The reason you can say that Kernel, is because you are here to say it! Do you not see that there are millions of other solar systems on which evolution wasn't possible because those conditions weren't right? The fact that you are here means that the conditions WERE right - it is simply a tautology. With a unverse composed of billions of galaxies and an almost infinite number of stars (a fact that in itself should make you at least sceptical that creation just happened here for no apparent reason) chance does, just occasionally, come up with an outcome.

And of course, once life arose by evolutionary processes, it began causing conditions that were suitable for more life (the generation of oxygen by plants for example). Have you heard of Gaia?

INTRA-INTER SPECIES REPRODUCTION AND "TRANSITIONAL FORMS"

The post by mrpickwick at 6:24 correctly explains in part why one would not expect to find a "transitional species form".

Intra-species reproduction usually produces SLIGHT variants over time as a result of natural selection pressure imposed by the environment. Slightly changing genes in a randomly changing pool serve as a menu from which are drawn variant productions of individual species members.

This is why Richard Dawkins points out that creationists are right for the wrong reason on one point - evolution is NOT random with respect to the ENVIRONMENT - it's only random with respect to the gene pool from which the selection is made.

The environment SHAPES the living organism in a precisely targeted direction that allows it to SURVIVE among the millions that die prematurely.

Most mutant genes are not beneficial but detrimental - the lethal ones never remain in the gene pool by definition. Others allow the species to survive over long periods of time by adapting.

Species can evolve into other species in two primary ways. One, as explained above at 6:24, is due to a geographical separation of a species.

When that happens, each separated group of the original species CONTINUES to change SLOWLY, OVER THOUSANDS OF YEARS as before. Many reproduction cycles involve no mutant genes at all, just recombinations of existing ones, so most evolution is quite slow.

Eventually, there will be enough difference between the two groups to prevent "inter-species" reproduction between the two groups. Practically, if they're physically separated, it's a moot point anyway.

Otherwise, intra-species reproduction would continue to be possible BETWEEN THE TWO GROUPS until sufficient differences prevented it, after which only intra-species reproduction would continue WITHIN each group.

Notice the pattern and length of time - NO TRANSITIONAL SPECIES FORMS WOULD EVER APPEAR ON SUCH A TIMELINE. Any fossils found would appear NEAR IDENTICAL to others from the same time period, EVEN AS THE ONE SPECIES EVOLVED INTO TWO SPECIES.

Even distinctly different but closely related species that only reproduce intra-species would still look similar. The only ones that would look dramatically different from each other (enough to also produce the seemingly elusive "transitional forms") would indeed appear ONLY across MULTIPLE STEPS OF SPECIES EVOLUTION INTO OTHER, DISTANTLY RELATED - NOT CLOSELY RELATED SPECIES.

For an analogy, there's hundreds of different species of grasses of which any particular species could correctly be claimed as "transitional" between any other two species.

But there's no individual BLADES of grass with a "hybrid appearance" that seemingly qualify as a "transitional form" between two living species of grass - at least in natural form.

Those intermediate forms associated with the evolution of the particular grass species in question died out a long time ago. But even their fossils look alike in close time periods.

By the time a grass species produces a tree species, way down the line multiple species later, all the creationist sees is one species of grass and one species of tree, completely blind to what happened in between other than the claimed absence of a "grass-tree transition form" needed falsely to link the two.

The other possibility of species origin is from a catastrophic environmental event that wipes out a high percentage of a given species (rather than merely separating it into two groups). The small group of survivors will likely reflect a gene pool significantly different from the larger one and evolve in a different direction accordingly.

However, this too would not yield a "transitional species form" - only a very slow progression of the same species, which perhaps could develop faster into other forms due to the shock or merely recover back into the original species.

The only exeception from the two possibilities above for species origin would be a dramatic, instant, mutant change within the population which allowed ONLY those few mutated individual organisms to "adapt" as the others died out.

But even this would not qualify as "transitional" unless the mutation also prevents this generation from intra-species reproduction with its first-generation relatives (now wiped out).

This exception indeed could yield the appearance of a "transitional form" by definition if it survived right next to its predecessor in the timeline, i.e., suddenly having four legs instead of two and so on.

The last possibility - the exception - is the most unlikely one - selected by creationists to complain what must exist to "prove" evolution - that case which no serious practitioner in the field expects to exist in the first place absent highly unlikely conditions.

Instead, the far more likely conditions of "no transitional forms" are overwhelmingly prevalent in the fossil record - perfectly consistent with the theory of evolution.

It is also perfectly consistent to theorize that high levels of membership in the Flat Earth Society is one more reason the U.S. is falling behind China.

Church and State are both political entities. The fact that they are uniting, though nothing new, is once more more mixing two different kinds of mumbo jumbo. hocus pocus.

Islam isn't supposed to run things in Saudi Arabia; it DOES run things. It is, after all, the birthplace of the warlord Muhammad.

But to the point at hand, scientifically-minded people should point out the central evidence for evolution--the fossil record. If God created everything, why are there so many extinct species? It can't be the Great Flood because many of them are fish and underwater crustaceans. Why are there fossils that are clearly hominid yet not fully human? There is scientific evidence for evolution and none for creation--unless you count Holy Scripture and the holy warrior prepared to slay blasphemers as scientific evidence. Stay tuned for the "Galileo Was Wrong" movement.

I can't believe all you godless secularists. It's really so simple. You don't have to THINK about it. Isn't it OBVIOUS God created the entire fossil record just to test our faith?

LA, LA, LA, LA, LA, LA, LA... I'm not listening, I can't hear you. LA, LA, LA, LA, LA, LA....

I get the 'drift' and God created that lump on your sholders just to test your intelligence.

The whole concept of evolution sheds great light on both religion and science. The great myths of religion embody a subtle truth of transcendence and unity that can truly be experienced by the devoted. We all go through our periods of mythic consciousness whether it takes religious form or not. That in itself is a part of evolving beyond the magical thinking of infancy and early childhood. Myth is a step in the evolution of consciousness from magic to rational enlightenment (there is no reason to think that evolution of consciousness/awareness stops at the rational...but it cannot bypass or exclude it). Rational thinking that suppresses altogether the mythic stage from which it emerged becomes pure reductionism, scientism, etc. and nauseum. I had a professor in biology who insisted that evolution involved no telos..no meaning..no intelligence. In that stance, he had ceased being a rational scientist and was simply an opinionated believer in scientism. Aside from his unethical attempts to preach his scientistic dogma, he remained an excellent teacher of biological science. When someone who wholeheartedly believes in the god of whatever tradition yields to the evolutionary impulse toward rational light, he/she begins to see the truth of the sacred myth in perspective. There are indeed many religious traditions and yes, they do express the truth of an all-embracing trancendence. One now sees one's religion rationally. One has evolved into a higher perspective, a greater unity. Then from a rational perspective can enter concepts like evolution. There are many who have taken this step. Unfortunately, they are in the minority. While "Intelligent Design" may be nothing more than a trojan horse to bring an exclusive creation dogma into the classroom, the exclusion of transcendence from the teaching of evolution is perhaps as damaging to education. Evolution is an inclusive emergence into greater and greater complexity and unity...in a word, transcendence. The Big Bang theory points to the most sublime mystery. To admit this in no way necessitates the admittance of any particular religious myth, dogma, or god for that matter. "God" is not the only symbol available to convey the rationally unknowable-but-undeniable. To insist that rational, deductive thinking (science)is the only way of knowing and that all mystery, transcendent or not, will eventually be dispelled by science, is no less a fundamentalist stance than that of "Intelligent Design", etc.. Evolution puts both myth and science in perspective. It priveleges neither and transcends both...that's just what it does. That's why we still have the apes and all our more primitive ancestors with us.

Peace

I guess I missed the part where evolution was proved by science. Where are the transitional species? Where is the proof that natural selection creates a new species? After 40 years of creating mutations in the lab equal to millions of years of natural mutations not one life form was ever improved let alone turned into a new species. So where is the evidence that mutations create new species? It was evolutionary scientists, who realized that after almost 200 years of looking there was no proof of evolution, that actually coined the phrase Intelligent Design.

After all, polls say that up to 48 percent of Americans are skeptical about evolutionary theory.

When an equal percentage becomes skeptical about gravitational theory, perhaps they can just float away to some newly created paradise in the sky.

It's too bad the U.S. doesn't have an anti-atomic theory lobby. Maybe the next generation could be taught that they should stop fiddling with all that weaponry stuff and just allow the "intelligent agent" to take care of it. Maybe he/she/it could speed up radioactive decay just a little.

I think the point is, do as Socrates urged and "know thyself." The whole things in there, like what ails you.

Nowadays, we could update this to, ok read and study and assimilate, then let's calmly Think For Ourselves.

New slogan for a new religion I'm starting. Send money, Thanks.

The thought of being controlled and manipulated by scientists or religious fanatics is quite scarey. I remain skeptical of both systems. It is only when I see millions of Christian Zionists foaming at the mouth to bring about armageddon or when I see the hatred some Islamic idiots are preaching that even Science doesn't look as bad.

Free_Don November 21st, 2007 2:14 pm -- I guess I missed the part where evolution was proved by science. Where are the transitional species?

Are you serious? If so, you can find lots of links to related topics here. Fossils of transitional species (e.g., fish to amphibian) are being discovered all the time.

Avry, I looked over your web site but could find not transitional species listed. I searched for the word 'transitional' on that page but it was not there. I have searched the scientific literature over the years but can find no actual transitional species!

Here chew on this; using the science of mathematics I can prove evolution could not possibly happen. Human DNA is a chain of 4 things 3 billion long. Using a branch of mathematics called permutations I calculate10E36 possible combinations. That is 10 with 36 zeros behind it. Now if an organism reproduces and mutates through that sequence every second for 100 Billion years how many combinations would it have gone through? Check my math but its only 1e-18% or a decimal point with 18 zeros behind it per cent. The possibility of finding a human in 100 billion years is statistically zero. How many such organisms would have to populate the earth to find a human? Lets put it this way – we would be up to the stratosphere in fossils, and of the most bizarre type. I have not included the fact that DNA alone is worthless, it needs many proteins and other stuff to make it work. Include those in the calculations and you can see that evolution is completely baseless.

Please someone check my numbers and please someone show me a transitional species!

I think the worst part of creationism/intelligent design/whatever they'll call it next is that the attempt to "teach" it is nothing more than an attempt to misrepresent science. Of course you can't prove ID is false; you can't prove that the universe wasn't created 3 seconds ago, complete with your memories of reading the start of this sentence. But evolution is a theory that makes predictions, that can be tested. Graham Cairns-Smith has a theory that our DNA may have evolved from a chemical matrix used to hold clay together, but he's not approaching it from the perspective of "I know it's true, it's in the book" but from the perspective of a researcher. ID is nothing more than an attempt to stop people from thinking by saying "The facts are this, as I interpret my holy book. The search for truth is irrelevant, because I have all the truth I need."

And isn't that the problem with problems from Global Climate Change to the current white house administration?

Craig

Free_Don, your math is correct but your chemistry isn't.
Chemicals don't have infinite numbers of possible combinations. There's also no guarantee that evolution would produce a genetic human identical to the one you're proposing - or do you doubt that every person is genetically unique?

Consider this, if raindrops had to form by water molecules sticking together at random, and all of the Earth's water was in water vapour, interacting a million times a second, we'd form a raindrop every 20 billion years. A look outside my window shows that this is not true. But my problem is that raindrops form in a different fashion (using the Bergeron process).

Craig

Craig, I looked over my post and nowhere did I mention infinite possibilities. They are definitely calculable. Adding the chemistry only lessens the statistical probability that evolution is possible and by many orders of magnitude. Your raindrop example leaves out the physical realities of how water vapor forms into drops which, amazingly enough, has only been explored recently.

EBONIV: Interesting posting.

The high percentage of people with doubts that the evolution of life occurred reflects poorly on the culture and educational institutions of the United States of Israel. I have to leave the question of specific intelligence out of it, although maybe there is something in air, water or general nutrition of the nation. Certainly the general gullibility of the population staggers belief. After having swallowed most of the governments lies concerning its wars and capitalist ideology, its no surprise that the majority cannot understand where they came from, let alone where they are going. Possibly the thought of natural selection processes horrifies them, the winnowing that will occur to rid the future of those combinations of DNA and environment that are unsustainable in the long term. With humans its just going to be very soon.

They should teach The Theory of Stupid Design in all schools. Everywhere around us one can see Stupid Design, so how can one think that the world just happened either intelligently or randomly?

Ben Stein is a fool who just happens to be the son of a former chairman of the Fed. As physicist Stephen Weinberg has more eloquently said, it is useless to try and forge common ground between religion and science. Science has won many a hard fought battle over the centuries, and should not give an inch to the preachers of fear and ignorance.

Free_Don, I don't think we're talking about the same thing here. Let me try to explain. Your description of DNA is something that is 4 things combined 3 billion ways (3E9 ways). But this isn't quite true.
First, although 4 things can create 24 combinations if you group them in pairs, DNA can form only 2 combinations - A=T and C=G bonds. Estimating the combinations can lead you astray by a factor of 10 right there.
Second, there is considerable variance within the human population. Several trillion combinations of DNA are quite possible with recognizable humans at the conclusion; you're shooting for the odds of repeating someone with your genes, which is unlikely.
Third, you're assuming that all probablities are equally likely. Reality is that once life began, and maybe before, some chemical combinations are more common. Once life had been going for a while, the most common building blocks were ones that came from other organisms - a much smaller set.
Fourth, once life begins, you have a working genetic code. However simple this is, that code is considered universal. The reason is that any living organism will have that code fragment (minus copy errors that we call mutations). So, it's not like you're building a human from scratch each time either - that human has instructions from its parents, as they did from theirs, and so on.

And my example about raindrops actually illustrates this point - they won't form in the way that we tend to think (when water molecules adhere to the surface randomly). They do form using the Bergeron process, where they condense on other things (grains of salt, dirt, even larger molecules - the things that made your mother say for you not to eat snow).

BTW, what would you consider proof of evolution? By definition, it can make plausible explanations and predictions, and we haven't found a problem that would disprove it. That's the nature of scientific proof. Technically we haven't proven gravity either - but it would be easy enough to disprove.

Craig

Free_Don,

There is no such thing as "transitional species." It's a wonderful strawman set up by folks who don't understand evolution. There are mutations - the girl in India with 8 arms and legs (Thanks, ID!) is proof of that. But there will never be such a things as a "transitional species."

It seems that you like to use science until it starts to impede on your faith. That's sad. Did your god really make you that unintelligent?

How many times does the failure of logic represented by "Free_Don" (freedom from rational thought?) have to be answered? I guess the answer is an infinite number of times (some of that infinity is at http://www.blognow.com.au/mrpickwick/Evolution/. As Bart Simpson would say:
Evolution is not a random process.
Evolution is not a random process.
Evolution is not a random process.
Evolution is not a random process.
Evolution is not a random process.
....
Or perhaps:
Every species is a transitional species.
Every species is a transitional species.
Every species is a transitional species.
Every species is a transitional species.
......

Craig and Free_Don,

I hope you are both excluding the "arrival of the first single celled creature capable of reproduction" from your discussions (this point is unclear in your posts).

Evolution only addresses how a natural process can generate a variety of organisms starting from the simplest life form that can reproduce. This initial condition dramatically increases the probabibility of encountering complex life forms in the evolutionary path.

Mano Sigham blogs on this topic and goes through probabilities as well starting here: http://blog.case.edu/singham/2007/06/19/evolution1_the_power_of_natural_selection.

I haven't found time to check his numbers, maybe you can do so.

Craig, thanks for your reply. Your answer is great but you have not provided any scientific proof in the form of calculations. Assuming what you say is true how many possible combinations are there in human DNA? And if you are brave add the necessary proteins and amino acids and other stuff needed to make me. Then recalculate for every species on Earth as each one has DNA of different lengths. Unless of course you have scientific proof that a DNA strand of 300,000 (a species of fly) can become 300,001. I know of no such observation.

Your comment about drops is exactly what I was referring to. They need something to form around and coalesce into a drop.

Now for the good stuff. Evolution's basic premise is one species turning into another. Transitional species would be proof of that. If there were any of those creatures around the link by Avery would have a book titled "Transitional species found – Evolution Proved", but there was none as I looked. Wasn't it the head of Paleontology of a major British museum in the 1990's that admitted in public that the fossil record does not support evolution? My favorite quote is from Bill Nye the Science Guy, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof". So where is the extraordinary proof?

Thanks for more detail Craig. Our posts crossed.

Thought Shaman

I am giving evolution every possible break I can. Your point is clear, how did 4 things form a chain 3 billion long in the first place to form a human? Or 5 million (from memory, it could be wrong) in a completely different order for a frog. Also, remember that only left handed amino acids can be used! The right handed buggars gum up the works.

Good Stars! Free_Don, evolution is *not* about "one species turning into another." It isn't about "engineering an organism" at all.

It would be easier if you stopped thinking like an engineer and think more in terms of an artist creating a large number of similar "looking" paintings. Come up with a collection of basic styles and themes, and then vary these to create distinct paintings.

Thought Shaman

I could not get to your web page. Is it still valid? Does it provide observed scientific proof that natural selection can produce a new species?

Thought Shaman

But that is exactly what Darwin said in 'Origin of the Species". And I read evolution based materials and that is exactly what they say. And who and where is the 'artist', and where did the "basic styles and themes" come from? Is that science?

Free_Don,

Try this shorter link at http://blog.case.edu/singham/2007/06/19

The above should get you to a folder listing with a single file in it. BTW, I am not Mano, I happen to read his blog often.

The operative phrase is "turning into." A species may give rise to another species, via mutations, but it does not turn into another species. BTW, Darwin was not the only proponent of evolution.

The artist analogy is intended to help you visualize the process (I am not trying to support the idea of a designer here). You phrase your arguments like an engineer trying to build a car. I was merely trying to point out that a better model to understand evolution is to approach it like an artist.

I have seen some amazing pieces of art and thought, "how on earth did the painter think to paint that?" However, when I see other pieces of similar art, I can trace out the variations that make the original painting in question, a variation/progression of an existing theme.

Thought Shaman

Thanks, I read your link. I only found theories and talk – no proof for evolution. It is nice to discuss and banter but no proof. I am tired of talk, I want PROOF! Sorry to be disagreeable.

Thought Shaman

Our emails crossed also. If you look through my posts you will not find any mention of a Creator (besides this one). I am merely asking for proof that evolution is more that a theory and religion, religion being defined as believing and teaching something as true but with no proof that it is true.

Thought Shaman, are we being trolled?

Free_Don, there are two reasons that make me suspect that you're trolling. The first is in your post at 4:30. Science tends to be a cumulative effort; we cite original sources so we can be certain we're not using someone's ideas incorrectly or appropriating them without credit. It has been my experience that creationists tend to go to the comments of the original authors, be they biblical or Darwin (in this case). Darwin is not the latest word on evolution!

Secondly, your arguement about transitional species is a bit of a strawman, or it stems from a misunderstanding. My cousin has a female german shepard. She was impregnated by a (presumably ambitious) daschund. (The pups looked a little like dobermans, and we think she was sleeping at the time.) Do they constitute a "transitional species?" Certainly you can't claim that the parents were the same. What about people crossbreeding huskies and wolves? (I know some dogsled racers). Ligers? Donkeys?

Conversely, maybe you're not talking about two species making a new one sui generis, but one species that is "becoming" another. By that definition, we all are. The human genome has changed in the last 2000 years - check out the noses on roman coins, paintings, sculpture etc and then see if you can find anyone who looks like that today.

I think you're approaching the problem from the wrong direction. Think about holding a winning bingo board, where all 25 squares are filled. The odds of that happening randomly are 75!/(50!25!), or about 5.3E19 to 1 against, by random chance. On the other hand, if you're in a game where the balls are chosen until there's a winner, someone will always have what may appear to be a vanishingly small probability even happen to them. Your numbers are giving you an improbably small chance of life's components coming togetehr to make you, or any other isolated organism, true. What you need to do is to consider that since the chemicals that make the biosphere will indeed combine, how can they do so? That goes a long ways towards making the odds surmountable.

Craig

Free_Don,

There is your problem. A scientific theory, as a collection of hypothesis, is "never proven." One can only disprove a theory (hypothesis).

The only way to disprove evolution is to show that there exists no collection of mutations that can ever be inherited that would cause us to declare some subsequent generation as a new species. However, there is much evidence to the contrary.

Remember to stop thinking like an engineer and things will fall into place... :)

Free_Don, one last thought. What do you consider proof?
I have a feeling that no scientific theory passes your standard. Leave evolution aside a minute and consider gravity. We can make predictions with it, be they things falling when we drop them or spacecraft trajectories or even the bending of space-time. Experiments have been done to examine it, sometimes supporting ideas, sometimes causing theories to be revised. There are a few unexplained areas in gravitational theories, such as how exactly mass creates it and whether the gravitational constant is invariant at all time and distance scales. But most scientists would consider gravity to be true, if not fully resolved.
Evolution is the same. Not every loose end has been tied up. Yet its predictions are mostly valid, and there exists the possibilities of its disproof, in part or in whole. So what are you looking for?
Craig

The number of possible nucleotide strings 3 billion long (4 raised to 3E9) is an astronomical number, but you're leaving out a little thing called natural selection, which is not a simple linear search.

Craig,

Mano actually goes through probabilities and assumptions about surmounting the odds.

I see you present some good illustrations in your last post. However, the problem is that people like Free_Don who object to evolution appear to use the concept of a species as a fixed entity.

They forget that it is us humans who invented the concept of a species in the first place, and that the concept is still evolving (pardon the pun). Hence, my attempt at the painter analogy to get them to think of a fluid concept.

Ipenek,

It think you mean to say that natural selection is not a "brute force" search :).

I really do not know what you mean by 'trolling'

From what I have read, evolution boils down to one species changing into another. Please define what evolution is actually about. How did all the varieties of life get here?

As for your example was it not still a dog? It wasn't a dog/dolphin or dog/something else unseen_and_new was it? Does it not look like a dog? Maybe its shorter, longer or a different color but if it was categorized into a phylum (I think that is the correct word) would it not be a dog?

The article above was at its heart "evolution is fact and should be taught. Anyone who disagrees is unscientific and should go away". I have only asked for proof that evolution is in fact true and provided science in the form of mathematics to show it is statistically impossible.

mrpickwick
I have read many scientific papers on evolution and none say every species is a transitional species. Every species is categorized by evolutionists and a transitional species would be a cross between one species and another or so the evolutionists say. When a whale skeleton is found with a bone in the fin that could be considered a foot the headline read "Transitional Species Found – new Whale". But 6 months later other evolutionary scientists looked at it and concluded it was not a new species nor even a foot. It was start to finish a whale. From what I have seen evolutionary scientists are disparately looking for that elusive creature but none have been found.

All in the world I am asking for is for someone to step forward with proof of the claims - whatever they may be - for evolution.

mrpickwick you only make allegations but offer no proof. How is every species a transitional species when they are so different and so different on a fundamental level.

Free_Don November 21st, 2007 5:12 pm -- "How did all the varieties of life get here?"

They all sprang into being at the behest of an 'intelligent agent' a few days after he/she/it created the universe itself. Prove me wrong!

Free_Don I don't know whether you do this for a living or are just having a bad day. Every species is "transitional" because every species continues to evolve until it becomes extinct. You are totally confusing the two parts to evolutionary theory - adaptation by natural selection (which is not theory but tautology), and speciation by geographic separation. Darwin understood this from the moment he landed on the Galapagos Islands nearly 200 years ago. And since Darwin literally tens of thousands of scientists have refined the understanding of how these two quite separate processes work to create the diversity of species seen in the past and the diversity we see today (including the great apes, the species of which divided geographicallly and continued adaptaing in isolation until they became different species, and continued adapting until today. The gorilla and chimpanzee are as fully evolved as we are, they didn't stop adapting (say) 5 million years ago when they split from the early hominid species who in turn would speciate, adapt, become extinct, except, by chance, us). If you seriously can't understand this then go read some text books, or even popular accounts.

Free_Don,

Evolution is "scientific fact." This does not mean that evolution can never be overturned. It is quite simply our best guess with the evidence we have before us, that theory does have predictive power, and that the likelihood of the theory not holding is low. For instance, evolution requires that we find some record of related organisms, and we have fossils that demonstrate that.

The difference between say, a religious fact, and a scientific fact is that the scientific fact is always conditional. Scientific fact always posits a way to disprove it. In effect, its "death" is associated with its "life."

On the other hand, a religious fact is absolute unto itself, and admits of no possibility of error.

mrpickwick,

Your post would be better if one replaces phrases such as "until they became" with something like "until they gave rise to." A species may give rise to another species, and continue to exist for a long time before it goes extinct. I am sure you did not mean to give the impression that a species gets "replaced" by a variant.

Free Don

Part of the problem with the poorly taught theory of evolution is the notion that one animal changes into another-they do not in a linear fashion. Western thought promotes linear thinking, and evolution is not a straight line from A to Z. Evolution looks more like a dendritic pattern.

And although Science IS another way to tell a story, it is a story based upon what can be measured and described on this plane of existence, and no other. It is a dynamic paradigm, it is organized to change and shift, test and retest. If an hypothesis cannot be proven false, then it becomes a theory. If many scientists test and retest the same theory and the conclusions are regular-like the law of gravity, then it becomes a law.

You want proof from transitional species, and this is a misnomer. The fossil record is comprised of a brief point in time where specimens were preserved due to a confluence of events. It is very spotty, and does not constitute an unbroken record thru time of "this" changing into "that".

Part of the confusion I have found is that as a theory it has not been taught in such a manner that the average layperson can understand.

As a short term glimpse of how evolution occurs I always refer people to the pepper moth.

Change happens, and essentially that is all evolution means. Instead of the old view, that the world was static and unchanging from the way "god made it" according to the bible, science opened up avenues of exploration of the natural world that explained these changes that could be seen, touched, felt and measured.

Thank you for a nice summation, ggpearl.

Using "god made it" stems from an engineer's mindset (more like a classical engineer - civil, mechanical, etc.).

"Change happens," is more an artist's mindset, illustrated by phrases such as "go with the flow," and "explore."

The true fight is not evolution vs. creation. It is between different patterns of thought, static absolutes vs. emerging dynamics.

Unless the "engineers" understand that they are really fighting themselves they are unlikely to admit any evidence to the contrary.

I think schools should teach MAGIC,

like at Harry Potter's Hogworts Academy..that would be SO COOL!!!.....oh wait, they already are..in the form of "cintelligent designreationsim"

We cant explain it, so it must be MAGIC

For anyone REALLY interested in looking at this stuff a little more closely, I can't recommend anything more highly than playing with the concepts yourself...

Try these first:

http://www.swimbots.com/GenePool5.exe
http://www.ventrella.com/Darwin/DarwinPond.zip

If you're still interested, there's much more, depending on what exactly you're wanting to look into.

I highly recommend a program called NetLogo (google it, you'll find it fast) for exploring system interdependence issues. If you're more into the evolution / biological simulation side of things try Framsticks after that. The learning curve is steep, but the program's depth and capability make it worth it.

Oh, and for my 2 cents: I'm a monotheist who believes in evolution. Go figure.

neomunk,

Why should it be surprising that you are a monotheist who believes in evolution? As I mentioned in a previous post, the real fight is between different mindsets.

All one has to do to retain god intellectually, is to pick any natural process and simply assign god as its necessary, first cause.