that is pure insanity. this is a great example of a perfectly intelligent person making a statement so wildly, stunningly crazy that is it demonstrates how strong the indoctrination and brainwashing of christianity is.
Hmmm . . . I can't go that far. Criticism should always be listened to, of course, but often it must be dismissed for having no basis in fact. Articles of faith do not constitute scientific evidence. We can argue until the cows come home about how the universe was created because there were no witnesses and the remaining scientific evidence is fragmentary. There are thousands of religious creation myths around and we can argue over those as well . . . but it isn't a scientific argument. But evolution, on the other hand, is supported by an massive preponderence of evidence. Just two months ago National Geographic did a cover story entitled "Was Darwin Wrong?" in which they examine how well evolution has held up over the decades. Their conclusion -- No, Darwin was quite correct and the supporting evidence is overwhelming. Not only is there scientific evidence, but there are human witnesses. DNA evidence shows conclusively that all breeds of dogs were descended from the wolf, not from foxes, coyotes or other wild canines. Domestic dogs evolved rapidly due to human influences in the last 15,000 years, specifically the selective breeding of dogs to produce specific desired traits. This process continues and is just one example of many. Again a recent National Geographic article "from Wolf to Woof: The Evolution of Dogs" describes this story well.
and for once, red knows exactly what he is talking about and is 100% correct. darwin is about as important as any scientist in history, because evolution is such a transcendant and incredibly useful concept to understand. not just for biology, but copmputer science and math and problem-understanding in general. darwin completely changed the world and was incredibly ahead of his time. this reminds of an incredibly insightful and amazing post i made many many months ago::
That darwins pond thing was awesome. After I read that post you made I went and found it online to download. Probably one of the coolest things that no one has ever heard of.
Martin that is an awesome post, I'm always trying to explain evolution and how simple it is. I wish I had that Darwin's pond program, so I can show it. Everythiing evolves
here's on just like it called Gene Pool: http://www.ventrella.com/GenePool/GenePool3.exe its linked on this page which has a ton of good simulations/applications and other evolutionary things: http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/h-darwin.htm
here's darwin's pond 2005 version: http://www.ventrella.com/Darwin/DarwinPond2005.zip all versions and the above one here: http://www.ventrella.com/Darwin/darwin.html
periodically i get sort of obsessed with something for a while. a few years ago it was evolutionary biology. before that it was robots and urban legends. now i am obsessed with japanese baseball and ants. anyways, i got really in to reading richard dawkins, and man, that is good stuff. a couple great books about this stuff are "the blind watchmaker" and "the extended phenotype". but if you wanted something a little lighter, but still incredibly interesting, you should read "a devil's chaplain", which is where i stole all my most recent anti-religious rants.
You apparently didn't read the rest of my post; that one statement, by itself, without any context, is what you call insanity. But re-read all of what I said. Again, I'm not talking about micro-evolution, the processes of natural selection and adaptation, the phenomena that Charles Darwin observed on the Galapagos Islands, and have since been observed over and over again. I'm talking about macro-evolution, or more accurately, the idea by certain scientists that the universe began with the Big Bang, that the Earth and the solar system gestated from gaseous clouds in the cosmos, that, somewhere during the Earth's gestation 4.5 billion years ago or whatever long time ago, micro-organic life and DNA sprung from inanimate matter (something I was always taught in my biology classes was physically and scientifically impossible), and that eventually, that process led to reptiles, which led to apes, which led to people. Now, that's what they'd tell you, but, like I said earlier, science is what we know, what we can test, what we can reproduce. You won't be reproducing that in a laboratory with a control sample anytime soon. Nobody was there to observe it. So even the brightest scientific minds don't know for certain that that is what happened. What science has done is take the very sketchy and incomplete evidence that they have, and has drawn some conclusions to give us a very general idea and description of what they think happened. I use the term "very general" because science can't even give us all the answers about the process, let alone who or what initiated it. There are still significant gaps and "missing links" in the pattern of human evolution from ape-like creatures to what we are today, and the transitional species, the breakthrough that would turn the THEORY of Evolution into the LAW of Evolution, remains elusive. I'm not saying that they are necessarily wrong; I'm just saying they don't have all the answers. And I wish they would just admit that; I wish dogmatic evolutionists, like dogmatic creationists, would just admit, "Hey, we don't have all the answers. Science can't explain every last little detail about who we are and where we come from." But they don't. Too many teach evolution as perfect scientific law, that has all the answers, and just completely dismiss any criticism of evolution out of hand, without even listening to it. Some people who question macro-evolution are indeed quacks, but if you dig hard enough, you will find legions of legitimate scientists, many who are not creationists, many who are even atheists like yourself, who simply recognize the fact that there are some questions yet to be answered, who have questions and criticisms of evolution or at least the way it is taught and talked about, and have written volumes about what they think on the matter, with scientific evidence to back it up. It really bothers me that critical analysis of macro-evolution has pretty much become off-limits in today's scientific community. Science is supposed to be about open inquiry and truth. If evolution really is that solid, that true, that infallible, as certain as blue sky and white snow, fine, let's get everything all out on the table. Stop shouting down, laughing off, and dismissing out of hand any criticism of any kind. If the theory is that sound, then have debate, heck, go ahead and make it a scientific law. Besides, if the "indoctrination and brainwashing" of big, bad Christianity were so strong, wouldn't we all be Christians and wouldn't it be the believers in evolution being ridiculed?
