I've had a look, and here are some unanswered questions. If I could have Nick answer any one of these, it would be D4. F6 as my second pick. Does anyone else have any preferences?
A : THEOLOGY
(1) Can you point out where in the Qur'aan "it teaches that all non-believers should be killed"?
(2) "Scripture simply says that the moon, the sun, and the stars were placed in the firmament of the heaven, below and above which heaven are the waters." (Martin Luther). Do you agree?
(3) Do you acknowledge that the Bible was several times assembled --- and edited --- by fallible men?
(4) Why do you think that the people with knowledge of science and nature, of whatever religious faith, so overwhelmingly endorse evolution, and why are the YECs so pitifully ignorant of science and nature --- and so unconcerned with accuracy --- that their tracts are riddled with ridiculous falsehoods?
B : SCIENCE VERSUS PSEUDOSCIENCE
(1) Would you be so kind as to inform us of any practical use or any predictions that your so-called "science" can make?
(2) Can you point out any flaws in real science?
C : BETWEEN THE FALL AND THE FLOOD
(1) How did parasites, many of which cause life-threatening diseases exist while only Adam and Eve were on Earth [after the Fall]? Did they have all those parasites?
(2) Can you explain where Stone Age man fits into the Bible story? (NB: you may want to look at Genesis and see how many generations the Bible gives before the invention of bronze and ironworking.) Or is the Stone Age post-flood? Did descendants of Noah chose to turn their back on his knowledge and start from scratch? They discarded the tools and knowledge used to build the largest floating vssel in history and voluntarily went back to hunting with jaw bones and rocks?
(3) Do you know of any mechanism that would allow such a canopy [as described in Genesis] to exist? Do you have an idea of what records such a canopy would have left? Do you know if "life as we know, it Jim" would be possible under the conditions implied by such canopy? Do you know of any planetary model with such a feature? Do you know the qualifications of those who created such a model?
D : LIFE ON THE ARK AND THE SPECIES QUESTION
(1) Many fish species are quite delicate when it comes to water Ph, salinity, temperature and oxygen levels. How they survived the deluge? Did Noah have tanks in the Ark? (He would need tanks for fresh water and saltwater fish, since the deluge waters must have completely messed up the subaquatic environment.)
(2) How did Noah manage to maintain the environment on the arc for those creatures that live in low-pressure sub-zero environments and those that live in high-pressure high-temperature environments?
(3) Every modern disease of animals must have come on the Ark, including of course diseases that affect humans. The Ark must therefore have been loaded with bubonic plague, cholera, polio, typhus, typhoid, sleeping sickness, leprosy, syphillis, smallpox, measles, malaria... How did Noah and his family survive?
(4) How many different SPECIES did Noah take onto the Ark?
(5) You make a distinction between species and kind. Do you regard all ants as being of the same "kind"?
(6) Speciation has been observed in birds within a human generation, and ... mammals, insects, plants, and of course, bacteria. If you accept these facts, do you then also embrace the concept that all species were not created at once?
E : GEOLOGY AND THE FLOOD
(1) We have not recognized a worldwide flood deposit (in contrast to the recognized Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary). Where in the geologic column should we expect to find it (i.e., how old would it be)? If it would be 6,000 to 10,000 years old, there certainly should be evidence; heck, we have evidence of all sorts of regional depositional events that occurred during this time frame.
(2) How do YECs explain that layers supposedly deposited during the deluge can be tilted, faulted, folded, buried underneath kilometres of rock (including massive volcanics) or uplifited miles high?
(3) Since YECs claim that sedimentary rocks were formed by sediments deposited during the deluge, diagenesis and lithification must be quite fast, after a couple of thousand tears. Why don´t we see sediments say, deposited by the time of the pharaos, that became rock? Why does loose mud deposited at the bottom of a water body not become rock almost instantly?
(4) Are we to believe that there were igneous intrusions during the Deluge, forming nice tablular dikes in the sediment that was being swirled around, or that stratal deformations characteristic of consolidated rocks formed while the sediments were still being deposited?
(5) How do YECs explain metasedimentary rocks?
(6) Where are the all the tuff, ignimbrite, lava and lahar layers associated with the eruptions that caused or helped to cause the deluge [according to the hypothetical "steam from eruptions" mechanism for the Flood]? (Note that all of them must have the same age!)
(7) Why should "billions of dead things buried" be evidence of a global flood? Is this normally what we see after a flood? Why do you find it "unlikely" that we would have as many fossils as we do "if it wasn't for a ww flood"? Do you know how many fossils there are? If not, why do you find this number unlikely?
(8) (With regard to polystrate fossils) : Why should we take fossil evidence that there have been mudslides in the past for evidence that there has been a global flood?
(9) If fossilised creatures were all killed in a global flood, why are 90% of all fossils marine life? Wouldn't land animals be worse affected?
(10) Why are human remains never found in the same strata as dinosaur fossils?
(11) Can you explain the unique fossils of Antarctica in terms of YEC geology?
(12) Given that your claim that "the mountains raised up after the flood" is invalidated by Genesis 7, would you like another go at explaining where all the water went to?
F : AFTER THE FLOOD --- DISPERSION AND BIOGEOGRAPHY
(1) How did the plants survive the Flood / their seeds survive to germinate?
(2) After disembarking from the Ark how did the plant-eaters survive until the plants had grown out again, and how did the predators survive until the prey had multiplied?
(3) "Conservation biologists now calculate as a rough rule of thumb that unless a wild population contains around five hundred individuals, it is liable to go extinct, sooner or later. Yet even five hundred is only enough to allow the population to tick over... five hundred, then, is a very conservative figure." How does this square with the story of the Ark?
(4) If only two of each unclean land mammal was taken into the Ark, but there were eight humans, of which at least six formed breeding pairs, then we ought to find higher genetic diversity in humans than in unclean beasts, and we should also expect the most genetically diverse mammals to be whales, which would not have undergone the same (impossible) population bottleneck. But this is not what we find when we study genetics. Why do you think this is?
(5) The Great Pyramid shows no evidence at all of ever having been submerged. Therefore, it must be of post-Flood construction. But it is so old that it must have been constructed within a few hundred years, at most, of the Flood. How was that pyramid built by so few people?
(6) You explain the distribution of the world's fauna, and that of Australia in particular, by ascribing them to human pastoralists. Australia is home to dozens of unique species of venomous snake. Can you explain how and why anyone would herd these creatures to Australia from Turkey (without, you notice, losing any on the way --- Australian snakes are unique to Australia) and why they didn't, instead, take any domesticated meat animals such as sheep, goats, or cattle? Which humans would be dumb enough to carry polar bears to the Arctic? Tigers to Sumatra? Komodo dragons to Komodo? Crocodiles to Florida? Army ants to Brazil?
