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Andy, I too disagree with the analogy you drew between Brad's comments and the Laws of Thermodynamics. And as far as your question goes: ''"why are you so opposed to the possibility of intelligence declining, and the existence of a young earth?"'' -- I don't think anyone in this conversation is suggesting that they do not support a young Eart, we just don't support this argument for young Earth. This issue is not as black and white as you seem to see it: removal of this counterpoint does not inherently advantage the arguments for an old Earth. If I said that an alien came to me and told me that the Earth is billions of years old, or that it is 6000 years old, you and no other logically minded person would agree that this was proof for one theory vs another. And you shouldn't, it's a ludicrous argument, and just because you support the theory that this so-called proof supports, it doesn't mean you have to support this "proof" as well. As an earlier contributor posted, using the same logic about declining human intelligence to extrapolate the age of the Earth, one could use increasing human height to argue that the Earth is far younger than 6000 years (the contributor suggested it would be closer to 3000 years and that means everyone during Jesus's time would be under 2 feet tall, which is not true). You have yet to provide any extrapolation based on hard numbers, only supplying us with anecdotes like civil war letters and the federalist papers as examples of declining intelligence. Even if these examples were valid (and that is doubtful), it would suggest a very steep slope for the decline of intelligence over the past 200 or so years, thus people 1000 years ago should all be genius is the slope is consistent according to your argument. And the slope does need to be consistent or abide by a known nonlinear function in order to perform the extrapolation you have suggested; this is basic mathematics and regression theory. Again, the argument is poorly thought out and does not seem to be supported by any hard evidence or even the majority of commentators here, thus it should be removed from the article until such time when an analysis is presented that supports this argument. --[[User:Mike127|Mike127]] 23:28, 17 June 2011 (EDT)

Andy, I too disagree with the analogy you drew between Brad's comments and the Laws of Thermodynamics. And as far as your question goes: ''"why are you so opposed to the possibility of intelligence declining, and the existence of a young earth?"'' -- I don't think anyone in this conversation is suggesting that they do not support a young Eart, we just don't support this argument for young Earth. This issue is not as black and white as you seem to see it: removal of this counterpoint does not inherently advantage the arguments for an old Earth. If I said that an alien came to me and told me that the Earth is billions of years old, or that it is 6000 years old, you and no other logically minded person would agree that this was proof for one theory vs another. And you shouldn't, it's a ludicrous argument, and just because you support the theory that this so-called proof supports, it doesn't mean you have to support this "proof" as well. As an earlier contributor posted, using the same logic about declining human intelligence to extrapolate the age of the Earth, one could use increasing human height to argue that the Earth is far younger than 6000 years (the contributor suggested it would be closer to 3000 years and that means everyone during Jesus's time would be under 2 feet tall, which is not true). You have yet to provide any extrapolation based on hard numbers, only supplying us with anecdotes like civil war letters and the federalist papers as examples of declining intelligence. Even if these examples were valid (and that is doubtful), it would suggest a very steep slope for the decline of intelligence over the past 200 or so years, thus people 1000 years ago should all be genius is the slope is consistent according to your argument. And the slope does need to be consistent or abide by a known nonlinear function in order to perform the extrapolation you have suggested; this is basic mathematics and regression theory. Again, the argument is poorly thought out and does not seem to be supported by any hard evidence or even the majority of commentators here, thus it should be removed from the article until such time when an analysis is presented that supports this argument. --[[User:Mike127|Mike127]] 23:28, 17 June 2011 (EDT)

:Pick any measure you like, and it's clear that intelligence is declining.  Read, for example, [[Civil War]] letters and compare them to what the average person produces today.  How long could intelligence be declining at a significant rate?  Not hundreds of thousands of years, or even tens of thousands of years.

:Pick any measure you like, and it's clear that intelligence is declining.  Read, for example, [[Civil War]] letters and compare them to what the average person produces today.  How long could intelligence be declining at a significant rate?  Not hundreds of thousands of years, or even tens of thousands of years.