His personal opinion, not everyone's.

Good Cartoon.

I voted for Evolutionist.
Not sure I can buy into the Creation myth as prestented by Christianity.
That doesn't mean there isn't a God though.


and it's possible she's black....



_

The teacher was quoting it from the 1995 National Association of Biology Teachers position on teaching evolution. I'm at least pleased to see that since then it has been slightly revised, and the "unsupervised" part was removed... That's at least good.

Yes, and completely disconnected from any religion. Not endorsing or ruling out any spiritual belief, because it is a scientific theory, making no prounouncement on religion.
It may go against what some religious texts claim, in some religions. But that is not important.

This certainly is true enough. You can see in everyday in the species of cats, dogs, birds, etc that exist in the current time. However, using Darwinist Evolutionary Theory as applicable to Man is somewhat flawed. The "tree of life" as Darwin describes it simply doesn't exist.

To wit, Darwinist Theory breaks down in a number of areas and unfortunately, a number of observations and experiments that "support" it, having been proved false or flawed, are still taught in schools and universities to this day.

1. How do you explain the "Cambrian Explosion" the rapid occurance of most of the complex animals in the fossil record about 530 million years ago? Darwin himself saw this as a major issue against his theory of evolution by natural selection.
2. Darwin theorised that species evolve through the success of "traits" that helped them survive, the classic "survival of the fittest". If Darwinist Evolutionary theory is solely responsible for a success of a species, why don't we see more "intermediate forms" in the fossil record or in the present time?
3. The Miller/Urey experiment of 1953 where Miller created a few simple amino acids, the "building blocks of life" in a closed lab experiment was severly flawed. The "atmosphere" Miller used was not at all like the early atmosphere of the earth. Besides, the "amino acids" that were created were more like formadehyde, an "anti-life" compound.
4. Haeckle's Embryos. It has been conclusively shown that Haeckle not only chose embryos in varying stages of development, but that he actually "altered" the drawings to support his evolutionist conclusions.
5. Science has determined that the known universe is approximately 15 billion years old, and most astronomers and scientists acknowledge the "Big Bang" theory as having the most validity when compared to other theories. The possibility that atomic elements could combine to together to form compounds, thence amino acids, thence proteins, all in the correct sequences to create life (not to mention DNA and RNA chains), would far exceed the time the universe has been in existence.

You're an intermediate form,as am I.

If indeed we are an "intermediate form" why don't we see this in other species? ;)

Ever see a Mudskipper?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...s_gracilis.jpg

Speaking of fish ...

Did you know that there are over one hundred thousand different species of things under the ocean and that doesn't even include the fish.

Nobody can prove anything till they die ... then it's too late.

Dead men don't talk :arrgh!:

Allright ill give you just a single example, tiktaalik, look it up

All that is valid objection, and too interesting as if I could stay away :)

I recommend to make yourself familiar with concepts as developed by Erich Jantsch, Franesco Varela, Ilya Prigogine, Humberto Maturana, Hermann Haken, Ken Wilber, Heinz von Foerster, as well as (more speculative but still unobjected) Rupert Sheldrake.

as I said above, matter seem to have an inherent ability of self-organisation, meaning that in a chaos-theoretic sense structures are enfolded inside of it and unfold in an unpredictable (too complex thus chaotic) yet preconditioned manner. We also know from quantum sciences that two particles can be linked in a non-time-depending manner and their mutual behavior influenced by mind, as if they respond with a kind of mind by their own.

There is not really a linear "tree of life" as Darwin suggested. It is not that a species forms and transforms always towards a more modern and better design, and it also is not that there always is only one example of a developement tree - the spearhead of modernisation, so to speak. In fact, species from many time phases of earth'S history can coexist in time, for a longer or shorter period of time. Even some relics from the time of the dinosaurs continue to exist until today. Other first design studies, like the very huge single-cellular life forms that once have existed and reached sizes of up to 1-2 meters (all being just one single cell) may prove to be so unusable that they dissapear very quickly again. Evolution is not really any linear, but circular, it is not necessarily imporving, but sometimes even goes backward, or is simply changing. Only the general trend seem to be "upwards", while inside this trend single species nevertheless can get stuck, or move backward. the cambrium explosion oif lifeforms may have come from the fact that high developed multiple cell-lifeforms were relatively new, and little "experience" regarding how to approach such designs in the best way were "available" for Mrs Evolution. It s loike with econimoc growth of countries raising from a catastrophe or a war: in the beginning, everything is flat and empty, and thus high econmical growth rates are possible, but the more developed the economy is, the smaller the growth rates become, and the harder they are to be maintained.

for a fascinating and very enjoyable summary (600 pages) of the developement of life throughout the different phases of Earth's history, and the history of the oceans, I recommend frank Schätzing's "Nachrichten aus einem unbekannten Universum". It is aimed at the public market, and written in a very amusing, entertaining style. It is a great bestseller in Germany, since long time now.

I personally do not "believe" in the Big Bang. The theory raises more questions than it gives answers. Fact is - if something happend, why it happend, and when - we do not know. It has become a tradition of western thinking of the past 2000 years to think in linear time concepts (it has not always been like this, at least not exclusively), where quantums of time pass by and create a flow from the past towards the future. this way of thinking is challenged by physic scientists in some branches of theories, and it is replaced with a circular thinking in Asian philosophy. That we think there must have been a point in time that marks a beginning, comes from our linear time concept. In circles, you have no beginning. So, when philosophizing about the "beginning", or "origin" of existence, you cannot avoid to take the context of your thiniking's developement into account. In other words: it may be thats cience is not fit to answer the question for beginning(s) of universe(s). and in the infinite-world theory by Everett Gordon and Wheeler, every single event on quantum level already creates a splitiing of the universe in which it takes place: into one universe where it took place, and another universe where it did not take place. In other, a myriad of universes is created every i every moment, right now, ad infinitum. theory, yes. But on this matter, we probably will never have anything more than theories. seen pragmatically, it maybe doe snot make sense for john Smith to waste too much time on thinking about this all this. And even if he would find an answer that pleases him more than other theories - he still would need to live his life right here, and deal with the daily routines and challenges, and the reality as he perceives it. that puts the value of this effort into relation, i think. the same is true for mythologic explanations of why the universe, as we understand and interpret it, is there, instead of nothing.

Heraklit: panta rhei - probably one of the most reasonable and modest statements both in science and philosophy ever. In the end, the only thing we can be sure of only one thing, that in the world of form and matter, there is never a standstill, but everything chnages, and transforms, and gets tranformed into other forms. Lasting truths, final knowledge, maybe are not possible in that kind of everchanging world.

But maybe beyond this veil of Maya?

Speaking of evolution, a missing link has been found according to this article.

These authors write mostly in the theoretical realms. Wilbers entwines mysticism with philosophy, Jantsch *assumes* self organizing, Haken's "Synergistics" is build on "self organization" which can be proven not to work when accessed as a system from which organic life has sprung. The other authors provide theories which are not proveable in their entirety. I'm not closed their points of view, it's simply that at some point, their theories break down leaving more than a few questions.

Matter is self organizing only at the most simplistic levels and is not capable of organizing into the more complex structures necessary to create life. To wit: to self organize molecules of sodium chloride will only result in repetitive chains of sodium chloride. There is no affinity for a sodium chloride molecule to organize with any other molecule.
What is missing is the ability to organize the far greater structure of even the simplest cell, an organism that is powered, reproduced and made unique of "molecular machines", each with it's own unique structure, and requiring its own organization.

For life to have arisen from "self organization" is simply too astronomically remote to consider.

The unfortunate aspect of this theory is that there is absolutely no record of this ascension in the fossil record. The other aspect is that the Cambrian Explosion occured in a very short (geologically speaking) span of time. There has been nothing like it since..

Another issue, in your example of economies, *something* acts as a stimulus...

I will have to look into it. Thank you.

I think you would find the Kalam Cosmological Argument very interesting. I has been around for a very long time and has been passed down for centuries. Simply stated, the Kalam Cosmological Argument is constituted by 3 sub-arguments:
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The Universe had a beginning.
3. Therefore, the Universe has a cause.

A practical example. If you and a friend were sitting at an outdoor cafe and a car nearby "backfired", and your friend asked, "what caused that?" You wouldn't say, "Nothing caused it." Why? Because something caused it.

Hmm, I think a "missing link" concerning a particular simple single celled organism and algae is interesting, but a far cry from the evolutionist thinking regarding the ascension of Man from the apes... for which no "missing link" has ever been found.
Please note also the article calls it "the nearest relative". This certainly doesn't validate at all that the organism IS from the same phyllum or species branch and leaves much detail unanswered.

Obviously, you have not read X-Men.