Lets deal with the last point first:
I find it highly amusing that someone would make the argument that "anyone who doesn't agree with me must be ignorant". When you are loosing the argument, use personal attacks - really smart.
No, I said you are ignorant because you are ignorant - literally ignorant of the realities of scientific knowledge. I was not attempting to denigrate you or attack you, you simply do not know the facts which are essential to a true understanding of the reality of life around you.
David F. said:
I did not at all say "God must have done it". The failure of evolution does not in any way imply the acceptance of Creationism.
The Survival of the fittest is of course true - no one ever said it wasn't. Evolution is a very broad topic containing much truth and much falsehood.
Let's start by splitting evolution into its two parts - Macro and Microevolution. Microevolution is what used to be call adaptation and no one has ever disputed this idea. Of course people and animals change to best adapt to their environment - survival of the fittest.
The question though is, does this adaptation extend to pre-programmed changes or to the addition of new changes? One race of man might develop extra fat around their eyes to protect from the cold, causing them to squint or become "slant eyed". Was this a pre-programmed DNA response which was brought out by conditions (those without it died before they could procreate) or was this brought about by mutations? Some things truly are mutations (take blue eyes for example) while others are simply variations around a mean. No one disputes that there are variations from one man to the next, or from one dog to the next, or from one fish to the next. The evolution debate comes when scientists try to extend that variation along a trend line. The available evidence suggests that variations too far from the mean in a species causes death while macro-evolution absolutely depends upon the survival of a specimen which varies far from the mean.
The fallacy here is that the mean is automatically the best solution. But over the course of a few million years, occasionally a new mean occurs which is better than the old mean, which provides a new starting point. Enough time and enough such small steps will eventually lead to speciation. Your talk about eye colour and epicanthic folds - let alone major changes like skin colour and differences in hair types, growth patterns and colours, have all occurred over a measly 100,000 years. The appearance of different large ape species took place over a period of a million years, a million years go. Complex, large-scale life forms of the kind we are surrounded by every day in their tens of billions first appeared six
hundred million years ago. Mammalian life only about 100 million years ago, but even that was long enough for the continents to change out of all recognition to reach the stage they are at today.
Can you understand the difference between variations about a mean and variations along a trend line? All evidence I have ever seen suggests the later is not possible (fatal). Species delineation occurs when one group falls far right of the mean and another group falls far left of the mean - still variations about the mean but far enough away from each other so not to be able to breed. Darwin based his theory on known fact, but then extrapolated to an untruth. A + B equals C, but A + B might not lead to X.
But how is there an untruth here? You're basing this on experiments done on a macromutational level over the course of a few human lifetimes at best. This simply does not apply to the evolution of species over millions of years, a process which allows for the very very occasional success where you would normally expect failure.
Do you have any knowledge of statistics?
Do you?
Evolutionists use math (statistics) to reach a false conclusion. Evolutionists say anything that can happen will eventually happen. This is simply not true. Just because you can place a probability on an event, does not mean that event will eventually happen. Some things are truly impossible (I think most statisticians say anything less likely than 1 in 10 to the 70 is really zero - I think they are being over generous).
And exactly what are you claiming has a chance of less than 1 in 10^70? No-one who believes in the spontaneous generation of life on earth would claim that it is such a ludicrously low chance. (For the record, 10^70 is the equivalent of the number of seconds that have elapsed since the Big Bang and each second is divided into the number of seconds since the Big Bang, and inside those micro-pico-nano seconds is the number of seconds since the Big Bang and inside those inconceivably tiny artefacts there is the number of seconds since the Big Bang. That's what 10^70 is)
It is not evolutionists who alone claim that a low probability event will eventually happen, it's a statistical fact for probabilities of a
reasonable level, like one in a billion trillion. (1 in 10^21). Creation of simple amino acids out of the mixture of organic molecules available in a primordial earth under the lash of the ultraviolet radiation from the sun (before there was an ozone layer) is not such a small probability event, as has been verified experimentally. Let's say that the creation of a DNA molecule has a chance of one in 10^21. However, in the primordial sea under the constant bombardment of ultraviolet radiation there must be a trillion reactions between those amino acids and other organic molecules over the course of a year (actually over the course of a day, probably). Now, despite your assertion that a low level probability event is the same as a zero probability event, what we have here is an event that will show up after probably about one billion years. Now, obviously if you state such a probability in respect to a normal everyday experience, it's the equivalent of not going to happen, but in this case we certainly have a billion years to play with and it suddenly becomes not unlikely at all, but quite likely, given enough time. Let me give you a different example. People cross the road all the time because in the course of our lifetimes we understand that being hit by a car is a low probability event. But say that we actually lived for a million years. Our assessment of the low probability event would change, and we would stop crossing roads, because if you crossed the road every day for a million years, you would undoubtedly one day be run over.
David F. said:
You see, this is the problem. Evolutionists know their theory is seriously flawed, but they don't have anything better and they don't want to fall back on creation. Most who blindly cling to evolution do so because they can't bare the thought of giving in to the theists. They don't have to. It is OK to simply say we don't know. While there is some evidence that something dramatic happened 6-10 thousand years ago, I surely do not see enough evidence to proclaim creation as the absolute victor (I suspect creation is true but I won't try to proclaim that to the world - I simply don't know for sure). However, cellular evolution is just silly so I can certainly proclaim that as false.
Go ahead, just say we don't know!
You evidently didn't read my previous post fully. "Evolutionists" I will accept as your term meaning in a limited sense those scientists who work in the fields of biology and genetics every day, who accept evolution because it impinges in important ways on every thing that they do in their research which is directed at improving the human condition. This leaves aside paeleontologits, paeleobiologists and geologists who rely absolutely on the truth of evolution in order to do their jobs properly. To pick the most obviously "beneficial" area of human activity, geologists use their knowlege of the real, documented evolution of life over millions of years in order to know where to find the oil that we drill out and run our cars on. Your statement that "evolutionists know their theory is seriously flawed" simply has no basis whatsoever. There are differences in opinion about specific processes, but no-one seriously doubts the fact of evolution itself.
Evolution is not a "theory", and it is not some kind of patch to cover over an incomplete knowledge of the origin of life. It is a fact of nature, endlessly attested by overpowering evidence at every level of life, from the shapes of dead bones (and live ones for that matter) to differences in molecules only visible using X-Ray diffraction analysis. Evolution is more even than just "the way things are" - it is a
physical law. Given a molecule which is able to create copies of itself out of materials in which it is bathed, and a timescale which dwarfs the puny human imagination, evolution
will happen, and complex life forms will result.
