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*3.+4. You really need agriculture to have civilization, as it support larger population with fewer people, so those left over can do useful things like live in cities, rule over others, etc. Some have suggested that writing was started for tax purposes (the ruler wants all he can get). The modern reader has to appreciate the fact that even conceiving of writing is a huge step in culture: the Incas didn't have it (and they were around for thousands of years). For agriculture, one could draw the analogy with moveable type for the printing press; it seems obvious now, but it took a while to come up with. While ancient man had all of the intelligence, it had none of the advances in technology and learning (all of the hardware, none of the software).
*3.+4. You really need agriculture to have civilization, as it support larger population with fewer people, so those left over can do useful things like live in cities, rule over others, etc. Some have suggested that writing was started for tax purposes (the ruler wants all he can get). The modern reader has to appreciate the fact that even conceiving of writing is a huge step in culture: the Incas didn't have it (and they were around for thousands of years). For agriculture, one could draw the analogy with moveable type for the printing press; it seems obvious now, but it took a while to come up with. While ancient man had all of the intelligence, it had none of the advances in technology and learning (all of the hardware, none of the software).
*5. The human population is another one that is a bit odd. The increase in human population is accelerating: more people equal an even greater generation after (in developing countries anyway), and the massive increase in agricultural production in the 19th and 20th centuries didn't hurt.
*5. The human population is another one that is a bit odd. The increase in human population is accelerating: more people equal an even greater generation after (in developing countries anyway), and the massive increase in agricultural production in the 19th and 20th centuries didn't hurt.
*6.
*6. This can be easily explained. Fossilization is a rare event; it takes the right conditions (dying during a volcanic eruption, during a flood or near a silty river) and it has to be buried quickly. There are so many fossils of dinosaurs because they were around for hundreds of millions of years, our earliest ancestors only about 3 million.
*7. I don't quite understand this one. While individual comets don't last that long, there are a lot of them (some astronomers estimate up to 1 trillion).
*8. Helium is a light gas, light enough to escape the earth's gravity through its own energy (or be blown off by the solar wind).
*9. Some scientists have suggested that the earth's magnetic field is going to flip (north becomes south, and vice versa). Geologists have found evidence of this in the rocks in Hawaii (iron rocks, when cooling, preserve a record of the earth's field strength and direction).
*10. This is a silly one. Creationists, when making certain claims, forget the other side of the equation. In this case, the plates constantly move, some going into the mantle, and some rise up (and give us the Himalayas, the Tibetan Plateau, and the Rocky Mountains, among others).
==Science==
==Science==