evolution stuff

excuse the hell out of me.

but, i've never been given hard definitive evidence, that said , "this IS how it happened."

maybe you can give me some.

 

Evolution relies very little if at all on accidents. It relies on things that happen all the time, in an observable manner. Natural selection can be seen very easily in the wild or in the lab.

Why not? We know a lot about physics, how things happen, etc. We have evidence for the state of the early world and universe, and we know a lot about early organisms. It's really like reading a history book in another language. You might not figure everything out, but given enough time, you can have a pretty good understanding of it.

That's a very popular idea among anti-evolutionists. The difference is that one side has a huge mass of evidence to support it. Huge.

Sciences generally hesitates to hold absolute truths like that. But here's some good stuff...

http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/essays/courtenay1.htm
http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/29620
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/03/0308_060308_evolution.html
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/newton/askasci/1993/biology/bio039.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/11/021115065518.htm

Not "proof," but it's some darn good evidence.
To contrast, here are sites with evidence against evolution...

http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/top.htm
http://www.remnantofgod.org/creation.htm
http://www.creationism.org/heinze/examined.htm
http://www.biblelife.org/creation.htm
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evolution Hoax/4000.htm

Now a lot of the stuff in those ones is just not true. There are blatant lies, and what isn't a blatant lie is either a sneaky lie, logically unsound, or just plain old silly.

 

Seems to me we have some very basic disagreements about knowledge here. Science can't provide 100% certainty about anything, because such a thing is beyond the reach of human reason and sensory equipment. Some sciences (e.g., chemistry) are more rigorous than others, because they allow for controlled laboratory experiments. There is an interesting experiment by Barry Hall at the University of Washington in which bacteria evolved a new system of lactose utilization. But for the most part, evolutionists have had to make inferences on the basis of an incomplete record of circumstantial evidence. It's an impressive amount of evidence from a variety of different sources: DNA, gradation, biogeographic distribution, existence of homologous and vestigial structures, presence of seemingly transitional forms, etc. But it's also possible for scientists (a minority) to challenge this evidence and remain unconvinced, by rejecting basic inferences and methodological assumptions that seem reasonable to their peers. Kind of like global warming, or "reparative therapy" for gays offered by a minority fringe of Judeo-Christian psychologists. That's life.

One point in favor of evolution is that it's the only scientific theory on the origins of species we have. Creationism and Intelligent Design don't offer any real alternative theory of life's origins that can be tested or refuted--no explanation of the mechanisms by which different life forms were created, other than the implication that God made it all happen somehow. I have a problem with teaching that as "science", but no problem with teaching their objections to evolution as a critque of natural selection. It wouldn't be necessary to include all the different creation myths, because the IDers have been careful not to get specific about the Intelligent Designer or His (or Her, or It's) methods. In one of the pioneering works on Intelligent Design, Evolution: A Theory In Crisis, biochemist Michael Denton did offer the explanation that variation among species results from the Designer making variations on an underlying theme or blueprint, rather than from one species evolving into another. In his more recent work, Nature's Destiny, Denton reverses this view and opts for the alternative that the Designer influenced the process of natural selection by fine tuning the basic parameters of the universe to make evolution of intelligent life highly probable. That's an impressive example of evolution in itself--from creationist to qualified Darwinist. By studying the evidence (or lack thereof) for Behe's "irreducible complexity", Dembski's Complex Specified Information (CSI) and Gish's probabalistic attacks on natural selection, students would get a chance to see what the fuss is all about. But I think this would be more appropriate at the college level than in high school, and the arguments against these ID postions should also be brought out.

 

i think that God fine tuning the universe for the probability of life is such a round about way of doing things, that the very purpose of creating life is lost.

 

Do we know what that was? For humans to try to figure out what God was up too might be somewhat presumptuous-- kind of like my dog trying to figure out why I get upset when he shits on the rug. One of the bolder efforts to answer this question was by a Christian French paleontologist and geologist who was also a Catholic priest, Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Teilhard did distinguished work on some of the fossils of prehistoric men, especially Peking Man, and came to the conclusion that evolution was not only okay for a Christian to believe in but was the very centerpiece of God's Plan for the Universe. He believed that there was a definite direction in evolution toward greater complexity, unity, and consciousness. Evolution proceeded from cosmogenesis/geogenesis or the formation of the physical earth and other planets and heavenly bodies to biogenesis, or the emergence and evolution of life culminating in increasing consciousness, and then to noogenesis characterized by growing collective consciousness through information exchange on an intercontinental basis. He was regarded as something of a heretic by both the Catholic Church and the Darwinists--the former because his doctrines seemed to undermine St. Augustine's teachings about original sin, the latter because his theory was teleological, based on the idea that there is a definite direction, purpose, or goal to evolution. Although Teilhard died in 1953, the advent of computers and the internet fulfilled his predictions about the course of evolution toward increasing global awareness. So folks, while we're posting all these pearls of wisdom, I hope we all realize that we're participating in the Divine Plan for ultimate salvation through collective consciousness formation by the exchange of ideas via the internet, culminating in the Omega Point, when we'll finally uderstand our true destinies in union with God. I've done my part!

Frank Tipler, a physicist at Tulane, has developed a cyber version of Teilhard's theory in which the brain patterns of all humans who have ever lived will be resurrected by robots for an eternity of virtual heaven or hell in a master Omega Point Simulator. And the Geeks shall inherit the Earth!