines of research. You might as well ask the banker how the weather on the moon Titan is today. Ask a big-bang-onist.
3. Where did the laws of the universe come from (gravity, inertia, etc.)?
Non sequitur. The Theory of Evolution and the creation of matter are separate lines of research. You might as well ask the Nascar racer how the endocrine system works. Ask a big-bang-onist.
4. How did matter get so perfectly organized?
Non sequitur. The Theory of Evolution and the creation of matter are separate lines of research. You might as well ask the infant in ICU how to make French Toast. Ask a big-bang-onist.
5. Where did the energy come from to do all the organizing?
Non sequitur. The Theory of Evolution and the creation of matter are separate lines of research. You might as well ask the stuffed toy puppy on my daughters bed why 6:00 AM comes so early. Ask a big-bang-onist.
6. When, where, why, and how did life come from non-living matter?
Almost not a non sequitur ... but the theory of evolution doesn't concern itself with the first life form, but with descent with modification. You might ask an A-biogenesis-onist.
7. When, where, why, and how did life learn to reproduce itself?
Almost not a non sequitur ... but the theory of evolution doesn't concern itself with the first life form, but with descent with modification. You might ask an A-biogenesis-onist.
8. With what did the first cell capable of sexual reproduction reproduce?
First understand that sexual reproduction and asexual reproduction are not mutually exclusive, and then note that asexual reproduction of an organism capable of sexual reproduction will create more organisms also so capable so that at any point after that, it is not problematic. It takes little imagination to understand something so simple.
9. Why would any plant or animal want to reproduce more of its kind since this would only make more mouths to feed and decrease the chances of survival? (Does the individual have a drive to survive, or the species? How do you explain the origin of reproduction?)
Perhaps it wasn't a driving force a few billion years ago and most organisms just split when the time was appropriate for them to reproduce. These creatures, plants and things had no nervous systems to "want" to do anything. You're anthropomorphizing too much. They performed whatever functions were necessary, at any given moment, in response to the appropriate external or internal stimuli. Over time, those species that were more prone to reproduce probably (though it's no sure thing) gain larger populations than those that were not - one measure of success. When the first cute couples of organisms were reproducing sexually the same dynamic would exist. Organisms more likely to reproduce more often will likely have the larger populations. Because of competition for resources, the populations that are larger will have more surviving offspring. With time, the creatures with the strongest drive to procreate dominate.
Now, after all the eons, life forms reproduce with great fecundity, often whether they “want to” or not.
The only way around making babies and still existing now is to live forever. Seems like reproduction has the edge over immortality on that.
10. How can mutations (recombining of the genetic code) create any new, improved varieties? (Recombining English letters will never produce Chinese books.)
The interesting thing about your analogy is that by recombining letters, even though all in English, I can create stories for children, stories about wizards, stories about scientists, stories about cowboys, stories about news paper editors, stories about silly high school teachers, stories about, well anything you can imagine. Also, they don't all have to be stories, they can be poems, songs, novels, novellas, documentaries, encyclopedias, scriptures, instructions, technical manuals, and any category of literature.
So, with the same few letters, we can have Shakespeare and Chaucer, Saint Paul and Richard Dawkins, and any style of document you can think of, and many more you can't.
Also, DNA isn't really an alphabet, although that is a popular analogy. It's a framework, and instruction set, and machine, and a machine reader, and a slew of other things as well. DNA is like a book that can read and write itself, repair itself, construct other books, consume and liberate energy, and build its own library in the same process.
Of your ten questions, seven are not proper questions for an evolutionist, and the remaining three are fairly simple.
Now, as for the first seven:
1. There likely has always been something. Of course, the problem with the word always is that it implies some sort of measure of time. Before (another word implying time) the instant that we call the big bang (perhaps it's really the big oomph) there would be no such thing as time as we know it. We also don't know what was, what existed, the instant the big bang began. It isn't a problem to admit we don't know something. It also isn't a problem to admit we might never know that something. That doesn't stop us from speculating and trying to find out. Scientists that study cosmology have a pretty good idea what the Universe was like only moments after the first instant. But you'll have to ask a cosmologist for a more detailed description and answer for number 1.
2. Same answer, essentially, as for number 1. Ask a cosmologist for the details, but likely there has always been a something that once the Universe got rolling eventually became matter.
3. This is a question of much debate, as far as I know. We might never know. But ask a cosmologist - they are the ones that study this question.
4. I would not call matter perfectly organized! You will have to state your question differently, I think. Ask a cosmologist, perhaps they'll understand what you mean and won't laugh at you for asking.
5. Perhaps you missed the bit about the early Universe being many millions of degrees - that's a tremendous amount of energy. It's still there now, too. There just isn’t nearly as much heat in any one spot.
6. I don't know. And that doesn't bother me. What I am sure of is that what we consider life now and what would have been successful when nothing else lived must be vastly different. There are a great many models proposed, but no one really knows when or where the first life happened. Likely, it had to happen for the "first" time many times before a successful unbroken chain that leads to us began.
7. Same answer, basically, as for number six. No one knows, no one can sit down and say "November 11th, 3,490,021,005 BCE the first life form sprang forth." What we do know is it must have because here we are. Those of us that can rightfully be considered evolutionists don't worry about this question specifically, we worry about how descent with modification works. We let the folks that study abiogenesis worry about that first day of life.
That wasn't so hard.
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