I believe the opposite.

I think that science is just as unproved as religion and try to keep a open mind to both.

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What's this i hear bed? Word has it you and Pam are sleeping together.

You did not go to the link I provided!


http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html

Like I said before, there is little need for debate here. There is nearly complete agreement. That is a fact. You can disagree (although the link is (*)(*)(*)(*) good). It does not matter. Like Galileo said, "They can say whatever they want, but the Earth is round".

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I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

Actually, Galileo said, "I don't care what they say, the Earth revolves around the sun".

Either way, whatever....

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I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

The difference between science and religion is that science continually progresses thought and continually improves its ideas through study and research. Religion, for the msot part, does not change as religious ideas have not advanced as Christian opinion on the world has largely stayed the same. It has not progressed or changed, it has pretty much remained the same way. I'm currently taking a theology class and the ideas we are learning now are the same as they were 500 years ago.

And yes, you sandwich and chair due owe their existance to scientists, just think about what goes into making them.

Audrasun, I do read the posts in context. When I am directing my response to a specific person, I usually use their name. The undeserved suffering comment was a response to the notion that there must not be a God because kids get cancer. The rest of the response was in answer to the question how could you believe the Bible and not every other book ever written. I was actually trying to get the thread back onto the topic of evolution. I don't see the need in arguing the merits of the Bible when discussing evolution.

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"Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves." ~Ronald Reagan

I did go to the link you provided, and I responded. Please re-read the thread. Here was my response...

Respectfully, it was you who did not go to the link I provided.

This is all so WRONG!
1) Total lack of transitional forms
No there are heaps of transitional forms. There are also a lot of missing links, which you seem to be referring to. We haven't found a ape-man yet, but we've found austrolopithusus (sp?) and homo erectus so we're half-way there. Archaopteryx is a half-dinosaur half bird. I know someone will say that other half-birds have been found in China and proven to be false, but archaeopteryx has been scrutinised by hundreds of devout scientists trying to prove its falsity.

There is also a reason for this lack of transitional forms you massively blow out of proportion. There have been 6 billion years since life first formed. Things get destroyed over time. Just look at the ruins of cities in Egypt, after only ten thousand years they're practically destroyed and they're made of stone. Certain conditions are required for fossils to form. Do you know why there is no evidence of the very first life form? because the earth is a very large place and even if it was fossilised, it is hihgly unlikely that we would find it since it can only be seen with a microscope!

There are still existing transitional forms, such as a cross between a worm (annelids) and an insect. This may seem trivial to you, but it was one of the major missing links up until ten years ago.

And in additional to fossilised transitional lifeforms there is a giant tree diagram of species, genera, families, orders etc that show approximately what evolved from what. Explain that away.

2) Sudden explosion of life
There is a theory about the Cambrian Explosion. During that period life had recently learned to have sex rather than breed by self-replication. That means that genes could be swapped around allowing major changes. Before sexual reproduction, self-replication meant that the same genes were duplicated over and over pretty much unless a mistake was made (which would have been rare).
Since life was henceforth mostly single-cellular, in a few million years a lot of new niches were exploited that couldn't before and a lot were newly created. It took a while for life to recreate the balance it had before sexual reproduction.

3)Mathematical probability against evolution
I've never heard of this, but I'll try and refute it anyway. We've also calculate the chances of any life whatsoever forming at all. Very low. And your flair for dramatic exaggeration is showing again. I'm fairly certain what you mean is that science has shown that the exact way life has turned out is very low, because there are so many other ways it could have turned out. I know one of the major arguments once was that only God could have created the human eye because it was so complex. I believe someone created a mathematical computer program that showed that something similar to a human could develop from the simple eyespots that exist in amoeba, using tiny little steps, each of which would have made evolutionary sense.

4) Evolutionary mechanism in cells cannot be explained and we cannot explain how life can be created from non-life.
What do you mean by evolutionary mechanism? Genetics is very well understood. You get half a chromosome from each parent and the resulting gene pair dictates what you look like. If you get a good match-up you have an advantage over other members of your species and so if enough members of a species has that characteristic, it will eventually breed out the previous characteristic.
You have a fairly good point here when you say we cannot explain how life came about from non-life. We don't know how. But we have shown that organic (just means very large carbon compounds) molecules can form from primaeval conditions. All 24 types of amino acids have been formed as well as simple bubbles that would form a cell membrane. All that is missing is how the replicating double helix structure formed. But we couldn't even explain how genetics worked chemically until fifty years ago when Watson and Crick developed the theory of the double helix molecule. And that "theory" is practically accepted nowadays.



And a brief aside, I've seen a lot of generalisation and misconception about evolution and creationism here. A tuna fish doesn't evolve into a amphibian in one step. That's the major objection people had originally. It required a timespan many times longer than the Bible seemed to say actually occured. Bottom-feeders such as the Mexican handfish maybe? that lived closer to the shore would eventually want to eat the food available closer and closer to the shore (at least some of them) then they'd need stronger legs to reach their food more easily. And then some of them might go for the food already on the land. And use their elgs to get that food. There. How a tuna became a frog.

I didn't see the link. Sorry. The difference between our two links is this: Mine was written by a scientist who is an expert in the field and her views are shared by nearly all the other experts in the field. A field, by the way, that is not exactly new. There's ton of data on which to draw. Your link was written by a religious studies professor!

I will allow the gallery to decide which is more credible and which has an obvious agenda. Here was an opinion of Foard's work by another Prof at ASU, "Darwin Papers is a badly argued piece of creationist propaganda."

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I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

I love these creationist/evolutionist debates.

Main reason I put my stock in evolution is because it is conclusions based on known and observed facts.

whereas creation is a conclusion which looks for facts to support it.

"Sorry. I'm not following you at all. How exactly does childhood cancer disprove the existence of a creator? What does "free will" have to do the topic? "

Some have suggested that God left us with choices or free will. God can let a child die from cancer or disease because he is "out of the picture."

This is hypocritical with the teachings that He is always with us and guiding us - besides would a just and good God let an innocent child suffer?

This is a major problem for the clergy and if you've ever been to a funeral for a child you hear silly things like, "God needed more angels" or "God took his only son so he knows how you feel." - crazy stuff that flies in the face of teachings.