Why is evolution hiding?

[Esquilax]

Inevitably, those of us who aren't professional scientists have to take a lot of science on faith and trust. Unfortunately, that also makes it embarrassingly awkward to ask a question that seems, in the light of recent studies and several popular books, to be growing ever more pertinent. What if Darwin's theory of evolution – or, at least, Darwin's theory of evolution as most of us learned it at school and believe we understand it – is, in significant respects, not entirely accurate?

Darwin's initial theory wasn't entirely accurate, and the theory of evolution has been adapted to take account of new information as we've progressed. But the basis of it has only ever been confirmed by everything that we've come to know about the living world since. In over a hundred and fifty years we have never come across any significant contention against evolution. It is simply a fact.

There are strict limits to variation that are never crossed, something every breeder of animals or plants is aware of.

Argh, you're killing me man. This is just crap, I'm afraid; the reason a breeder of animals- my family breeds dogs by the way, so I do understand what you're saying- doesn't see their animals breeding something that's of a different species is because that process generally takes many millions of years to become as noticeable as you're imagining. The lifetime of a single human, no matter the generations of animal they're able to breed, isn't enough time to bring about the big, attention grabbing speciation event that you're thinking of.

Nor do they have to, mind; in a scientific sense we're able to create new species in a laboratory, because evolution is true. This is a fairly lengthy article, but if you go down into chapter five you'll see that the stuff you're talking about has been done under laboratory conditions for years.

I at this time am skeptic that new information is added to the gene pool by mutation and natural selection to create frogs from fish, reptiles from frogs, and mammals from reptiles, to name a few.

There's a type of bacteria that was bred in a lab called Flavobacteria that can digest nylon. Nylon isn't naturally occurring, and no other bacteria can do this; where do you think they developed this ability, if not through new information being added to their genetics via evolution?

Also, Science has fucked up many times, said one thing at one time was good for you, and 10 years later says this is terrible for you, take it off the shelves.

This is a process that we call "learning." Are you against learning, TC?

Would you prefer that science didn't own up to the mistakes it makes, just to maintain the pretense of being all knowing? Or would you rather a scientific method that corrects for its errors and always works to remove them from play?

Also, even if I were to become the most militant and fanatical atheist on this forum, I would still get extremely irritated every time someone says something like "Dawkins proved that God doesn't exist". Bullshit!

Yep, that would be a pretty stupid thing to say, I'm with you there.

Scientists do not know how to explain so many of the theories of evolution because the research leads to results they can't understand.

Fruit flies are much more complex than already complex single-cell bacteria. Scientists like to study them because a generation (from egg to adult) takes only 9 days. In the lab, fruit flies are studied under every conceivable condition. There is much variation in fruit flies. There are many mutations. But they never turn into anything new. They always remain fruit flies.

And they always will, dude! I don't think you understand just how small these changes are; evolution never has, and never will, state that one species gives birth to an offspring of another species. That would disprove evolution as science understands it, to see that. These are gradual, small changes that build up over time; we might not get fruit flies turning into anything else, but we do get new species of fruit fly from that.

Let me put it this way: if I start piling up sand one grain at a time, eventually I'm going to get a huge pile of sand, right? Why would small changes in species over time not add up to big, noticeable ones eventually too?

I argue that there has been much evidence. One example is the image on the Guadalupe tilma. It was always believed to be a miraculous image, it lead to the conversion of the Aztecs, and with are scientific technology we can determine if an image was painted or if fibers were dyed and what they have been dyed with.

Scientists do not know of any artwork that has or even could by natural phenomenon be produced in a manner so baffling and mysterious, nor do they understand why a tilma made of cactus fibers isn't decomposing after hundreds of years.

Given that this supposed miracle hasn't been allowed a scientific examination in over thirty years, I find this claim dubious.