Rapid evolution does occur, and it is not just a matter of semantics. Evolution is a pervasive concept. Once you start thinking in evolutionary terms, it explains so many obscure patterns that you wonder how you ever did without it before. To give just one example of rapid evolution, HIV has been demonstrated to evolve within the lifetime of individual patients. Unlike most organisms, it has no safeguards against mutation, and its mutation rate is extremely high. Also, the virus reproduces at an extraordinarily high rate (i.e., many generations in a short time), and its population within a single human body can very high. Taking these facts together, HIV should be an excellent test case for rapid evolution. And in fact, HIV has been shown to mutate from one strain into many during the course of a single infection, much to the benefit of the virus, as it tends to become resistant to treatment over time. Incidentally, Ross, I have high respect for the Seventh-Day Adventists, whose seminary in Collegedale, Tennessee was within the study area of my Master's thesis. Their views may be peculiar to outsiders (strict vegetarianism, for instance), but as a group they do not reject logic, and they have the courage to change their views in the face of contrary evidence. Your own statement shows this openness to reason and observation. To give an example of that, when creationists thought they had found human and dinosaur footprints together in Cretaceous strata on the Paluxy River in Texas, a team of Seventh-Day Adventists came to investigate. When they found that some of the "human" footprints were very indistinct, and others had been faked (carved into the rock), they withdrew. But other groups continue to cite the Paluxy case as evidence that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time. There is more than one kind of creationist! Andrew K. Rindsberg Geological Survey of Alabama