Now there's a sentiment that not only I can agree with, but that has related examples that we can all see.

Think of the retarded V:tM larpers that go around trying to "scare" people by telling them "I'm really a vampire, and I drink blood, you should play my game", and what kind of impression that creates in the layperson as to what "role playing games" mean. (Note: nothing against general players of V:tM, or even larpers, but I know that the sane ones of you out there hate these jackasses too. )

/mypartinthishijack

Thanks for responding, craigpierce, and for doing so with some dignity. I hope nobody minds if I respond with some information that I hope is fairly on-topic.

Now naturally I don't know what flavour of creationism you support, and I may be putting words in your mouth, but it seems to me that you probably dispute two main things: that the Earth is billions of years old, and that all the species arose from a single common ancestor, via the process of evolution.

You suggest in a) that there isn't enough evidence to answer any 'big' questions like this, and in b) that the evidence has been misinterpreted, while later in your post you say that you are hoping to gather enough information to make up your own mind. Fair enough. I'd encourage you to read around the subject and conduct whatever studies you can for yourself. I have, and it's been very rewarding.

Firstly, find out about radiometric dating. There are tonnes of different techniques out there, their validity has been tried and tested, and I think it's fair to say that it's pretty obvious scientists understand the physics of nuclear decay, since if they did not we would not have nuclear power stations and nuclear bombs (yay us). It's remarkable how much these different methods agree when it comes to the age of the Earth and the geological strata, and how different studies of different geological strata in different parts of the world mesh together to produce a coherent picture of the Earth's history. Also you might want to study various theoretical models of the internal workings of the sun, the Earth, planet formation etc. Yes, they're just models, but the point is that they all explain the observable facts, and no 'young Earth' model seems to do that.

Secondly, I've heard many creationists like Kent Hovind mock how humans could possibly be related to plants when we're so obviously different. However I encourage you to look at cells from both under a microscope, because at this scale they are much more obviously related. I'm sure you'll also enjoy finding out about various less well known organisms out there that are neither animal nor plant but a little of both.

You can go a little further than the microscope, and study the molecules within cells (I do this for a living now), like DNA or proteins. It rapidly becomes very clear that animals and plants share many very similar proteins. What's really cool (and you can do this for yourself) is that you can take the sequence of a particular protein (a human protein, say) and search a very large database (such as NCBI, which anybody can use) for related molecules. Not only do you get a large number of hits across different organisms, but you can see for yourself (and I recommend testing this out on a large range of different proteins, since the data set is incomplete and different proteins evolve more rapidly than others because they are less important) that the most similar non-human sequences will be from organisms like chimpanzees and other primates, then other mammals, then reptiles, then amphibians, and so on. In other words, this totally supports the single common ancestor idea, and the tree of life as it has been estimated by older methods, such as the morphology of living and fossil species. It's very cool. The agreement isn't total, of course, and molecular studies have led to some fairly major revisions in the tips of some branches on the tree of life. That's fine, but that's just the details. The 'big picture' remains very much intact.

I'd also point you in the direction of various computer simulations ('A-life') because, again coming from a very different direction, these are quite effective at showing that evolution can do what it is said to do, and that some pretty surprising, complex and wonderful forms and behaviours can emerge, unbidden, from a fairly simple set of rules (read about Thomas Ray's 'Tierra', for example).

Without going on and on, the point is that there is absolutely tonnes of evidence out there, of very different types and origins. Of the evidence that scientists are unable to find fault with (scientists are pretty savage about finding faults with evidence, because that's how the whole discipline works), all of it says that the Earth is ancient and that living things descend from a microbial ancestor.

You're quite right to want to sift through the evidence yourself, and I hope you do. If you're anything like me you'll really get a kick out of the journey, so good luck and enjoy the view. I was a christian until my early 20s, as it happens, but I experienced way more heart-pumping eye-opening 'cosmic' revelations on this journey than I ever did in church.

Getting more firmly back on topic: I'd argue it is only 'human hubris' that assumes that intelligent life would share our own particular motives or technological drive.

In fact I'd argue that the pursuit of technology to leave Earth and the desire to contact ET aren't even all that widespread amongst humans- there's actually only a tiny number of people out there who are actually doing anything about it.