40% of the United States poplation believes in evolution

Well, those footprints proved to be erronous. I do believe in God and I do believe he has interacted with members of the human race and has influenced historical events. I believe that evolution/natural selection was intended to be the way God wanted nature to be controlled. I believe in God for many reasons too numerous to go into at this early hour.

Remember, God never explained to man how nature worked. He only gave us a roadmap to live peacefully, although sometimes its not so peaceful, within His creation.

God is very much mysterious. I do not believe we simply wink out of existance at the end of our life, but I cannot tell you what happens.

I know.


I don't know ... I think a lot of theories become proven.


I know that we can see natural selection and species changing in the lab and in the wild. I am well aware of that.

What I'm saying is that until I see one species become another, then evolution (the entire theory of it) will not be a fact for me. There is no 'missing link'. Some are saying that the species drift thing is the missing link. I have not been convinced of that.

BUT like I said .. I don't care either way. God creating Adam and Eve or Evolution .. it doesn't matter to me. It doesn't change my beliefs that God had a hand in our creation and that He can use whatever method He wants to make us.

I can't stand when people try and use the 'tornado through the junkyard' analogy. It just goes to show that you have no clear understanding of evolution. You've basically created a strawman and attacked it.

Evolution is NOT a proccess of chance and probabilities. It uses the proccess of natural selection. It would be crazy to think we got here by chance. Natural selection is nearly the opposite of that.

I really wish people would actually research evolution and understand it before posting here. We seem to always have the same discussion when evolution pops up. "its just a theory", "Its not proven", "its like a tornado going through a junkyard and creating a 747", "missing link = no theory"... etc, etc.

Lots of people like to create a false dichotomy when it comes to evolution. I think we should restrain from using this arguement:

1) There are holes in evolutionary theory.
2) Since there are holes, evolution doesn't exist.
3) Since evolution doesn't exist, ID must exist.

Why is it people always take that last step and jump on the ID bandwagon?

I also noticed, in this discussion as well as others, that people like to say "I dont beleive in evolution" and then use that as an arguement. This is completely bogus. We should ultimately restrain from using "I" in an arguement like this, unless you've got some serious evidence to back it up. Why don't we use phrases such as: "the *blank* institute, school, scientist, journal states this about evolution..."? Who really cares about what you or myself thinks about evolution? Thats not the point here.

About scientists excluding the possibility of god, they are most likely presumming it a very small probablitiy, not completely dismissing it. you can't disprove god, you can only assign a certain probability to it, which is very minute. This is because science leaves the door open for evidence to come in.

Interesting, LuDaCrIs. I have seen evolution believers do the same thing when it comes toward ID. It works both ways.

no, it doesn't
the problem is the evolution has proof
ID doesn't
we've actually witnessed evolution on the microscale
the only reason we can't see it on the macroscale is because of the number of generations required to observe it

evolution has more evidence coming to support it every single day
it doesn't rely on disproving ID



that's all ID has
unless you can prove otherwise

We have found missing links.

Never happened. What did happen in some instances is that people misidentified another animals footprints as being human.

There are no natural assocaitions of human fossils and dinosaur fossils.


THere are plenty of missing link fossils.


You can interpret the bible in any number of ways, they are all irrelevant as far as what the evidence says.


String Theory has nothing to do with the supernatural, it is yet another finer detailed and higher resolution materialistic-scientific explanation of the world.

The Matrix movies have nothing to do with string theory. If anything, its frmo the 'brain in a jar' idea.


I am confused then. Why do you accept that change in species occurs through natural selection, but then say that evolution doesn't happen?

Theories are incapable of being proven, its a technicality, but its real. They can't be proven. Sometimes, a theory has been accepted by so many people for so long, that we tend to think of it as having been proven, but they're not. If nothing else, anything that is 'proven' can't, logically, be unproven, and any theory can allways be 'unproven' or 'refuted'.

Why isn't, say, lucy, a good example of a missing link? Or homo erectus, etc?

Observed Instances of Speciation

They are not 'spectacular' (depending on your defintion of spectacular of course), but they are cases of speciation, speciation occurs when part of a population can't interbreed with other parts of the population. They can still appear to be very similar, but they are seperate biotic species.

Fair enough. But consider, if god made the universe and man, he made him different from the animals in that he had a rationale mind, he could think was self aware, had a will, etc. And the universe was set up to be able to be 'figured out' by the application of that rational mind to various aspects of the universe, so why not become involved in it then no? IF anything, you almost have a certain obligation to do so no?

Interesting link. I'll have to ponder this and do some googling to see what else comes up. Thank you.



Chimps have been shown to be self aware. One of my psychology books talked about that 'dot on the head' experiment and the mirror. Chimps also murder each other. Elephants have been known to remember elephant 'friends and family' whom they have been separated from for years. But by and large we are supposedly different .. yes.



Ahhhhhh .. why is God a dead-beat dad? Is that what you mean?

Sometimes ... no .. MANY times ... I wonder about that. That big tsunami gave me a real hard time in the faith department. What kind of loving father would allow his children to die in such pain and terror when he had complete ability to stop it. STopping a tsunami doesn't interfere with anyone's free will. I definately had a hard time with that. Still do. I see pictures of dead little children with mud coming coming out of their ears and noses and mouths .. and I wonder what kind of parent would allow a child to die in pain and terror like that. Oh yes .. I have a problem understanding it.

But He's still around. There are miracles that happen every day. I KNOW He exists because I have had two 'close encounters' with Him. I can't scientifically prove He is there ... but oh Nygdan .. He's BIG .. and seriously MAJESTIC. Amazing. But of course, I can't prove that so I guess it has nothing to do with the conversation. And just because He is there doesn't prove that He had a hand in making us.

I fully understand your comment about Him having an obligation to be involved with us. I don't understand why He acts the way He does. I just know He's there and that He's waaaaaaaaaay to big and majestic (these two encounters were incredible) for me to argue with Him.

FlyersFan you might find a 4 part series of videos worth watching. The videos cover the concept of intelligent design of the universe--in a sense. I don't have links to all of them, but you can get them by:

These are awsome documentary videos. You'll want to watch all four of them. So, go to:

www.metacafe.com...

Seems to me I saw where someone had post all four links to the documentary on ATS, but I can't remember where.



[edit on 30-1-2007 by Astronomer70]