[rickdylan]

The age of the universe is 14 billion years, which must be accepted in order for evolution to work. The dating methods used by scientists on fossils have not been debunked by creationists-the age of the earth is 4.5 billion years, this fugure is universally accepted by scientists....

I don't care who accepts it, it's wrong. Again I'd GUESS that our universe at large is eternal but the people who claim our planet is 4 billion years old are the same people who go on trying to claim that this meat is 68 million years old:

and we both know that's impossible.

[Coyoteman]

Are you beating this dead horse again?

It has been explained to you many times where you are wrong.

[tyke]

...are the same people who go on trying to claim that this meat is 68 million years old

Meat?? LOL. That's the funniest thing I've read all weekend. Really, perhaps you should go back to the original source of that photograph (i.e. not the creationist website you cribbed it from) and learn what the object in the photo is really made of before you start claiming that it tastes like chicken.

[E-Mat]

rickdylan, camerakid400, DaveyB:

Thank you for the lively and civil discussion. Debates like this should be the argument for both sides to consider teaching both sides.

I get more science--and certainly more interesting science--in one FreeRepublic evolution debate than I ever got in weeks of biology and zoology classes in high school and college.

At the very least I can conclude that all Quebec school curriculum should be FreeRepublic-approved.

Now I have two other points of observation:

"Due to the special circumstances required for preservation of living beings, only a very small percentage of all life-forms that ever have existed can be expected to be discovered. Thus, the transition itself can only be illustrated and corroborated by transitional fossils, but it will never be known in detail."

If there aren't even enough fossils to represent all the evolutionary transitions we expect to see, then how can there be such an excess of redundant fossils for the species we do see?

Also:

"Sure, there are many things we don’t know about evolution, but the field of biology would collapse if evolution wasn’t there to tie everything together."

camerakid400,
For the sake of the credibility of everything else you posted, please confess that you made this statement in haste.

Biology existed long before the hypothesis of evolution, and would continue to exist even if evolution wasn't there. Evolution can be both hypothesis and conclusion, but all the real science remains with or without the conclusion. In fact, it's arguable that biology would be a far more productive science if less resources were spent on trying to prove something that by its own admission could not affect us in a million years. (Sort of reminds me of SETI.)