Natural selection is not a strong enough force to have changed us from bacteria to humans even over a zillion years. ...There has to be an Intelligent Force controlling it....

Do you have any proof of the statements above? They look like opinions to me.

Can you think of an experiment that would prove or disprove the existence of this "Intelligent Force", or does its existence need to be taken on faith?

To All:

The solution to the evolution/ID/creationism wars is to abolishing government schools! We must begin the process of privatizing universal K-12 education.

Evol/ID/Creationism is only one of HUNDREDS of issues that have religious consequences for the children. Is there any wonder that there are continual tugs of war over the curriculum and school policies?

All education will have political, cultural, and moral and ethical content and consequences. That is why government MUST get out of the education business. Government education WILL alway ***establish*** the worldview of some while actively undermine that of others. The government established worldview WILL have religious consequences.

How can it possibly be constitutional on ANY level for the government to be establishing the worldview of some while actively undermining the culture and religious traditions of others?

Also...it is child abuse to take innocent children and deliberately and actively sabotage their culture and religious traditions.

Evolutionist theory rests entirely upon a presupposition that life is an Immaculate Conception.

Think about that one for a minute...

The "origin of species" is rooted in the idea of a singularity: the mechanics of the DNA molecule. All species of Terran life has it. Like the singularity of the "Big Bang" theory, the two are categorically inseparable as immaculate conceptions. It only takes a mere application of logic.

The perplexing question of human origin from a common ancestor to apes is even more problematic. According to evolutionary theory, humans (Homo sapiens) did not descend from apes, but from some "missing link."

Although Dr. Louis Leaky spent decades searching and found Zinjanthropus and Homo habilis, Olduvai Gorge gave no answers. Logic also suggests in order to "descend," there has to be something you descend "from" and something you ascend "to."

Evolutionary theory rooted in the universal human dissatisfaction for mortality is a vain search for human origin(s), an attempt to rationalize a yearning for connection to something eternal.

Now, since nobody knows the answers, it is only scientific method to consider all points of view on the issue in education. To do otherwise would be like students dancing around totems, with professors as witch doctors proclaiming intellectual taboos and making sacrifices.

This is far worse than what the ersatz secularists accuse the creationists of doing!

Here is a neat testimony from a Godless atheist...

Boy, someone could get rich if he wrote that stuff into a book and sold it - oh, wait...he did!

Oh wait, liberals only like to discuss competing ideas when discuss whether to smoke from a pipe or a bong.

LOL

Evolutionist theory rests entirely upon a presupposition that life is an Immaculate Conception.

No it doesn't. The TOE does not address the origin of life. And I'm sure you've had that pointed out to you before.

But don't let that stop you from rambling on as if it did.

Human and Ape Common Ancestry

Post of the Month: April 2005

by John Harshman

Subject:    Re: Evidence for Evolution
Date:       12 April 2005
Message-ID: ORQ6e.1284$t85.315@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com

Verily wrote:

> "OldMan" wrote in message news:1113277657.164115.220500@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
>
>>I am relatively new to the debate between Darwinian evolution and
>>intelligent design. I have read through a lot of posts on this forum
>>that argue one way or another, either for or against evolution. The
>>one thing I have yet to find is any evidence presented to support
>>macro-evolution. Evolution within a species seems to be pretty
>>obvious. I am more interested in any empirical evidence that supports
>>evolution from one species to another.

Ah, so it's evidence you want. Perhaps you would like to look at this:

Evidence for human relationships to the other apes.

Here is a set of DNA sequences. They come from two mitochondrial genes, ND4 and ND5. If you put them together, they total 694 nucleotides. But most of those nucleotides either are identical among all the species here, or they differ in only one species. Those are uninformative about relationships, so I have removed them, leaving 76 nucleotides that make some claim. I'll let you look at them for a while.

[                        10         20         30         40         50]
[                        .          .          .          .          .]
                 + 1 2++   3  11 +4 3   ++  52+1     2615+4 14+ 3 3+6+
gibbon          ACCGCCCCCA TCCCCTCCCT CAAGTCCTAT CCAATCTACT GTACTTTGCC
orangutan       ACCACTCCCA CCCTTCCTCC TAAGACTCAC ACAACTCGCC ACACCTCGTC
human           GTCATCATCC TTCTTTTTTT AGGAATTTCC TCTCTCCGTC ACGCTCTACT
chimpanzee      ATTACCATTC CTTTTTTCCC CGGATTCTCC CTTCTTCATT ATGTCTCATT
gorilla         GTTGTTATTA CCTCCCTTTC AAGAACCCCT TTCACCTATC GCGTCCCACT
[                        60         70     ]
[                        .          .      ]
                  +++ +++1 + +?   2 + +++
gibbon          CCTACAGCCC AGCCAAACGA CACTAA
orangutan       CCTACCGCCT AGCCATTTCA CACTAA
human           CCCCTTATTT TCTTGTCCGG TGACCG
chimpanzee      TTCCTCATTT TCTTACTCAG TGACCG
gorilla         TTCCTTATTC TTTCGCCTAG TGATTA

I've marked with a plus sign all those sites at which gibbon and orangutan match each other, and the three African apes (including humans) have a different base but match each other. These sites all support a relationship among the African apes, exclusive of gibbon and orangutan. You will note there are quite a lot of them, 24 to be exact. The sites I have marked with numbers from 1-6 contradict this relationship. (Sites without numbers don't have anything to say about this particular question.) We expect a certain amount of this because sometimes the same mutation will happen twice in different lineages; we call that homoplasy. However you will note that there are fewer of these sites, only 22 of them, and more importantly they contradict each other. Each number stands for a different hypothesis of relationships; for example, number one is for sites that support a relationship betwen gibbons and gorillas, and number two is for sites that support a relationship between orangutans and gorillas (all exclusive of the rest). One and two can't be true at the same time. So we have to consider each competing hypothesis separately. If you do that it comes out this way:

hypothesis            sites supporting
African apes (+)      24
gibbon+gorilla (1)     6
orangutan+gorilla (2)  4
gibbon+human (3)       4
gibbon+chimp (4)       3
orangutan+human (5)    2
orangutan+chimp (6)    2

I think we can see that the African ape hypothesis is way out front, and the others can be attributed to random homoplasy. This result would be very difficult to explain by chance.

Let's try a statistical test just to be sure. Let's suppose, as our null hypothesis, that the sequences are randomized with respect to phylogeny (perhaps because there is no phylogeny) and that apparent support for African apes is merely a chance fluctuation. And let's try a chi-square test. Here it is:

These are all the possible hypotheses of relationship, and the observed number of sites supporting them. Expected values would be equal, or the sum/7. There are 6 degrees of freedom, and the sum of squares is 57.8. P, or the probability of this amount of asymmetry in the distribution arising by chance, is very low. When I tried it in Excel, I got P=1.25*10^-10, or 0.000000000125. Might as well call that zero, I think.

hypothesis            obs.   exp.
African apes (+)      24     6.43
gibbon+gorilla (1)     6     6.43
orangutan+gorilla (2)  4     6.43
gibbon+human (3)       4     6.43
gibbon+chimp (4)       3     6.43
orangutan+human (5)    2     6.43
orangutan+chimp (6)    2     6.43
sum                   45    45

The difference is significant. Now the question is how you account for it. I account for it by supposing that the null hypothesis is just plain wrong, and that there is a phylogeny, and that the phylogeny involves the African apes, including Homo, being related by a common ancestor more recent than their common ancestor with orangutans or gibbons. How about you?

By itself, this is pretty good evidence for the African ape connection. But if I did this little exercise with any other gene I would get the same result too. (If you don't believe me I would be glad to do that.) Why? I say it's because all the genes evolved on the same tree, the true tree of evolutionary relationships. That's the multiple nested hierarchy for you.

So what's your alternative explanation for all this? You say...what? It's because of a necessary similarity between similar organisms? But out of these 76 sites with informative differences, only 18 involve differences that change the amino acid composition of the protein; the rest can have no effect on phenotype. Further, many of those amino acid changes are to similar amino acids that have no real effect on protein function. In fact, ND4 and ND5 do exactly the same thing in all organisms. These nested similarities have nothing to do with function, so similar design is not a credible explanation.

God did it that way because he felt like it? Fine, but this explains any possible result. It's not science. We have to ask why god just happened to feel like doing it in a way that matches the unique expectations of common descent.

Biology teachers should teach Darwin's theory of evolution, but also the scientific evidence against it - 69%

This sounds reasonable.

Yet none of the ID advocates have uncovered anything remotely close to "scientific evidence against it".

("why are there still monkeys?!?" not withstanding)

"nothing in science is ever "proven beyond all doubt"."

true, but some things are more certain than others, for example, the process of how the digestive system works, which is pretty much known as fact and not a theory.

Now, since nobody knows the answers, it is only scientific method to consider all points of view on the issue in education. To do otherwise would be like students dancing around totems, with professors as witch doctors proclaiming intellectual taboos and making sacrifices.

This is a ridiculous statement. A lot of points of view have been discarded from science long ago--they simply did not meet the standards. When you go to a hotel and get your key, do you check each and every door, or do you let past experience and logic guide you to the proper one?

(And nowadays dancing around totems is usually restricted to Friday nights. Not like the good old days! Why, I could tell you tales of grad school... )

There is no scientific evidence for universal common descent either...

Ah God, not *this* again.

Talking to creationists is like a never ending conversation with Leonard Shelby from Memento.

Well at least you don't have to read Jabba the Hutts long list-o=links.

"There is evidence against the theory. here are some things to consider.

1. Natural selection is not a strong enough force to have changed us from bacteria to humans even over a zillion years. How come other animals/beings (like other bacteria) havent changed? What was wrong with their natural selection?
You evidence that evolution is BS is that you claim natural section isn't strong enough? Who says that? Other bacteria do evolve, quite frequently and much faster than humans. Many infectus diseases are evolving to become immune to antibotics.
2. The idea of evolution just being completely random doesn't wash. There has to be an Intelligent Force controlling it.
It isn't random at all. Evolution occurs when a single member of a species is mutated, and that mutation makes it better at surviving. This is natural selection 101 here. Take this over millons of years and you get radical changes, that cause species to adapt to their enviroment.
3. There was an issue with the propellors on the first organisms (one-celled.) The organism could not exist without the propellor, it could not survive, but the propellor had to have been brought about by natural selection, which couldnt have happened unless the organism was alive, which it couldnt be, if it didnt have the propellor.
One celled organisms were alive.
4.According to the theory of evolution, in the distant past there was no life in the universe -- just elements and chemical compounds. Somehow, these chemicals combined and came to life. How'd that happen, what caused it, what caused that, and how did the chemicals and other elements get there?
What causes chemical reactions to occur now? Chemical reactions happen all the time, there doesn't need to be a reason. The elements got on earth just like all heavy elements got on earth. Its space dust. These elements bond together due to the laws of physics. Chemistry 101 at any univeristy should cover that. If you want to go more indepth with that, take a quantum mechanics course.
5. Why do we still have appendixes?
Why not? Your projecting your simple view of the world on reality. There is not plan for evolution. Evolution is not a force, its a result. We have appendixes because at one point they were a funcitioning organ. Now they aren't, but there is no reason for them to disappear. When someone is born with a mutation (this probably already happened) that causes him to not be born with an appendix he will pass it along to his children. In a couple million years some humans will have appendixes and some won't. If for some reason appendixes hurt our chances are reproduction then those with them would be less likely to survive to pass on the gene to their children. Thats how evolution works
6. If evolution is caused by mutations, why are most mutations malignant and negative?
Why does gravity attract instead of repel? It just does. Thats not proof that Evolution isn't a good theory.
7. "Darwinists claim that the reptile-to-mammal evolution is well documented. But for reptiles to evolve into mammals at least some of these transformations must have happened:
• Scales had to have mutated into hair.
• Breasts had to have evolved from nothing.
• Externally laid eggs had to evolve into soft-shelled eggs that were nourished by an umbilical cord and placenta in a womb.
They had millions of years to develop. These things didn't happen at once, or even in a short amount of time.
• It has never been observed in any laboratory that mutations can cause one species to turn into another. Despite this, evolutionists believe that given enough time, some animals will eventually evolve into other creatures.
You would have to study thousands of generations of the spiecies, and introduce a major change in enviroment. Like I said earlier diseases have evolved into new strains that are resistant to antibotics. That it self is evidence that the theory of evolution is pretty accurate.
• Sir Fred Hoyle, of Cambridge University stated that statistically the chances of one cell evolving was the same as a tornado passing through a junkyard and giving you a fully functional Boeing 747.
One mans opinion. There are many who would disagree. Plus the chances of evolution in constant enviroment are incredibly small. However over a long time it does happen.
--There are many creatures that defy evolution. All of the examples below illustrate complex and sophisticated biological structures. It is difficult to believe that these creatures could have evolved, since all of their systems had to have been in place at the start for them to survive. Angler Fish; Chicken Egg
Beaver; Giraffe
Black And Yellow Garden Spider; Incubator Bird
Bombardier Beetle; Woodpecker
Why did these animals need to have a starting place setup for them? Because you said they did? I believe Giraffes evolved from the same animal that horses did.
more to come if I have time..."

Well there would be no theological obstacle since I wouldnt believe in the Bible, but I would still be skeptical because there are lots of holes in darwin's theory.

And yet in post #50 you wrote:

well what else would an athiest believe? That we simply materialized, or were put here by aliens?

So you would be the only atheist in existence that had reason to be skeptical? On the contrary, I believe you were completely accurate in your first statement.

And along those lines I contend that the vast majority of anti-evolutionists are desperately looking for reasons to doubt the ToE simply because they feel their beliefs are threatened. So much so that they will latch onto pretty much any rationalization that comes along, whether or not they understand the concepts behind it, fully agree with the motivations behind it, or how much money those promoting their particular flavor of anti-darwinism are making off the flocks of people who are begging to believe them.

I am the one who originally excerpted the article.

In the end, they use Darwinian logic to fit the pieces together, but it grieviously injures the assertion that ERV's are the end-all to assigning absolute relationships.

Well, I guess that's your interpretation. I agree with the authors that in fact what it did was confirm the utility of ERVs in exploring evolutionary divergences.

Evolution is not in itself an attack on religion
Religion itself is not an attack on evolution.
Evolution of species, within species, between compatable species, and from wooly to short-haired, is something we have reason to believe in. I'm taller than my father and he was taller than his father; not fatter (nurture) but physically taller (nature - one concludes).

"God" is an obvious choice for designer (of the universe) but a god is not necessary to conclude that there is some design in the mechanism of life.

(Of course, they might both be simple accidents based on not simple coincidences, which we are busily speculating over)

In my opinion (not a theory by your definition) there is a mechanism at work.
I would have to stretch well into the realm of faith to accept the random arrival of better, or more successful, or more reasonable looking distinct creatures, all based on a hopeful guess that (again) random chemicals, lying about in luckily well stirred pools of other chemicals, at the right temperature, on a wednesday, were struck by a random lightening bolt and decided to start swimming and breeding...based on Darwin or on anything presented so far to substantiate that claim.

I'm sure I will be shown to be painfully ignorant of current ideology, but I don't think Darwin presumed that his observations were any more reflective of the meaning of life than did monty Python when they offered up their version.

o the extent of the debate I've seen so far, 'evolution' is being used either as a cover story for secular survival or as a knee jerk defense against the questioning of your beliefs.
(I prefer to believe the latter)

Two opposing view points, each with strong support and deep roots, should be allowed to face one another - not be dictated by courts or by a stone wall.

"Recycling the same old stuff I see."

that was an extremely dumb statement,ml1954. I guess you don't believe in saving any essays, files, reports, writings, or anything else you've ever written to reference in the future.

On a previous evolution thread, I compiled a few challenges to evolution. What's wrong with using them again, especially when my post was directed not to you, busybody, but to another poster whom I had never shared those points with before.

I don't have the time to go rephrasing my previous posts or looking for more information when I have already compiled it. And why should I, if I have already compiled the information I want?

Now do you understand?

Maybe you think my tagline and other quotes from historical figures are "recycled old stuff" too.

What BS.

That is not what this survey says at all.

What do you expect? its WND.

One step above NewsMax, which is one step above Debka.

Hi zeeba neighba, LOL I love that comic, my favorite one is when the alligator gets fired from the fast food place for threatening to eat the zebra :-)

I think you would answer ENCYC. What I would say is all 26 letters of the alphabet came into existence at the same time and that life shares common characteristics and are not necessarily related by common descent, but by similarity; i.e. all life is similar. I think a more relevant representation would be:

No. I'd answer encyclopedia. Each of the word is related to 'encyclopedia' by a one letter change.

Otherwise you are assuming what you are trying to prove.

If I list those five versions of 'encyclopedia', and say they look like they're all copies of a single word with a small number of errors, what am I assuming?

I see similarity and see similarity.

You see similarity and choose to look no further. Fine. But don't say we have no evidence, because similarity is evidence. It's one thing to decide not to look at it. That's a choice. It's another to claim there is none. That's a falsehood.

Nor do I see how this gets you to a creature which you have no genetic information for?

But I gave you the eyecolor - which is genetic information - for a creature - your grandfather -for which you had no genetic information. All I had to do was look what was common to his descendants. Is it really for hard for you to see that if we have gigabytes of genetic information - not just one characteristic- for hundreds of different descendants, we can piece together what the genome of the ancestor looked like, even though we don't have any direct information about it?