Again let me draw attention to the hypocricy at work with people like Knute, he claims it all about the evidence, and no evidence counts except if it happens before his eyes (everything else is just 'observations')? Does he then have a problem with God? Or the big bang theory? or even jurors convicting people on other evidence other than eye witness accounts?

you can NOT provide proof of evoultion sinse none exists. you can provide observations, and you can provide opinions but you can NOT provide facts.

If i go into his house and he does not see it happening, does he believe the fingerprints i left behind are merely "observations" and not evidence or proof that I was in his house? What if the footprint matchs my shoe as well. What if they then also find DNA evidence say the hair/fingern nails matching my dna?

At what point will he start believing I was in his house ?

Or will he never ever believe i was in his house unless he was there at the time watching me come in because dna, fingerprints , footprints are just 'observations' and 'opinions' i was in his house? LOL

Oh, I thought this thread is about good an evil in GalCiv2 and not about good and evil in real life...

Darklor

Darklor, it started as that. It's got way out of hand since

Now, to respond to knute. I never said fantasy. Whether you like it or not, it happened. However, I said the evidence was debatable, nothing else. It IS NOT fantasy, and it happened. Most religious people I know accept this, and the only ones who don't were brainwashed by being taugh by nuns, and can't bring a shred of evidence to their theories, and use the "I aint no monkey" argument. Sadly a lost cause, because these people tend to be immune to logic, and don't know a thing about evolution.

You want to see it happen? Fine. I mentioned Chernobyll, where the lack of natural selection mechanisms allows 3 eyed frogs to grow. There are multiple-headed turtles in the world, extremely rare due to the fact that each head is (seemingly) independant, which makes walking a difficulty. Again, they have beem saved by the people that found them, defeating natural selection. These things are mutants. Mutations are evolution.

There is no good or bad in nature. No "useful" genes or "useless" ones. If it survives, it breeds. If it breeds, it multiplies. If it does this enough to get into the genepool at large, it has evolved. You cannot deny this has happened, there is so much evidence for things like this (and, as I said before, hybrids like mules, zonkeys, etc are evidence for the mutation-breeding) that I would be less impressed if you managed to persuade me that the sky was purple.

If you must continue with the ridiculous notion that you can see evolution, then study bacteria. Get a high powered microscope and projector, and film it. You will probably see them change over time. DNA changes every generation, and if it works it stays. That is evolution in progress, and the only way you can defeat that is to say that bacteria don't exist, and are a figment of scientists imaginations. Do that, prove it, record the proof, and present it to someone, and I'm sure you'll be nominated for a nobel prize soon enough.

Oh, and frogs don't grow wings because it would serve them no benefit and they haven't got anywhere near the genetic structure. Reptiles became birds because they had cooling mechanisms. Some mammals could do it too. Frogs however aren't aerodynamic. Cats and dogs evolved seperately. As did humans and apes. You seem to think that we evolved from apes, which is a cause of a lot of misunderstanding. We (all primates) had an ancestor tree, that split into branches. We are cousins of apes, not descendandts.

sorry i got held up ive read all the replys. and i may say that you ahve all done an outstanding job of using google and cut/paste. there is post after post, pointing out everything from my lack of understanding, to my spelling errors, and even boasts of 'victory' as if the conclusions reached in this forum will shut the doors to collages across the world and God will be declared a myth by the U.N tommorow and creation will become the next Holy grail. and yet not one link to a whale with gills or a frog with wings. lots of thunder and flash but no lightning strikes. you cant <----- read that slow because i typed it slow for you since you missed it last time. you can NOT provide proof of evoultion sinse none exists. you can provide observations, and you can provide opinions but you can NOT provide facts. you can not show me one case anywhere of any thing evolving into something different. no horse fly has ever evolved into a horse. and all the MACRO paths that that were admited to be fantacy by marc are a prime example of it, there is NO direct link between dogs and cats. none, there is no direct link between dogs and man, none, there is no direct link between cats and humans, none. there isnt even any direct links between man and apes ................... none. there is fruit flys that change color , but are still fruit flys, there are bacteria that change size and shape as well as color, they even develope the ability to live in enviroments that would have killed their parents, but they are STILL bacteria. and THAT my dear lads is what you keep missing, that point just flys over your heads and dissapears into the wild blue yonder. all your posts are just alot of noise to cover the fact that you cant point to a single case of observed evoultion where one species evolved into another one. if i have to. (and lord i hope i dont have too) i can go fire up the old google engine too and provide links to all the breaks in the chain. i can provide all those cases where the bridge turned from oak to pine. but would it help? prolly not. as hard headed as you think us creationists are, heh *shakes head* well lets just say that its a two way street. ill tell ya what, now that you cant provide the flying frog or the whale with gills, ill rest my case. and let anyone who cares too take it from here. ive asked for proof, none has been provided. none of you have asked for my proof of God, i say that its evident in the fact that when you turn the light on you dont have to turn the dark off. my 'proof' will be supplyed to each and every person alive today, the instiant after their death. im content to give up this 'victory' and wate for the final battle. i surrender. the field, sir, is yours

Knute, you DID NOT read through all the posts. Yes, some of mine had parts that were cut-and-paste but would you have me re-type the whole thing? I know, I know, noone wants to read large posts so we'll take it in smaller bites.

Please READ the following; it's from a debate between two professors at Brown unversity (one pro, one con evolution:

"He repeatedly asked questions like: "How can life spontaneously assemble?" or "How could an eyeball evolve?" If I cannot explain to the satisfaction of Walt Brown, right now, how an eyeball evolved, then evolution did not occur. But this is nonsense, confusing an observation with its causation.



The first time he did it, I said to the folks, suppose I were to tell you that I saw the baseball game on TV last night. Then you ask me to explain how that picture got through the air all the way from New York. I don't know. But that doesn't change the fact that I saw the game. Second time Brown did it, I picked up a roll of duct tape and dropped it. I said that of the four forces of nature, gravity is the least understood. Physicists can't explain why that roll of duct tape dropped. Yet it did fall. The third time he demanded some sort of explanation from me regarding an evolutionary observation, I simply told him I would explain that particular observation if he would explain why TWA flight 800 crashed. The debate here is whether evolution has occurred, not how it occurred." <br/>




This is the same as your BEST argument......... Comment?

That's a good argument, but I think knute is claiming more that you CAN"T point to any evidence for evolution (an emperical question) rather then saying evolution is impossible based on what we know (a theortical one), altough no doubt there is some of the latter as well.

People who argue the later , tend to ramble about the 2nd law of thermodynamics....

"He repeatedly asked questions like: "How can life spontaneously assemble?" or "How could an eyeball evolve?" If I cannot explain to the satisfaction of Walt Brown, right now, how an eyeball evolved, then evolution did not occur. But this is nonsense, confusing an observation with its causation.

The first question is a much bigger mystery then the second. Altough many people confuse abiogenesis and evolution, in theory they are not the same, The evidence for the latter is nearly unchallengable, the former is much less so.

"How can life spontaneously assemble?"

Well, the standard textbook answer is "A combination of our volcanic atmosphere, and porbably a meteorite, caused protein strings to be created, forming deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA. This twisted and formed into methane breathing bacteria, which expelled oxygen. As more oxygen became available, some bacteria learned to breathe oxygen, which was more efficient in terms of energy, thus they generally prevailed".

This doesn't satisfy me whatsoever. I'm not going to say "why?" because I believe there is no reason or why to the universe. There is no cartesian principle at work here, the universe merely is. However, where did the meteor which contained the remaining pieces of the puzzle come from? Why did it contain RNA? Why is it that life was created back then without a seeming hitch, but when scientists form it it's unstable? (well, that last one is probably because a petri dish doesn't compare to a planet, but still it stands as a point) where, when it all gets down to it, did life start? Odds are that if Earth had been left alone without any meteoric interference, a fair few scientists believe that nothing would have happened. Which leads us back to the question: Are we alone?

Oh, and I tried to explain the eyeball thing as it's current theory. It's not a matter of removing a piece, it's a matter of the pieces becoming more and more complex, until it looks like it's hand crafted. The eye is not anywhere near perfect, it's blind spot has been mentioned, and just think how easy it is to trick the eye. A famous magician (can't quite recall his name) once made the Suez canal disappear through mirrors and other trickery, and slight of hand is well know.

If you persist with the theory that God made us all, made the eye, all in his own image, then you are left with 2 options. 1) You're wrong. 2) God isn't perfect at all.
I'm not religious, but even when I did believe in a God I didn't worship him, since if he does exist then he has made so many obvious mistakes. Sod innefability, I refuse to pay homage to someone who is as flawed as I am.

Well, the standard textbook answer is "A combination of our volcanic atmosphere, and porbably a meteorite, caused protein strings to be created, forming deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA. This twisted and formed into methane breathing bacteria, which expelled oxygen. As more oxygen became available, some bacteria learned to breathe oxygen, which was more efficient in terms of energy, thus they generally prevailed".

I don't think there is a standard textbook answer yet.

The one you described sounds like panspermia to me, the theory that life basically came from outer space. A possible theory, but one that just pushs the question back one layer.

Most other theories, speculate that there were simpler forms of replicators, more primitive than DNA, (RNA??m, clay based?) that kick started the processes, and through bootstrapping they were replaced by more and more complicated replicators until we came to DNA.

But it's just a theory, and different scientists have different candiates for what this inital primitive replicator ancestor of DNA was, but we might never know really the answer.. We need to know more about the conditions that prevailed in the past as well..

Evolution of the eye is far different. People claim that eyes are useless unless all the components are there, but simply by surveying nature we can see species with eyes of varying sophisication from simple light sensitive cells, all the way to complex len like eyes of different designs and with many steps in between.

This shows that eyes do vary in ability, and that you don't need a fully blown 100% super advanced eye , for it to be useful. So eyes can indeed slowly evolve.

He must be off asking his pastor how to respond...