yah, i will in time..Its just been an insanely busy week for me..i will PM you when i post a reply to that, when i get around to sitting down and studying over it.

Haha, no rush. Don't worry, I won't bite your head off like that other guy. :-)

what other guy?

Hey alcoholsoluble, be gentle until you face true ignorance (eg. TheWiseMan ) metaphor is here to try and understand teh evolutionary viewpoint, which isnt something an ignorant person would do, ignorance would be listening to your preacher babble about pseudo-evolutionary examples and metaphors, and trusting him to be your guiding hand just because he has spiritual authority.

*waits for the next creationist post to debunk it *

That's my job! :-P

Actually, it's exactly what every ignorant person should do.

ig·no·rance
n.
The condition of being uneducated, unaware, or uninformed.

Read that again.

My great-grandfather had a good saying. You can teach the ignorant, but there's no cure for dumb. I've been avoiding calling him dumb, as he seems to want to learn. Ignorant, however, simply means, as stated so many times before now, uneducated, unaware, or uninformed.

Fair enough, it would seem we have a slightly different take on the word. What i understand it to mean is ignoring, or being ignorant. But anyway pure semantics, sorry for the original post

AlcoholSoluble did use the word "ignorant" correctly, but I still think the personal attacks were unwarranted. (i.e. "pathetic" and "Please tell me you don't have kids")

I agree with bns here.

Again, I am sorry for some of the things I said. I have a tendency to really get into arguments sometimes, to the point where I'm just arguing for the sake of arguing. Some of the things I said, I probably shouldn't have. I just didn't think things through enough when I first posted it.

metaphor-, and any whom I have offended with my words, please accept my humblest apologies.

Well, I can't speak for metaphor, but personally I'll let you off the hook. We all get a little carried away sometimes. It's big of you to apologize, and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you didn't really mean anything by it.

Welcome to the board!

Thank you, kind sir. ^^ I will try to hold my posts to a higher standard and recheck them before posting.

But do fire off a good one, now and then. If only to keep the gallery amused.

I started a thread in The Backyard on evolution, perhaps we should continue this debate there. It does get a lot more traffic.

No fuckin' way! I get way to tired of many people going from misconception to misconception, having them pointed out, only to have new people just starting all over again.

• Various BS about misconceptions(or even strawmans) basically seeing evolution as creation, as many narrow minds can apparently not even conceive evolution;
  • Mutation DOES NOT always give beneficial traits. (like tumors in people, which can be a cell-division error.)
  • Evolution DOES have random variation in it. It DOES NOT produce "perfect" creatures in any sense.
  • Evolution IS NOT totally random. Small changes can get made during cell divisions, and crossing over is done with sexual reproduction.
  • And in god sakes, different animals have different genes not like every species has a single set.

• There are no irreducible traits on any of the creatures, for instance the eye in this thread.(Or explore the link hackle gave) Many things have redundancies and still function when changed. Also note that functions of certain attributes can change. Lastly, notice that many creatures actually differ a only a little on the microscopic level. Or even macroscopic; mammals, reptiles and birds all have the same basic shape, spine, four legs(arms) and a tail. Mammals have similar lungs etcetera. It might well be that these have not evolved differently because it does not have the oppertunity to.

• "Life comes from life"; Well, evolution itself does not attempt to explain abiogenisis. Creationists are the ones so crazy to claim abiogenisis creates entire creatures of all species, with everything on it, which is way crazier then just thinking it created a single or a few. (independent from each other.) There actually might be ways of increasing the chance.

• "I never see life in my pasteurized peanutbutter or whatever other such product."; Ever watched your peanutbutter with a microscope? If you did, and there was a single cell of 'new life' in there would you find it? Should i calculate it for you?? Do you fuckin' expect a whole creature with legs and lims in there?? And why dont you compare the volume*time of all pasturized goods ever to exist to the volume*time of 0.001% of the water(aka potential spontanious life creation volume) on the earth times 1.0 billion years.

• In conflict with thermodynamics; Thermodynamics does not say what hypothetical poster says it does, and is not that sure thermodynamics and statistical physics is true either. (For instance arrow of time problem.) Works so far in experiments, Maxwells demon might indicate that microscopic manipulation might break it. Has various problems, but works in the cases we work with.

• "Where are the missing links?"; Then we find the missing links, guess what the question becomes then? You have guessed it, "Where are the missing links?". People wont be happy about this until we have found fossils of every creature in the world. I also always wonder where the missing link is in the rotation of my clocks pointers.

• "No proof"; there is at least partial proof(in link), and there really is no other reasonable theory.

• "It is only a theory"; So is gravity.. Sayings like "Just a theory" are just sayings, actually theories have varying acceptedness in the scientific community, and some are true for approximations. Some are not true at all. Just about everything in science is theory; that does not stop the laser in you cd-reader, the electron gun in your CRT, you car, your cpu and memory from working.

• Misquoting scientists; In the science community evolution is by vast mayority accepted. Do not let discussion of scientists about how it happens mislead you. And for god sakes, TAKE POPULAR SCIENCE ARTICLES WITH A GRAIN OF SALT.(that one more general)

• But it is all-so-beautiful non-arguments.; Not about evolution nor abiogenisis. Seems most of the universe does not actually contain life by any standard. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

• Does not explain anything. Yes it does! And what does creationism explain? Some dude pulled it out of his magic hat?(Dont whine about we not knowing about the origin of the universe either, we admit not knowing that, so should you.)

Here is hackle577's link The Talk.Origins Archive: Must-Read FAQs
NOTE forgive my profanity, and my excessive bolding style. If i have not got them all feel free to add.(I probably do not)

I read this ages ago, but it is a really good explanation of how evolution is not the antithesis of religious belief.

Evolution - its fact, not fiction.

We have become who we are now from our great ancestor apes. If you accept that you have the influence of the ideas, and habits of your grand parents who lived 200 years ago, then you should also accept that still you have the influence of your great grand parent the apes, but might be a lesser influence comparatively with your recent grand father. And your ideas and habits will have a direct influence on your children and your further generation. If you say this false, there will not be a mankind today, and earths population would be billions of apes.. and if you accept, then you should also accept evolution..

If you accept that worms get originated in a human stomach, and live for years, then you should also accept that life on earth was first originated in water, and later moved to land (the reptiles), and tortoise is one of the oldest species which has seen a million of transformation in species on earth and water.

And you say, the humans today are worse mentally and physically than any time before.. I should accept you.. and again this is due to the same evolution, and transformation.. yesterday we were apes, today we are humans, and tomorrow may be a new species. Thats evolution. The mental weakness today is due to the development of the entertainment media. there is no way to escape it unless to live in peace in a jungle. And unlike our ancestors who ploughed the field and lived in jungles, today humans work with minds, hence the physical weakness. But the greatest development ever did TIME AND UNIVERSE see was the transformation of an ape to a human. And the greatest destruction ever did TIME AND UNIVERSE see was not just World wars, but the adultery of human mind.

Evolution is a theory --- and therefore neither fact nor fiction. There seems to be strong evidence to support it, but also a few things that evolution doesn't quite explain. Make up your own mind based on the evidence.

Well what doesn't quite explain?

How does it occur? Why did it happen so quickly? (The number of possible random variations is ENORMOUS) We don't fully understand the factors involved, and we can't reproduce it. I do think it's the current best explanation, but I don't think it's finished---just like every other scientific theory.

Just to avoid confusion here, evolution (defined as change in the gene pool of a population over time) is a fact. It is the various mechanisms of evolution that are still being fine-tuned.