Some good points there.

What do you think about the transmigration (?) theory - life traveling on meteors, etc.?

I thought that evolution showed that animal A adapts to A1, A2, A3, etc. and that it branches from that. I also thought that in the case of a animal that goes extinct, that natural evolution would fill that gap in the biosphere at that time with another animal that adapts/evolves into that gap.

I think that you can hypothesize a subconscious awareness of your surroundings that can alert you to someone staring at you and that it can be tested and demonstrated. I don't need a mystical explanation.

I agree totally with a person taking their own path and explorations through life. Beyond, I'll find out about then. Till that point, there's absolutely no method or way to determine.

Your strike me as more on the agnostic side, as am I. Maybe I'm more comfortable with that.

khalling: I did want the conversation here, but I had hoped or thought that maybe the conversation would shift a little into the why's and philosophies of creation belief instead of more convoluted discussions of the belief itself.
I'm interested in the logic/illogic that drives some 1/3 of arguably the most advanced nation on the planet. I understand the belief. I was raised in the church and one of the big reasons I left at 12 -13 was the continual pressure to believe as the elders and pastors taught, what the Bible said, without asking questions - much the same reason the protestant movement started, only further. I don't claim to have found all the answers outside of religious fundamental belief, but I've found enough to prove that the search and answers definitely belong on the outside,
What I wonder about is with all the knowledge and discoveries that have come during the last 50 years, otherwise rational appearing people - some obviously highly intelligent, insist on the irrationality of such a belief. It's the same irrational logic that drives the Deaf Community to deny a child a the chance to hear, apparently so that they can maintain some egoistic position of identity and wholeness in a constructed world rather than in the reality they find themselves in.
One area I see that this type of belief system loyalty (?) expresses itself strongly is the creation/evolution argument - even the development of 'creation sciences' and 'intelligent design'. There are many other expressions of this type of belief systems/scientific analysis controversy throughout our nation i.e., anthropomorphic climate change/natural climate change, Big Bang/Static Universe, liberty/collectivism, our team/their team types of thinking that at it's extremes out and out frightens me and in all ranges confuses me.
Choosing what to believe or accepting other's insisted beliefs rather than developing belief based on evidence, measurement, and repeatability strikes me as either lazy minded or demonstrative of susceptibility that could be highly limiting to the individual at least. At the same time, again I find intelligent people on the belief acceptance side just as I have on the socialism side. But it's apparently an insurmountable issue to overcome beliefs with facts and history.

Sorry, I'm rambling, but it's just indicative of what I was hoping this conversation might lead to. I enjoy the site and the meandering, don't get me wrong.

Zen,
I thought you wanted the conversation here and not there. I'm confused! we do meander all the time on this site-I've had my share of posts commandeered. It adds to the interest-unless it gets annoying :)

I love this site, because I can downvote you into oblivion. bye bye

So, in a post about the argument taking over other posts, the argument takes over the post.
Does anyone else see the irony?

I cannot see how the article you linked to could help anyone see the issue clearer. It's just a demographic breakdown of survey results.

For my own two cents: it is clear to me that lifeforms have some measure of variability / adaptability in them. Dogs have it to a tremendous degree, other forms to lesser degree. That we've seen some of these variations come and go is clear from the fossil record, and some of this stuff is even pretty recent. I would have LOVED to have seen a Moa, and while that time has come and gone, this thing is not ancient history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moa
That we have lifeforms with adaptability is not the issue. This gets called "evolution" in the same breath as "a chemical cocktail gets struck by lightning and forms amoebas and eventually ducks and giraffes and monkeys". It's this second definition that gets rejected, and people often point to the first definition as proof that the second must also be true. It's a pretty big leap to get from what we observe to what the theory really boils down to.

Texan, there is overwhelming scientific data saying otherwise. While there is justified debate in some areas that does not crumble the entire theory. The very testable premise is in front of you daily. Just try to get a palm tree to thrive in Alaska.

the fossil record is not clear. Human evolution is not obvious.
Some scientist will do and say anything for government grant money.

Evolution has not and cannot be proven.
There are no transitional life forms living among us.

The polls are only a measure of how effective the Federal government, and the media control our thinking.

I tried a couple of times to start discussions on Darwinian Evolution. Not many people here are interested. I am glad to see that you are.

The fossil record is quite clear. Species, genera, families, orders, classes, they all come and go with alarming regularity. That is obvious. However, the mechanisms of evolution are not well understood.

Moreover, strict Darwinism fails at the observational level. On my blog is an short article about FERTILE HYBRIDS. DNA tests reveal that American arctic brown bears are more closely related to polar bears than they are to other brown bears around the world. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear) And so on. Fertile hybrids falsify the Darwinian definition of "species."

Similarly, human evolution is obvious from the fossil record. Yet, Human-Neanderthal relationships have been proved and disproved.

"The Neanderthal mtDNA sequences were substantially different from modern human mtDNA (Krings et al. 1997, 1999). Researchers compared the Neanderthal to modern human and chimpanzee sequences. Most human sequences differ from each other by on average 8.0 substitutions, while the human and chimpanzee sequences differ by about 55.0 substitutions. The Neanderthal and modern human sequences differed by approximately 27.2 substitutions. Using this mtDNA information, the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans dates to approximately 550,000 to 690,000 years ago, which is about four times older than the modern human mtDNA pool. This is consistent with the idea that Neanderthals did not contribute substantially to modern human genome."
(From the Smithsonian here: http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/gene...)

"A newly mapped Neanderthal genome provides strong evidence that humans and Neanderthals interbred.
- Between 1-4 percent of the DNA of many humans living today likely came from Neanderthals.

- People of European and Asian heritage are most likely to carry the Neanderthal genes.
It's official: Most of us are part Neanderthal. The first draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome has provided the strongest evidence yet that modern humans and Neanderthals interbred and that all non-Africans today have Neanderthal gene fragments in their genetic codes."
Article from Science reported via Discovery here:
http://news.discovery.com/human/evolutio...

You can find reliable articles saying that Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens separated 400,000 or only 195,000 years ago - but continued to interbeed up to 30,000 years ago. Such interbreeding defeats the Darwinian definition of species.

Also, we do clearly effect our own evolution. The recent evolution of the brain is another fascinating (and debatable) subject. Julian Jaynes suggested that the invention of writing broke down the "bicameral" mind and gave us a sense of "self."

In other topics, I cited studies in EPIGENETICS. Your grandparents' environment can have determined which of your genes is turned off or on, for instance for obesity. We obviously interact with our environments. The nature and depth of those interplays is not well understood.

I agree it can be very confusing. Like I was alluding to in the other thread both are a belief that cannot be proven to the satisfaction of a truly objective person.

Evolution seems the most likely objectively, but there are several fatal flaws in evolution. Evolution shows animal A becomes animal B then animal C, however all the intermediate animals between A and B or B and C are missing from the fossil record, although logically they must have outnumbered both A and B. They explain some of this by saying evolution can happen in leaps, but for evolution to have actually occurred it would have had to happen in leaps every single time.

There is also the question of short life span animals such as mice, mayflies, house flies, bacteria, and other creatures. Science has studies these animals now for millions of their generations and seen no evidence of species evolution. Sure, they have adapted themselves to changes, but over tens of millions of their generations they show no real species change. Scientists have been able to prompt changes in labs of some bugs, but the end result has always been a bug that did not last.

Religion is in a similar situation that many of the events from the Christian bible are confirmed by other sources such as Egyptian and Roman history, but the only concrete proof for a truly objective person is missing. I think a lot of Objectivists get stuck on mysticism. I tend not to think of it that way, as there are many things that cannot be objectively proven. Examples of these would be like you knowing from across a crowded room that someone is staring at you. You turn around, and immediately look directly at them. That is a hard thing to explain using only the five senses you can objectively say exist.

I think a person has to find their own truth for their own existence, and their own path thru life and beyond. It is clear to me that to "believe" in either religion, species evolution, or a mix of the two is a leap of faith no matter how you cut it.