Everyone knows Evolution exists, there just playing with you revolutionary. Thanks for illustrating why it exists but gee, this screams wind up in the face.

I don't think that's true. Why would states want to teach creation in school and why would 3 republican presedential candidates not believe in evolution? National polls have alse showed that a lot of people don't believe in evolution, the US has the highest or close to % of population that don't believe in evolution compared to other 1st world countries.

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Most people think Great God will come from the skies But if you know what life is worth You will look for yours on earth And now you see the light You stand up for your rights

Check out this Vid of Carl Sagan explaining evolution. Very enlightening.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...7&q=carl+sagan

And

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE9dEAx5Sgw

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"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." -V

1. Cosmic evolution- the origin of time, space and matter. Big Bang.
2. Chemical evolution- the origin of higher elements from hydrogen.
3. Stellar and planetary evolution- Origin of stars and planets.
4. Organic evolution- Origin of life from inanimate matter.
5. Macroevolution- Origin of major kinds.
6. Microevolution- Variations within kinds.

Only number six has been observed, the first five are religious. They are believed, by faith, even though there is no empirical evidence to prove them in any way.

Of course just asking: “Do you believe in Evolution” is a trick question. Then again...what do you expect from MSNBC hosting a Republican debate? Or posters like the author of this thread?

...what quality!

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The Solution for Illegal Immigrants (Gray areas discussed throughout the thread)

So you want me to restate the question to mircroevolution?

I'm sure the problem at the debate was that they were trying to decide which one of the 6 not to believe in.

You know what evolution is, you are just trying to avoid the topic.

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Most people think Great God will come from the skies But if you know what life is worth You will look for yours on earth And now you see the light You stand up for your rights

It is an adaptation to living by the equator and the Sahara.

People started to lose the melinin as they went North. This is evolution.
Sorry. You probably wanted a Fundamentalist to answer you.

Macro and micro-evolution are all that most people consider evolution. Origin of the universe and of all life are not usually considered evolution, at least not in the Darwinian sense. They are seperate phenomena altogether.
Macro-evolution part of the general evolution concept because it is the same phenomenon as micro-evolution, but over a very long amount of time.
The other things being referred to are not the same phenomenon and are only evolution by a play of words. Much like social or cultural evolution (which we have also seen in action... yet many of the dynamics behind them are rejected by most.
Macro-evolution is not proven... but is theoretical. There have been tests against it that have come up in favor... just nothing conclusive. That's why it's a theory. And it stems from the logic of micro-evolution.
The same dynamic that takes place in micro-evolution, extended over time, should be expected to produce much more interesting changes.
Problem is that we may never observe macro-evolution because it takes a (*)(*)(*)(*) long time. We may possibly see evidence if the human race survives long enough simply because we record things now... but no point in waiting around.
Until that happens I don't see macro-evolution updated from theory to law... because it can only be simulated and logically derived. When link creatures, such as the platypus are discovered, it supports evolution but cannot prove it.
But then again a lot of the laws of physics that we believe in cannot yet be observed. Only now is dark matter beginning to be found in any tangible manner... Without that, all of our physical laws are essentially theory.

There is still a big gap between theory and religion. Theory is disprovable. At any moment a discovery can lead to a change or even overhaul of the whole system.
Creationism pretty much requires God to show up, prove that He is God, reveal His secrets. If evolution theory is ever disproved, it does not automatically mean God exists.
That is a whole other query.
No scientific theory, no matter how much it gets religious people riled up, can actually prove or disprove God.

If you wish, here is a layman's article on it. Wikipedia is pretty good for layman's articles in a jiffy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macro-evolution

Note that the chief difference between evolution theory (1) and alternates like ID (2)is this:
1. Evolution is thus far the the best explanation we have that is consistent with scientific theory. We're still working out the bugs. There is still argument as to how it occurs. We're still gathering information. If evolution is proven wrong... we're back to the drawing board, unless the proof leads to an alternate theory.
2. Life is too complex for evolution to explain. Therefore someone created it. Therefore God (which we assumed before looking).

Evolution is methodical. ID contains jumps in logic based on what people wanted to find. Just how the hell do you prove something is too complex to have come naturally? This leads to an eventual logical stop: God must be even more complex. Where the hell did he come from?
Somewhere along the line something complex either evolves or forms spontaneously.

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

True, Darwin mostly covered Micro-evolution which sprouted into Macro-evolution, but to fully accept this theory as legitimate, the other types need to be considered.

And...Cosmic, Chemical, Stellar and Organic forms of evolution are considered “Evolution” because they all adhere to the same principles: “gradual change over vast amounts of time”

In part...what separates the micro and macro is: kinds of animals. Micro only suggests changes within certain kinds: different species of birds, dogs, cats, etc. While Macro suggests that all “kinds” came from one originator.

For someone who accepts the other forms of evolution, this is not a big leap. But if you’re only going off of what we’ve been able to “see and study”, Macro evolution has more disproving discoveries than convincing discoveries. Darwin predicted that once we had the technology to dig up all skeletal remains that we’d find millions of transitional skeletons (from one “kind” into another)...but to date...we’ve found no horse/cat or bird/fish transitional skeletons. None...nothing even close.

We can also record the trends of the past through digging. And so far...as you say...it is an unproven theory.

Sure...its duck-bill mouth, that helps it catch and eat food, could be a result of Microevolution...but it does little to further the argument of Macroevolution. A platypus can’t mate with a beaver or a duck...only another platypus.

When you accept multiple theories of evolution as fact, it becomes your religion. You cannot say: “A speck in the universe blew up, formed earth and our surrounding objects, created a mysterious soup, and out of this mysterious soup over vast amounts of time came RNA, then DNA, then unicellular organisms, then multicellular organisms...and ultimately monkeys who turned into humans...and here we are!”

...then claim...science is only real truth, even theoretical science...man made religion is faulty. Belief that everything we have today came from random chance over billions of years is far more ridiculous then acknowledging a designer. Well...it is far more ridiculous to someone who enjoys the outdoors and sports...and observes irreducible complexity and the anthropic principle first hand...which could be the other way around for a hermit who does nothing but conduct theoretical studies and reads books all day.

I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here. If Creationism is true, God created everything in the beginning (your: requires God to show up), he proved that He is God to the Israelites...but...

reveal His secrets? Please elaborate.

Of course not, I’d be interested to know of any ID/Creationism supporters who claim this.


Not only is it the best explanation that the scientists have come up with...it is the only explanation that they’ve come up with. And of course, they are still working out gray areas, and still have some uncertainties...but that doesn’t stop them from dumping all six forms into the text books. If it’s common knowledge that 5 of the 6 evolution theories are only ”theories” (and not proven) then why is it tax payer supported and fully embraced in public schools?

Irreducible complexity (in regards to life forms) is definitely an argument for ID, but only one of the many. I like the story of Francis Collins in this segment of the argument, Head of the Human Genome Project and Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (obviously related to mapping/studying human DNA). After graduate school he was an outspoken Atheist, he started working with human DNA in the early 80s, was accepted into the major research groups starting in the early 90s, and by 2006 after many years of working with the language behind humans he writes: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.

He does accept variations of evolution, but he cannot fathom the idea that random chance created life as we know it. But like I said, irreducible complexity in regards to life and genetics is only a small part of the intelligent design argument.

Fixed in quote

Evolutionary religion contains just as many jumps in logic as an ID religion. Except non-ID religion has more to answer for: “The believer in God has to account for the existence of unjust suffering; the atheist has to account for the existence of everything else.”

Shifting the “question of origin” to the ID does not remove it from the Darwinist. You can ask “Where did God come from?” just a much as an ID’er can ask “Where did everything else come from?”

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The Solution for Illegal Immigrants (Gray areas discussed throughout the thread)

Not evolution. And while it's a theory, it's the best explanation we've got of the observable universe. It's hardly "religious", because it's constantly being tested, and thus far the observations we've made are generally consistent with the predictions of the theory. If it was religious, it would be untestable or simply untested.

It also makes no comment about the existence of God unless you insist on taking Genesis absolutely literally.

Not evolution. And you mean Hydrogen, helium and lithium, actually. Those are the three that are thought to have been produced in the Big Bang. Everything else is synthesized from them in stars' fusion reactions. The process is pretty well established (once you have the heat and pressure, it's not much more complicated than sticking Legos together) and there have been various direct confirmations of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleos...ucleosynthesis

It also is irrelevant to any discussion of the existence or nonexistence of God.

Thanks to Hubble and other powerful telescopes, we've actually been able to observe new stars being born in distant dust clouds. And while planetary formation (and the establishment of stable orbits) have not been directly observed, the observable reality again has been tested repeatedly and conforms to current theory.

It also is irrelevant to any discussion of the existence or nonexistence of God.

Agreed. So far all we have is speculation with very little actual evidence to go on. But then, nobody credible pretends to know for sure either -- another sign that it's not a religious belief.

Again, there are mountains of indirect evidence for this. It also makes logical sense: if microevolution occurs, enough small changes can add up to big changes.

Especially when you consider how plastic life is at the simplest levels: bacteria and the like. There have been documented examples, for instance, of unrelated bacterial species trading genetic material. Do that enough times and you can easily get entirely new species. Throw in the effects of billions of generations of bacteria doing so over billions of years (for an uncounted number of individual gene transactions), with the results winnowed by natural selection, and even the most unlikely event is almost guaranteed to happen at some point.

Agreed. Readily observed and established. It's no coincidence that this occurs on much shorter time frames than the other five.

This is flat wrong, and I'm disappointed you would say something so disingenous.

Nor will you, because cats didn't evolve from horses and fish didn't evolve from birds. Not only do we have more transitional fossils than most naysayers are willing to admit; but nearly *every* fossil we find fits into the theory somewhere. When you survey the entire fossil record, you can *see* the gradual progression of species and complexity that Darwin postulated, even if there are still gaps here and there. And likely will always be, given how rare fossil formation actually is and the limitations on what body parts actually fossilize.

Which is merely a tautology, because the very definition of "species" is "able to breed and breed true." A particular lifeform becomes a species when it is no longer able to breed with the larger genestock it sprang from.

That said, the platypus' duckbill isn't actually a transitional feature -- it has almost nothing in common with a duck's bill beyond a certain visual similarity. What makes a a platypus interesting is its mix of avian/reptilian and mammalian features -- lays eggs, but has fur and nurses its young.

Belief without evidence is, indeed, faith. But it's more reasonable to posit natural forces whenever possible than some supernatural agent. So if there's a logical natural explanation for the observed phenomenon, then we should prefer it. That's why we no longer believe thunder is the sound of God's bowling or the old man in the sky snoring.

What's more, *none* of it actually conflicts with the existence of a designer. All discussions of our origins examine the *how*, not the who or the why.

Irreducible complexity is BS. It's a failure of the imagination -- in some cases, a deliberate failure. Every example thrown out by proponents has been pretty much debunked. The eye, the knee, those flagellum.... claiming they are "irreducibly complex" requires ignoring either the advantages of limited functionality or one of the several interlocking forces of evolution.

As for the anthropic principle as I imagine you're using it (the "the universe was created to support human life" argument), it's also a simple logical failing. We would not be here if we were not compatible with the laws of physics in this universe. But that's just another way of saying that a square Jell-o mold doesn't produce round Jell-os. Or that a newspaper press doesn't produce sports cars. If the universe required that all life forms be pentagonal, all life forms would be pentagonal. And when and if one of those life forms achieved sentience, they would look around and marvel at how perfectly suited the universe was for pentagonal life.

Because you teach the best *science* available -- science being the study of the nonsupernatural world, using testable hypotheses and observable evidence. Remember, the theory of gravity is just a theory, too.

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Man up.

In addition it has scales under its legs... and I think 12th was the one who taught us there are poison barbs there too (not really related, but (*)(*)(*)(*) interesting).
The spiny echidna is another creature that is between reptile and mammal.
The more people study dinosaurs, the more it appears they were a link between reptile and bird.

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside