Ringtail
"The article does not prove creationism however, and as far as I know creationism has not contributed any cures to our store of medical knowledge, not even aspirin."

What you do not realise is that modern science was started by creationists. People who drew from their believe in an ordered creation of God to investigate the created.

The idea of continents moving was put forward 100 years before its 'discovered' by a creationist.

Natural selection...creationist...

The law of biogenesis...creationist...

As I only have 350 words, I can only display a miniscule tip of the iceberg...

Now as to you comments about decoding the X chromosone. That has nothing to do with evolution (Common descent evolution). It is totally irrelevant. The differences in the sexes are based on differences in the X and Y chromosones. These differences are just brute facts. No theory is required, they just are. Even in analyzing the differences you do not need evolution, just an understanding of genetics.

You might be interested in reading a recent article on reverse engineering biological life. Treating life as if it was designed seems to be quite useful in understanding its function... who woulda thought
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0500276102v1

Grey

Beg to differ w/U. Ringtail's article is all about evolution. As for modern science, many people from many different religions and otherwise contributed to and began modern science.

A very big claim to say that modern science was created by creationists.

You like the idea of an ordered universe so U will find wot U need to prove it. Tried to look at your link, but needed to set up a password - will try to get to it some other time. Cheers

numbat, with that flawed understanding of evolutionary process I can see why you don't accept it. Evolution is all about gradual changes, but you are expecting complex changes.

Imagine a species of simple organisms that reproduce asexually. Many mutations happen and one of them results in an organism producing a chemical every 10th generation or so, the chemical doesn't actually do anything yet. Later on, another mutation occurs in the organism that reacts to said chemical and slightly alters the organism's structure; still nothing happens. Then another mutation occurs that allows it to exploit a feature of the organisms that do not have the structural change, allowing it to reproduce quicker. It only happens every 10th generation, but slowly this segment becomes the majority of the population.

Members of the population that are more "structured" reproduce more, especially when more "featured" organisms are around, so the predominance of the two types increases. Successive mutations develop the structures & features, and increase the probability of the chemical being produced. They are now "sort-of male" and "sort-of female", but they can still reproduce on their own. The more complex the species becomes and the more competitive the environment becomes, the more specialised each group will also become, until eventually they aren't able to reproduce on their own. Done.

"Yet if one were to look at the similarities between species surely there is strong proof of a master designer."
No, when biologists DO look at the similarities between species there is conclusive evidence of common ancestors, adaptation and flawed biological systems. Science isn't maths, there are no proofs.
---------------
Ian Parker:

"if we could achieve intelligence by random genetic mutations how come we havn't achieved AI."
Because we would need to simulate complex biological processes that we still don't fully understand and that have occured trillions of times per year for billions of years. So far we've got insect-like robots, give it some time.

"Flagellum in bacteria needs 50 closely interacting genes." And?
"Eye was evolved once and you can't get away without 5-10 simultaneous mutations at a bare minimum." Cite?

More later.

David, if you look around a bit you might notice that the strong attacks get targetted against a lot of beliefs and views, not just christianity.

You might also note that some of those fairly intense attacks (including plenty of name calling) come from some who openly identify themselves as christian.

You might also note the long bows drawn to tie evangelistic sermons to topics under discussion. A number of christians use this site to try and preach their message, heckling is to be expected. Live by the sword die by the sword kind of thing.

I personally would prefer a lot less villification of others eg the name calling etc. Have a browse through the postings by christians regarding homosexuality and see how well the postings fit with the way you would like christians to be treated (and I am not part of that lobbby).

I worry that some strict followers of many religions may reject societies laws, and may not take responsibility for their actions because they feel they get guidance from a preist, rabbi, mullah, minister, etc.

Despite that, I strongly support David's comment about Kenny's angry words. It is better if we can stick to debating the issues. Name calling adds nothing to the debate. Christians come in all shapes, sizes and with many different ways of looking at the world. Lets give everybody a chance to express their ideas and feelings and try to learn from whatever they say.

If God created Man (and Woman), who created God?