Evolutionists: How settled is your Theory?

correct. I am not so sure the people who adamantly defend and rally around the Theory of Evolution would do so, if they truly understood the details and what evidence supports it.

I am not going to write a book to defend my points, especially since it would be ignored and thumbed down anyway. However, I will just say, this.

Adaption is a fairly well supported aspect of evolution. In fact, adaption is probably about as close to being a fact as it can be.

The theory of evolution which attempts to conquer the question of the origin of species is fairly sketchy. I am not saying its necessarily wrong. Just that there is a lot more confidence put into aspects of the theory which don't warrant as much confidence.

This is why the whole "we evolved from apes" statement became such an embarrassment. Scientists (even Darwin himself who originally stated it) knew we probably didn't evolve from apes. There was very low technical confidence in this idea. But people rallied around it for decades as if it was a granted fact. Then they started turning up fossils of pre-man species and proved that people were not evolved from apes. We also proved that people have too much confidence in things that don't warrant confidence.

Thanks for the link. I thought it might be some bible thumping website but NPR I can respect.

There will forever be research opportunities in evolutionary biology. New discoveries may or may not require some old ideas to be thrown out. This is called scientific progress and it's a good thing. New evidence that requires old ideas to be thrown out makes evolution stronger, not weaker.

The basic facts are here to stay, including the fact that every species on this planet shares a common ancestor.

The NPR article is about a new idea and I appreciate learning about it. The new idea may or may not be true. Biologists will sort it out and find the truth. And this stuff is why evolutionary biology is in my opinion the most interesting branch of science.

How settled is evolution? Like I said there will forever be research opportunities in evolutionary biology but the basic facts of evolution (for example human apes and chimpanzee apes share an ancestor) are the strongest facts of science. The basic facts are settled. The minor details will change and that's a good thing.

By the way wushuboy is a liar, a moron, and he doesn't know what he's talking about. Religious nutjobs who prefer magical creation instead of basic scientific facts are pathological liars. They might be too bloody stupid to know they're being dishonest but that's no excuse. How hard is it to use google and look things up? The science deniers just copy and paste bullshit from their favorite profession liars for the magic Jeebus man and they accept those lies so they can happily live in their childish every-thing-is-magic fantasy world. Their stupidity burns.

"This is why the whole "we evolved from apes" statement became such an embarrassment. Scientists (even Darwin himself who originally stated it) knew we probably didn't evolve from apes."

That is pure bullshit. Wushuboy, you a liar and a moron and you should apologize.

DNA sequencing has repeatedly, thousands of times, shown that people are apes and we share an ancestor with the other ape species. You can believe any bullshit you want but being dishonest about science and scientists makes you a stupid ***hole. I will never tolerate dishonesty. Drop dead retard.

BAD Christian what is your problem with Chrsitianity is it just lack of education and belief in the loving god or because you have been indoctrinated by an un-Christian extremist sect or cult?!

Perhaps you think god was not intelligent enough to use the big bang and evolution as his tools?!

The Pope, Catholic Church, Church of England and mainstream churches all accept the big bang and evolution!

Lord Carey the former Archbishop of Canterbury put it rather well – “Creationism is the fruit of a fundamentalist approach to scripture, ignoring scholarship and critical learning, and confusing different understandings of truth”!

Nice that Christians and atheists can agree and laugh together even if it is at fundie expense!

But behind the laughter is the despair at the fundamentalists striving so hard to destroy Christianity by turning it from a religion to an ideology!

Surveys suggest that 29% of American Christians are so extremist in their beliefs that they fall well outside of the accepted bounds of Christianity!

While it is not true that we understand everything about it, what is missing from our knowledge in no way invalidates what we do know.

Without giving you a wall of evidence, look at it this way:

If you're building a puzzle, and you clearly can see that it is a picture of a puppy, how do missing pieces invalidate what you can clearly see is a puppy. Missing pieces are not invalidation, they are just areas where more clarity can still be gained.

There is no other scientific theory with as much evidence and merit as evolution. People can choose to accept that, or deny it ... but it continues despite their acceptance.

Anyone who says, "We understand all of evolution" is mistaken.

There are very few things we understand "all of." Biologists constantly refine and correct the explanations they proposed just last year. It's called science, and that's how it's done. There are areas of evolutionary theory that are extremely contentious, and anyone who thinks that every jot and tittle is settled just hasn't been paying attention.

As to whether evolution is a real phenomenon, though .... nobody seriously denies that. Or nobody who can be taken seriously, anyway.

The theory is settled....just as all scientific theories are. See, a scientific theory is built from these things called "Facts."

Do we know the precise evolutionary path of every single organism that has ever lived? No.

Why? Because we don't have every single fact in history.

But...when a new fact is discovered, it is incorporated into the theory.

Why is this soooooooooo befuddling to you folks? From your point of view, Math is just some story because no one has proven Goldbach's Postulate.

Evolution is like gravity in science, from time to time we have had to change our understanding of just what causes gravity, or how it works in the most subtlest of ways, but at the end of the day there was never a point where the mere existence of gravity was doubted.

It's not a contradiction at all.

Evolution doesn't require the first lifeforms appearing on land, or in the sea.

Regardless of where they first appeared, they evolved into more complex life.

It goes something like this. Evolution is a fact, the fact of evolution doesn't change. The "theory of evolution" explains the fact and is subject to refinement leading to better understanding of the fact.

There are NO contradictions in the Theory of Evoution. One only needs to do a bit of reading (from credible sources) on the subject to see that.

Like every other Scientific theory, there will be arguments. However, NO one argues that Evolution has occured, does occur and will continue to do so.

Heck, we can observe it through a grade 9 experiment!

Now, getting to the question of the "theory" of creationism, can you give me the name and the publication number of the Scientific, peer reviewed periodical that supports even a shred of the nonsense spewed by creationists?

No? What a surprise...