They have a job to do to help break down you and me and those elephants.

Well some eat telegraph poles, some are hunters, some eat plant material. They cover a lot of niches.

I was making a point

The LDS (i.e. Mormon) belief on the color of skin as a mark given Cain for sin did not include all Blacks. LDS believe in microevolution without complaint, some of us even embrace macroevolution. Personally I believe all "miracles" could be explained away using natural science. This does not change whether there was a guiding force behind the natural phenomena or not, such is merely a philosophical debate and not a scientific one. God is not necessary in a scientific paradigm, God is not necessarily nonexistent in a scientific paradigm. Science does not approach the topic of God aside from a statement that there is no evidence of a deity's existence.

Oh, I understand that the CLDS has re-evaluated the racial stance. That was more a little poke at danielost for his comments about skin color with regards to evolution. I actually don't mind the CLDS, for the most part.

With regards to the bold, good point, good point.

Re-evaluation is incorrect, general understanding on the concept was, and often is, not in line with the actual belief. Many still hold an incorrect view of, and many don't even know, what has been said on the subject by LDS authorities.

Yes, Daniel is not always very eloquent, but he means well.

Just as Christians in the past had to eventually admit that the world is round so too will they eventually have to admit that evolution is as much a fact as gravity.

Its simple you are transitional life forms all life is transitional because evolution doesn't stop.

I try but I am not very good with words or debates. Never took it in school.

Its alright, you get your point across. Occasionally you're a little ambiguous, but most of the time I get where you're coming from.

Bee Eff is correct. I need to make this more clear.


The dark skinned people may have carried the curse of caine on them. But each and ever person is responsible for their own sins and not what their fathers did before them. Thanks to Christ.

thats pretty racist if you ask me I have dark skin so you are calling me cursed, and I thought before you excepted evolution now your just a full grown creationist imbecile, how dumb can you be Im younger then you are and I dont except nonsense fairytales like you do. Open your eyes to reality. The world is not the one of the bible and It never will be. End of story and I know with 100% truth that the Bible is a load of BS, and If you were smart you would see it too.

I will say it again of all the people living in the same lattitude or north of it only one small group has light skin.


I am not a racist by the way. I do not believe in the so called 9 races on this planet. I only believe in one race, The human race.


As for being racist the person I wanted to run for president was miss rice.

It is dependent on many factors and though Daniel. But there is no denying that on average there further away from the equator you go the lighter skin colour becomes. You have an over simplification there.

That is an evil choice there Dan.

I am just going by what science says

But you are not taking into account other factors that are important as I said. You have a huge over simplification.

Like this!!!

Good one m'lady

"Right on". Thats the most short but sweet quote Ive heard today.
Thats cool.

Thanx Sir DanieL.

It would appear to me that we have become victims of entropy, even in evolution. Elements break down, and apparently evolution does too.

No it doesn't. Evolution works fine with in the 2nd law of thermodynamic (which I doubt you know in full) Proof of this. Evolution is observable and is a fact.

No doubt that evolution is observable. But how is it that alligators and crocodiles havn't grown bigger? Any change in their evolution? Its been suggested that men and reptiles have grown smaller. If that is the case, then we have not grown at all. Adaptation is one thing. Evolving from a different species is another. If you suggest that the Neanderthals have the same species in common with us, then it appears that we have fallen victim to entropy. Evolution-wise, we are declining. We are weaker, smaller, and more frail. The only reason why we live longer now is because of discoveries in medicine and health, not evolution. Perhaps this is a man made evolution. Perhaps not. But that doesn't mean that evolution disproves God. That means that evolution doesn't move fast enough to keep up with the times. Human social progress becomes more and more a road to destruction. Everything we discover to be a blessing is ultimately turned around and used as a curse. Humanity has big problems. Evolution isn't keeping up with it. That's observable.

Why would they grow bigger? What does that have to do with anything?
Speciation is an observable fact as well .

I think maybe you need to take a much deeper look into evolution and in to thermodynamics. Especially since you think a species that is exponentially growing is declining evolution wise. That I am afraid is just plain nonsense.

We are learning. That isn't evolution. That is education. It seems to be the rule though, that everything we learn, we use against ourselves. How is evolution going to stop us from destroying ourselves? It really can't. What is the hype about evolution for again?

Maybe you should look up what evolution is.

Main Entry: evo·lu·tion
Pronunciation: \ˌe-və-ˈlü-shən, ˌē-və-\
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin evolution-, evolutio unrolling, from evolvere
Date: 1622
1: one of a set of prescribed movements
2 a: a process of change in a certain direction : unfolding b: the action or an instance of forming and giving something off : emission c (1): a process of continuous change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher, more complex, or better state : growth (2): a process of gradual and relatively peaceful social, political, and economic advance d: something evolved
3: the process of working out or developing
4 a: the historical development of a biological group (as a race or species) : phylogeny b: a theory that the various types of animals and plants have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations; also : the process described by this theory
5: the extraction of a mathematical root
6: a process in which the whole universe is a progression of interrelated phenomena

That is many different definitions and it does not include the important one here. Biological evolution which is (for the billionth time in this forum)
A change in allele frequencies over a generation.

You say look it up. I looked it up. You don't agree with what merriam webster says.

Yes because it is the dictionary definition not the scientific one.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/religion/index.html


What about God?
Of all species, we alone attempt to explain who we are and how we came to be. This final episode explores the struggle between science and religion. Through the personal stories of students and teachers, it offers the view that they are compatible.

So are you saying that evolution isn't keeping up with Man's ability to discover and invent? That we should somehow physically evolve at the same pace that we make discoveries?

Hi Bluefinger, I have answered a lot of these questions already in other posts. Unfortunately I don't have time to answer the new ones at the moment. If click THIS LINK it will take you to my profile. Rather than give you lots of different links here, on my "About Me" page, right under the carton of late night biologist love , I provide links to the posts which should answer many of questions about species and what not.

Click me I'm a beneficial mutation (two to be exact) that constitutes new genes and new biological information

Hello Everyone.
I'll just make a few comments on the thread, and then reply to the OP indepth.


A. The vast majority of believers on our planet believe in Evolution. The 2 aren't opposites.
B. How can you be sure what is inside you is the holy spirit? How do you even know it is real? Do not believe something because you want to.


In Michael Chrichon's NEXT, it is theorized that Neanderthals died out because they were more cautious then humans, who had more genes pre-deposing them to taking risks.



Yes.



No offense, but do you realize how seriously messed up and scary that sounds? I'm seriously concerned.


See below.


This is even weirder.

OK. It seems like a few religious people in this thread had some kind of euphoric / really strange event in their lives, and in an atempt to understand it, reached out for radical religion.
That is, of course, the reflexive human response, but think more rationally. You have a effect, and are clutching straws for a cause.


But see, no offense, BUT THIS IS SO WEIRD! Sorry, Daniel, but I do not believe you can remember your first thought.
Your brain wasn't capable of language at the time. It is truly impossible for you to have thought 'so this is life'.
Oh. I have no doubt you Believe you can remember your first thought, but it is biologically impossible that you can.


Yeah! You are sooooo right! OUR ORIGINS HAVE BEEN SHOWN TO US IN THE GOSPEL OF THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER!
You see, Daniel, the Bible is 2 things:
A. The ancient's way of making money
B. Perhaps an honest attempt at explaining our world.
Back then, they had no way to explain our origins using science, so they guessed.


[rant]
Belle, why do you have to be sorry??? Not directing this at you, but I feel like ranting...
I do not understand this mindset of 'no copying and pasting peoples'. Here's the Reality:
NOBODY ON THIS FORUM KNOWS EVERYTHING THEY WILL HAVE TO IN A DEBATE.
I see nothing wrong with copy and pasting. IF Someone else on the web has the answer,
by all means USE IT!
[/rant]


Fossils are extremely rare freak accidents. If the Earth wasn't billions of years old, we would have close to zero. It is 100% expected that we do not have every form.
Sigh, wrong, wrong, wrong.
Let's look at this:
[A] + [ ] + [C] + [ ] + [ ] + [F] + [G] + [H] + [ ] + [J] + [K]
Can you fill in the blanks?
OF course- It is easy to see what goes there. If we have all of the fossils with letters, then filling in the blanks is easy.


You seriously do not understand what you are talking about...


Then use the bloody SOURCES PROVIDED.
[rant]
WIKIPEDIA ROCKS PEOPLE.
I'm sorry if you don't like it, but it is the FUTURE of information.
[/rant]



Wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong.
WRONG.
#


# Beneficial mutations are commonly observed. They are common enough to be problems in the cases of antibiotic resistance in disease-causing organisms and pesticide resistance in agricultural pests (e.g., Newcomb et al. 1997; these are not merely selection of pre-existing variation.) They can be repeatedly observed in laboratory populations (Wichman et al. 1999). Other examples include the following:

* Mutations have given bacteria the ability to degrade nylon (Prijambada et al. 1995).
* Plant breeders have used mutation breeding to induce mutations and select the beneficial ones (FAO/IAEA 1977).
* Certain mutations in humans confer resistance to AIDS (Dean et al. 1996; Sullivan et al. 2001) or to heart disease (Long 1994; Weisgraber et al. 1983).
* A mutation in humans makes bones strong (Boyden et al. 2002).
* Transposons are common, especially in plants, and help to provide beneficial diversity (Moffat 2000).
* In vitro mutation and selection can be used to evolve substantially improved function of RNA molecules, such as a ribozyme (Wright and Joyce 1997).

THERE ARE TONS OF EXAMPLES OF BENEFICIAL MUTATION:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB101.html
http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoMutations.html
http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoHumBenMutations.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mutations.html


Wow.
Lower animals?
And the crazies say Evolution leads to arrogance... This shows us indeed where arrogance lies...


OK HERE WE GO.

It seems like everyone is interested in the later part of human history. So I'll do that.

1. 65 Ma
A group of small, nocturnal and arboreal, insect-eating mammals called the Euarchonta begins a speciation that will lead to the primate, treeshrew and flying lemur orders. The Primatomorpha is a subdivision of Euarchonta that includes the primates and the proto-primate Plesiadapiformes. One of the early proto-primates is Plesiadapis. Plesiadapis still had claws and the eyes located on each side of the head, because of that they were faster on the ground than on the top of the trees, but they begin to spend long times on lower branches of trees, feeding on fruits and leaves. The Plesiadapiformes very likely contain the species which is the ancestor of all primates.[10]



2. 65 Ma
One of the last Plesiadapiformes is Carpolestes simpsoni. It had grasping digits but no forward facing eyes.


3. 40 Ma
Primates diverge into suborders Strepsirrhini (wet-nosed primates) and Haplorrhini (dry nosed primates). Strepsirrhini contains most of the prosimians; modern examples include the lemurs and lorises. The haplorrhines include the three living groups the prosimian tarsiers, the simian monkeys, and apes. One of the earliest haplorrhines is Teilhardina asiatica, a mouse-sized, diurnal creature with small eyes.

4. 30 Ma
Haplorrhini splits into infraorders Platyrrhini and Catarrhini. Platyrrhines, New World monkeys, have prehensile tails and males are color blind. They may have migrated to South America on a raft of vegetation across the Atlantic ocean (circa 4,500 km, 2,800 mi). Catarrhines mostly stayed in Africa as the two continents drifted apart. One ancestor of catarrhines might be Aegyptopithecus.


5. 25 Ma
Catarrhini splits into 2 superfamilies, Old World monkeys (Cercopithecoidea) and apes (Hominoidea).

Proconsul was an early genus of catarrhine primates. They had a mixture of Old World monkey and ape characteristics. Proconsul's monkey-like features include thin tooth enamel, a light build with a narrow chest and short forelimbs, and an arboreal quadrupedal lifestyle. Its ape-like features are its lack of a tail, ape-like elbows, and a slightly larger brain relative to body size.

Proconsul africanus is a possible ancestor of both great and lesser apes, and humans.


6. 15 Ma
Hominidae (great apes) speciate from the ancestors of the gibbon (lesser apes).

7. 13 Ma
Homininae ancestors speciate from the ancestors the orangutan[11].
Pierolapithecus catalaunicus is believed to be a common ancestor of humans and the great apes or at least a species that brings us closer to a common ancestor than any previous fossil discovery.
Pierolapithecus had special adaptations for tree climbing, just as humans and other great apes do: a wide, flat ribcage, a stiff lower spine, flexible wrists, and shoulder blades that lie along its back.

8. 10 Ma
Hominini speciate from the ancestors of the gorillas.

9. 7 Ma
Hominina speciate from the ancestors of the chimpanzees. The latest common ancestor is Sahelanthropus tchadensis (ca. 7 Ma). The earliest known human ancestor post-dating the separation of the human and the chimpanzee lines is Orrorin tugenensis (Millennium Man, Kenya; ca. 6 Ma). Both chimpanzees and humans have a larynx that repositions during the first two years of life to a spot between the pharynx and the lungs, indicating that the common ancestors have this feature, a precursor of speech.


10. 4.4 Ma
Ardipithecus ramidus ramidus

11. 3.7 Ma
Some Australopithecus afarensis left footprints on volcanic ash in Laetoli, Kenya (Northern Tanzania) Strong evidence of bipedalism.

12. 3.5 Ma
Kenyanthropus platyops, a possible ancestor of Homo, emerges from the Australopithecus genus.


13. 3 Ma
The bipedal australopithecines (a genus of the Hominina subtribe) evolve in the savannas of Africa being hunted by Dinofelis. Loss of body hair takes place in the period 3-2 Ma, in parallel with the development of full bipedalism.

14. 2.5 Ma
Appearance of Homo. Homo habilis is thought to be the ancestor of the lankier and more sophisticated, Homo ergaster. Lived side by side the Homo erectus until at least 1.44 Ma, making it highly unlikely that Homo erectus directly evolved out of Homo habilis. First stone tools, beginning of the Lower Paleolithic.


15. 1.8 Ma
Homo erectus evolves in Africa. Homo erectus would bear a striking resemblance to modern humans, but had a brain about 74 percent of the size of modern man. Its forehead is less sloping and the teeth are smaller. It is believed to be an ancestor of modern humans (with Homo heidelbergensis usually treated as an intermediary step).

Homo erectus migrates out of Africa and colonizes Eurasia.


16. 1.5 Ma
Dmanisi man / Homo georgicus (Georgia, Russia), tiny brain came from Africa, with Homo erectus and Homo habilis characteristics. Control of fire by early humans. Evolution of dark skin is complete by 1.2 Ma.

17. 700 ka
Common genetic ancestor of humans and Neanderthal, though the accuracy of this finding has been questioned.[12] At present estimate, humans have approximately 20,000–25,000 genes and share 99% of their DNA with the now extinct Neanderthal [13] and 95% of their DNA with their closest living evolutionary relative, the chimpanzees[14].

18 355 ka
Three 1.5 m (5 ft) tall Homo heidelbergensis left footprints in powdery volcanic ash solidified in Italy. Homo heidelbergensis is the common ancestor of both Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens. It is morphologically very similar to Homo erectus but Homo heidelbergensis had a larger brain-case, about 93% the size of that of Homo sapiens. The species was tall, 1.8 m (6 ft) on average, and more muscular than modern humans. Beginning of the Middle Paleolithic.

19. 195 ka
Omo1, Omo2 (Ethiopia, Omo river) are the earliest fossil evidence for archaic Homo sapiens, evolved from Homo heidelbergensis.

20. 160 ka
Homo sapiens (Homo sapiens idaltu) in Ethiopia, Awash River, Herto village, practise mortuary rituals and butcher hippos.

21. 150 ka
Mitochondrial Eve lives in East Africa. She is the most recent female ancestor common to all mitochondrial lineages in humans alive today.

22. 70 ka
appearance of mitochondrial haplogroup L2. Behavioral modernity. The FOXP2 gene (associated with the development of speech) appears in this period.[15]

23. 60 ka
Y-chromosomal Adam lives in Africa. He is the most recent common ancestor from whom all male human Y chromosomes are descended. Appearance of mitochondrial haplogroups M and N, which participate in the migration out of Africa.

24. 50 ka
Migration to South Asia. M168 mutation (carried by all non-African males). Beginning of the Upper Paleolithic. mt-haplogroups U, K.

25. 40 ka
Migration to Australia and Europe (Cro-Magnon).

26. 25 ka
Neanderthals die out. Y-Haplogroup R2; mt-haplogroups J, X.

27. 12 ka
Beginning of the Mesolithic / Holocene. Y-Haplogroup R1a; mt-haplogroups V, T. Evolution of light skin in Europeans (SLC24A5). First domestication of the dog. Homo floresiensis dies out, leaving Homo sapiens as the only living species of the genus Homo.

28. 10000 BCE
Beginning of the Neolithic / Holocene. The invention of farming in the Fertile Crescent occurred during this time.

________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________

So there we go!
For sources, see the wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_h...ion#cite_note-9

So. Any questions?

FYI, I'll be updating that page to include pics of fossils for each.
I'll post another link when done it.


Cheers,
SQLserver

Fossils are extremely rare freak accidents. If the Earth wasn't billions of years old, we would have close to zero. It is 100% expected that we do not have every form.
Sigh, wrong, wrong, wrong.
Let's look at this:
[A] + [ ] + [C] + [ ] + [ ] + [F] + [G] + [H] + [ ] + [J] + [K]
Can you fill in the blanks?
OF course- It is easy to see what goes there. If we have all of the fossils with letters, then filling in the blanks is easy

==============================================================================


If it is so easy how come they haven't been filled in. By the way if you re-look at your post you will read that all those ancestors of ours are speculative at best.

Here is an anwser to the questionof thetransitional forms your looking for. Every living being on this earth(including yourself)is a transitional form, there is no end result final form in evolution, no singularity. As long as that creature is still alive it will be transitining until it goes exitinct. HUMANS ARE TRANSITIONAL FORM, LOOKING FOR AN APE MAN IS LIKE LOOKING FOR A MAMMAL MAN THEY ARE THE SAME THING HAHAHA.

You claim that "missing links" is "such a poor concept." And that we were taught "a lie" - about how science is "searching for the missing link".

But there is a critical difference between "missing link" and "missing links".

Your color spectrum analogy still has links - "the thousands of slightly different hues that occur in between" red and yellow, between yellow and green, and so on.

You say that we've glossed over the thousands of different hues in-between colors. So are you saying that we've glossed over the thousands of "missing links" which would have existed between the scientifically noted species, such as Australopithecus and Paranthropus boisei?

Paranthropus boisei supposedly lived from about 2.6 to 1.2 million years ago....





P. boisei didn't seem to "evolve" very much, in its 1.4 million years of existence on Earth. It certainly had the same skull (skeleton) dimensions/shape throughout that entire period of time.

So where is your evidence that it evolved over its 1.4 million years of existence?

And are you claiming that it evolved into humans in the subsequent 1 million years?

The other problem I have with evolution theory is its concept of how life began on Earth.

The story - over billions of years, chemical soups on Earth randomly interact, until some of it magically transforms into the first living organisms. The supporters of this story have no clue about HOW this could happen. They just say it took billions of years for some chemicals to form cells which sparked into life.

Then, these cells somehow "evolved" into every other life form on Earth. Again, they have no idea how this could happen - it just did.

All by fluke.

If that's true, then why can't we use our highly advanced scientific knowledge to create life?

How much harder can it be than building a car or a 747? After all, no Buick sedans were created by fluke out of a chemical soup over billions of years. And they aren't even alive!

Seriously, though - it makes no sense.

It seems to me that life was designed / created by a superior intelligence. But the problem with that theory is - what or who created them?

Except that evolution makes no claim in regards to how life began. That's an entirely seperate field of science and Turbonium knows that.



Atually, we have several ideas. You just described one of them quite well. Another idea (in science, ideas that have enough evidence to support their probability and nothing that falsifies it are called theories) is Panspermia, which is the idea that the original genetic material that eventually became the genome as we know it came from extraterrestrial sources. Yet another claims tat life evolved in the deep earth, within pockets of water miles below the surface, which eventually rose to the surface.

We have plenty of ideas on how life could have evolved. For all we know, life evolved in more than one way. There isn't necessarily one and only one answer to the question.



Well, in the same way that winning the lottery is a fluke. Thing is, it is only a fluke if one looks at things from the wrong end. If one assumes the winner was the only one who should have won, it certainly looks like a fluke. If one looks at the lottery as a process, however, it is inevtiable that there will be a winner somewhere. With an entire planet's worth of chemical reactions going on in millions of different places, for millions upon millions of years...yeah, it's pretty inevitable that a given reaction will occur.



Because our highly advanced knowledge is barely at the stages where we understand how the process might work. Just as we are only at the stage where we understand how gravity might work. Our technological level is based on the past performance of humans. As far as the natural world is concerned, our technological level is barely adequate to understand it.



It's actually not all that much harder. Once you know how to actually do it. Just as building a car isn't all that hard. Once you know how to do it.



Not if you are looking at it from the end to the beginning. Looking at things as if the end result was significant is the wrong way to look at evolution. Evolution is a process. Unless you try to understand a process as a whole, you won't be able to make heads or tails of it. If all you look at is the Buick coming out of the end of the factory line, and make no effort to understand how all the different processes of the assembly line came into existance, that whole process seems magical as well (honestly, even after you understand it, it still seems kinds magical!)



That may certainly be the case. There is no evidence to support that notion, but there is nothing that contradicts it. It may simply be that our level of technology simply hasn't gotten to that level yet, just as the ancient Greeks suspected that lightning was a natural process, but were unable, at their level of technology, to understand it yet.

You are missing the point. The point is that to find a missing link(s) between humans and our last common ancestor with apes one would need to find a fossil representative of every
between then and now. Which is quite frankly ridiculous, because fossilization is rare no such thing will ever be possible. We do not need a missing link though, we only need to establish a clear descent through various anatomical features.

Missing link is often asked for by pseudoscience crowd because they do not understand this, or they understand it quite well and are playing a game of goal post moving. If you find a 'missing link' then one can simply ask for the 'missing links' to either side. Which is goal post moving, because we need no such exact representation to understand evolutionary history.




Actually Turbo,

You picked a very poor example to argue against evolution seen within a lineage. We have some very nice fossil preservation's of P. boisei and just as importantly, we have some very accurate dating of P. boisei remains as well. What this has done, is allow us to trace the evolution of metric and nonmetric variables across generations of this lineage (the 1.5 or so million years we see it in the fossil record.)

If you wish to look at a more detailed discussion of the evolution seen in P. boisei specimens please review the following references;

Wood B, Constantino P. Paranthropus boisei: Fifty years of evidence and analysis. Am J Phys Anthropol 2007;Suppl 45:106-32.

Wood B, Lieberman DE. Craniodental variation in paranthropus boisei: A developmental and functional perspective. Am J Phys Anthropol 2001 Sep;116(1):13-25.

Wood B, Wood C, Konigsberg L. Paranthropus boisei: An example of evolutionary stasis? Am J Phys Anthropol 1994 Oct;95(2):117-36.



No, but who is? P. boisei was an early hominid. It is an important fossil find because it shows some anatomical developments not yet seen in hominids, No one is claiming it evolved into us though. If you were to trace the lineage of your great-great uncle or aunt does it lead directly to you?

If you wish to have a debate, maybe you should better inform yourself?

You need to study a little paleontology. What do you think those African hominids like Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Australopitheucs, etc. are if not transitional forms? If you're going to argue against evolution, you could at least have the courtesy to learn a little something about it before you make such statements.
Doug

First of all, it's included within the ‘General Theory of Evolution’...

Abiogenesis (Greek a-bio-genesis, "non biological origins") is a theory which contends that organisms originated from nonliving, inanimate material at some point in the very distant past. Evolutionists typically believe that this life came from a single self-replicating protocell which in turn originally came into existence through spontaneous chemical reactions.

A common synonym is chemical evolution. Despite some insisting that it has nothing to do with the theory of evolution, without it there would be no life and without life there is no way any natural mechanisms of evolution could work.

http://creationwiki.org/Abiogenesis

You believe that life originated from nonliving, inanimate material, right? Through some process(es) of evolution?



Of course - countless ideas ("theories") have been presented/debated over the years.

My example (the "chemical soup") was part of the overall "evolution" theory we were 'taught' in grade school. It wasn't presented as a theory, but more like an established 'fact'.

Indeed. Hey, I'll betcha some kid could build his very own 'interdimensional time travel machine'....once he knows how to do it!

Obviously, once we know how to do something, we can probably do it.

The difficult part is.....first of all.....knowing how to do something!!

That was my point.

You know what else is a 'theory'? Gravity, but I don't see anyone questioning that because of the Bible.

No this is incorrect. You should steer clear of "creationwiki" for understanding science. Evolution does not depend on how abiogenesis. From the point of view for the theory of evolution -It could care less how life started. The theory of evolution pertains to the biological fact of evolution by explaining how and why the fact happens. Please get this crap out of your head!

Maybe this will help:


Please be sure to read, reread, and read a third time that boldfaced part if necessary. Read it until you understand it.

This is all fun and games, I am sure. So far you have come to a topic to argue against transitional forms and brought the typical creationist mubojumbo. You have stated for all to see your lack of knowledge regarding P. boisei. You have properly confounded multiple scientific theories together, again show how little you understand. You have shown the typical creationist "tuck and run for abiogenesis" colors. And then you end up with this, which I think is some poor attempt at philosophy?

So what happened to debunking transitional forms, give up?

I just thought about this. In order for a spontaneous experiment to work. It has to be spontaneous, if we do anything to help, like make the right conditions or put some form of DNA or RNA into it it is no longer spontaneous.

Your point being?

The schools teach a lot of stuff as fact when it is more like conjecture. History is their worst area. Science is a close second. Teachers who are not interested in a particular subject generally don't keep up on it. As a result, they are teaching stuff that was being taught when they were in college, from textbooks that were already five years behind research when they were written. Also, even if they are up to date, the books are often ancient and full of thinking that has changed. Also, grade school teachers get to thinking they know it all and never check to see if they still remember it right.

Grade schools are good with reading and writing, a little weak on arithmetic and pretty much disasters with other subjects. I'd be careful of what I heard that far back.

Of course, these are broad generalizations. There are some schools that are strong in a lot of areas.
Doug

While the narrow definition of "evolution" does not include the origins of life, a broader definition does, under the name of "organic evolution." Basically, organic molecules also evolve. They change as the chemistry around them changes. So, evolution DOES include the origins of life.

It is a little difficult to determine at the molecular level where life begins. We all agree that it includes self-replication, but otherwise, there is a shopping-list of characteristics which some things possess and some don't. For example, viruses ares in this no-man's-land between the living and the dead - they can crustalize like a stone, then come out of suspended animation and reproduce. So: does evolution apply to viruses? I maintain that it does and by extension, it applies also to other non-living things.

The chain of life from proconsul to modern humans is a continuum. There are no sharp dividing lines between species. Where the lines get drawn are a function of scientific understanding rather than of major differences. To say that there are missing links between Australopethecus, Homo habilis, H. ereactus and H. sapiens is to completely misunderstand the situation.

Modern species aren't divided into nice neat distinct units, either. Each local population is a little different from its neighbors. Whether it is different enough to conclude that it is a different species ("kind") is a matter of conjecture. Note that among humans, the racial differences are greatest around the outer perimeter of the African/Eurasian land mass. Toward the middle, everybody is a shade of brown. This is evolution: the differences have not accumulated enough to create a separate species. Now, with increasing mixing of the races, even that distinction may disappear.

Another example: English sparrows, imported to America between 1852 and 1881, have evolved enough to create a separate sub-species. Question for anti-evolutionists: do you maintain that there were no intermediate forms of English sparrows between 1881 and today? If not, how do you explain the differences between the American and European populations? Did God wake up one morning and decide he'd made a mistake and change every English sparrow in North America into a new sub-species?

Doug