"Bushbasher and Relda are still beating this ‘fact of evolution drum" - not to mention also Sancho, colinsett, most of academia, most reasonable people of many faiths and any scientist worth a mention. There are some, no matter how loud the drum beat, will always resolutely stick their fingers in both ears, failing not only in a lack of curiosity but in a misappropriation of their myth as dogma.

Explanations of the origin and nature of the world and life are not final truths passed down through generations by mendicant monks preserving the knowledge and wisdom of the ancients; instead, they are always provisional and ever changing, and are best couched in empirical evidence, experimental testing, and logical reasoning.

dan, i said above i wouldn't try to convince you of anything, and i said why. but perhaps you can sucker reida and sancho into playing your silly games. then you can tell them all about the "competent scientists who dispute evolution". i'm sure they'll be fascinated.

george, very nice post. i mostly agree with what you wrote. in clarification, i meant (2), the interpretation of observations, followed up by the usual predictive, falsifiable stuff. that is, science at work, and not dan and his mates jumping off roofs whilst considering the majesty of the biological world.

however, i think you're wrong about the lack of solid mathematical foundation as the reason people are skeptical of evolution. i guess having no clearly accepted mathematical foundation gives them an apparent weak point to attack, but that doesn't explain why they attack it. the point isn't how apparently weak the theory might be, the point is how much the theory threatens Man's place in the universe.

take dan as exhibit A. it's not that he had doubts that evolution is true: clearly he created those doubts because he's scared of evolution, because he wants evolution to be false. and it's a very natural fear. dan's not a lousy human, just a lousy scientist.

Speaking of crawling out of swamps, cane toads are spreading across the country at an alarming rate. Interestingly, the ones that are spreading fastest have longer legs than most toads, and can travel faster into uncontested areas: a mutation is giving them a survival advantage. Eventually, all cane toads in WA will be of the long-legged variety. < http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=2344 >

Where do new genes come from? Some emerge through interspersed repetition (when genes damaged during meiosis are "patched up" with a different sequence to the original), occasionally through damage from radiation, and virii and bacteria have been shown to move genes around, as well as actually incorporate themselves into the genome of other species (e.g. mitochondria). Genes also "shuffle" within exons. Good introduction here: < http://darwin.uky.edu/~sargent/ExonShuffling.pdf >

I have to say I'm confused by this: "I’m not sure what you mean by reliable. Perhaps this means testable or repeatable? How could we test for whether one of our ancestors crawled out of a lake several hundred million years ago?"

Do you mean that demonstrating adaptation today doesn't mean that it existed in the past? Isn't that like saying that just because there is gravity today is no proof it was in effect 3 million years ago? Or that because no-one alive today saw Da Vinci painting the Mona Lisa, we should be skeptical of claims that painting existed in the 16th century?

I would very much like to see valid science from a competent scientist which actually casts doubt on evolution. That's been a goal since the advent of Christian Science, and has been spectacularly unsuccessful. Lots of challenges have been put forward, all have been disproved. Keep in mind that a Christian scientist declaring his own skepticism of evolution isn't a scientific argument.

Also, if there were even a hint that the science was unsound, even the most atheistic biologists would be researching it night and day in the hope of winning a Nobel Prize.

Creationists and their debunkers are confusing two different things:
1. The creation of the universe.
2. The creation of life on Earth.

There aren't just two opposing beliefs, but multiple possibilities:

(a) The same "God" (intelligent being/s) created both universe and life on Earth.
(b) "God" created the universe and its rules, but not specifically life on Earth.
(c) No God created the universe, but a "God" created most of the life on Earth.
(d) One "God" created the universe, but *another* "God" created life on Earth.
(e) No God created either.

Believers of theories (a) and (e) control the debate.
But theories (b), (c) and (d) are left out!
And they're the most intriguing!

How do the debunkers explain the Cambrian explosion?
Or even how life appeared at all?

For most of this planet's history, there was no life.
Science has *no standard model* to explain how life began.

When life did appear, evolution was *incredibly slow*, and only produced *simple* organisms.

Then a *massive* amount of genetic diversity and disparity appeared *suddenly*, including very *complex* organisms!

Why?

Also, just prior to this, a mass extinction took place.

Could the present lifeforms on Earth be "manufactured" by some intelligent being or beings, first wiping out most of the existing lifeforms?

These "creators" subsequently modified their creations, adding extra brain sections to humans for example, but not bothering to modify crocodiles at all.

One "explanation" suggests that prior to the Cambrian period, there was insufficient oxygen to enable such diversity.

However, this in a *backwards* argument, based on our knowledge of today's lifeforms requiring oxygen.
Couldn't lifeforms have evolved that didn't require oxygen?

This "creation" has been mythologised, and mixed in with universe-creation myths to produce the familiar legends.
Just because the legends are not historical fact doesn't mean their original inspiration isn't.

The fact of evolution doesn't negate the possibility of either a universal creator or a life-on-earth creator.

Nor does it explain the *origins* of life, or the sudden complexity and diversity of the Cambrian period.

"Debunkers, I cast you out! The power of Doubt compels you!"

ah, shockadelic, at least your posts are fun!

"The fact of evolution doesn't negate the possibility of either a universal creator or a life-on-earth creator."

you're absolutely correct. but, once again, you should be telling Fearful Dan, not we debunkers. it's not the belief in a god which is getting up we debunkers' noses, it's the anti-scientific special pleading twaddle believers come out with for the sake of their beliefs.

BUT, the failure of current theories of evolution to explain everything is a poor argument against evolution, and a very poor (and standard) argument for god. positing a god doesn't explain anything, it simply is a way to avoid looking for the explanation.

shockman, gaps and contradictions in scientific theories is the norm. it may well be that a later, fuller understanding of the cambrian explosion will radically alter evolutionary theories. but that would not alter the fact of evolution, the evidence for which is overwhelming. once again, with feeling, einstein didn't make newton wrong.

bushbasher,
“Positing a god doesn't explain anything, it simply is a way to avoid looking for the explanation“. I could agree with that, provided you keep the terms ‘explain‘ and ‘explanation‘ within a scientific context. Belief in God - which is the rational background, or axiom if you like, of religious faith - explains many things, for instance the purpose of one’s existence, to many people (including dan or me) but I agree that this is not a scientific explanation, so it cannot collide e.g. with Darwin’s/Dawkins’ or Einstein’s theory.

I agree with what you say about the reasons why some people are scared to accept evolution as a fact of life. “Perhaps this is the reasons” in my post should have been “Perhaps this is ONE OF the reasons“, sorry for the slip.

I never experienced that fear, but I remember that many years ago as a student I was confused and “scared into rational insecurity“ when I first read about relativity theory: it seemed to go against common sense. Only after I learned the maths behind it did I realise that what I had to abandon were the presuppositions of Newton‘s physics, not common sense or even logic.

There are still many philosophical ambiguities underlying quantum physics, although its conclusions have been verified by practice, and the mathematics it builds on is very clear. In case of evolution you do not have these abstract certainties to fall back on. Perhaps therefore you have more militant atheists among biologists than among cosmologists, who are tempted - to paraphrase Marshal McLuhan - to call “the scientific explanation (evolution) is the Message”. Thus no wonder, some people object to seeing the Message (that gives meaning, purpose, to one's life) reduced to a scientific explanation.

I think dan‘s contributions are of interest not so much because of the arguments, but because of the insights into a kind of religious thinking, they offer. You can learn a lot from observations and evaluations offered by a scientist without knowing anything about his/her personal disposition. You cannot, when religion (or “anti-religion”), not science, is involved.