What are your views on the Theory of Evolution?

My view is the same as the scientific mainstream. Evolution is by far the best explanation for the change of life through time and for most similarites among organisms seen today.

Since creationism is in the news today, I'll add this:

A religion is a set of beliefs and practices that are believed in despite the fact that they cannot be proved to most people's satisfaction. Adhering to a religion requires a "leap of faith" by its adherants.

Science is a set of self-correcting methods for discovering how nature works, and the body of knowledge developed using those methods. A theory is a concept that has been tested against scientific knowledge and does a good job of explaining it. Most people agree upon the explanation given by a scientific theory.

Evolution does not explain the origin of life. It explains how life developed over time. Evolution has nothing to say about the existence or nonexistence of God or any other supernatural being. A large proportion of scientists, including evolutionary scientists, believe in Christianity or another religion.

Evolution is in conflict with Genesis Chapter 1, the other creation stories in the Old Testament, and with the creation stories of other religions. That is not because creation stories claim to explain the _origin_ of life; evolution does not address the _origin_ of life. It is because creation stories explain the origins of species, or "kinds," or whatever terminolgy you use, separately from each other and evolution explains that each species arose from an earlier species by natural selection acting upon random mutations.

(Did you know that the Old Testament contains several versions of the creation story and that these versions are in conflict with each other?)

Intelligent design is a variety of the pseudoscience of creationism, which was created by Christian fundamentalists.

The Christian doctrine of creation, as understood by mainstream Christians, teaches that God created and sustains the universe. It does not specify whether the original creation was accomplished by divine creation (creation ex nihlo), the Big Bang, or by another means.

Fundamentalists believe that the Bible is inerrantly and infallibly true. They fear that if any aspect of the Bible is not "literally true" (that it doesn't mean what they interpret it to mean), then the salvation promised by Jesus was a lie.

This extreme belief, coupled with general knowledge of science, has led fundamentalists to create a set of beliefs to rationalize their interpretation of the Bible with their knowledge of science. That set of pseudoscientific beliefs has evolved from creationism to scientific creationism, to intelligent design.

By far, the large majority of Christians do not link the factual correctness of the Bible to the spiritual truths it reveals and the promise of salvation made by Jesus.

Thus, by a wide margin, most Christians believe in the doctrine of creation, but do not believe in the pseudoscience of creationism, whatever name it goes by.

It really depends on the question you're really asking. The "theory of evolution" is concerned with the gradual changes that occur within a population of organisms over a number of generations. It is something that is easily demonstrated by observing any population (such as the development of immunity to an antibiotic by a species of bacteria, or even the gradual increase in height among Americans).

If you're talking about the origin of humans, from either a primate ancestor or from some deity, then you must phrase your question differently.

It is also difficult for one to support either point in this venue. To support the theory that humans evolved from a primate ancestor, one would need to cite evidence from the study of evolution, anthropology, biology, and statistics. To support the belief that humans were created by a deity, one would not only have to cite the religious text, but also explain why it should be believed (both from the standpoint of why believe it, and why believe that particular story, since there are many creation stories that people truly believe).

I am a Hindu so according to my religion, the universe was created by God(s), but I don't like the idea of teaching that in a biology class.

Being a relegious man, I believe that the God created the universe, but I don't entirely believe in that.

Why??? Well, there is no proof of that. Whereas, we know (or at least Scientists have proved that) the life as we know now started from a single cell.

"Theory of Evolution" is something that should be taught in a different class than in Biology class since Science is all about the proof.

Just a thought....

I think it is a sound scientific theory. However, I also believe it does not rule out the existence of the Prime Mover (God) or intelligent design. Maybe the processes in the Theory of Evolution are some of many mechanisms created by God in His grand design.

we see that a virus can mutate quickly.. adapt and change, so that sums up the Theory of Evolution.

Survival of any living organism depends on adaption and change. Tracing man back.. it's not hard to see that man has evolved. We share the same DNA with all species.. and are 95% the same (re: DNA) with chimps. The common DNA proves that we all evolved from the same source.. most likely a very primative organism.

I look at things in a different light, if God created us all then he created Darwin and Darwin mapped out the methods that God used to come up with world as we know it.