Quote:A good number of people are (understandably) fuzzy on what Darwinian evolution is and what it isn't, so I wrote this post to give a little info on what evolution actually entails.

Evolution is:

1) The change in allele frequency in a community of organisms over time. Notice how it says nothing about how life on Earth started. Especially notice how it says nothing about the existence or non-existence of gods.

2) There is no #2. The only thing evolution is is the change in allele frequency over time.

Evolution is NOT:

1) A religion. Evolution is a science, and science comes to its conclusions in reverse order to religion. Religion starts with its conclusions already drawn and then searches for facts to support them; science starts with facts and then follows them to a hypothesis, to rigorous testing and, eventually, to a theory. Evolution requires no faith, because it is based on rational empiricism. Importantly, the majority of the world's evolutionists are Christian, and the majority of the world's Christians are evolutionists; the majority of the world's creationists are either Muslim or Hindu.

2) A worldview. Individuals who happen to accept evolution hold to a myriad of different worldviews. Some are religious believers, some are nihilists, some are communitarians, some are pacifists, some are Buddhists, some are Confucians, some are Humanists, some are traditionalists, some are rationalists, some are mystics. The ONLY thing all evolutionists have in common is an acceptance of evolution.

3) A "life stance." Once again, evolution is just the change in allele frequencies in a community of organisms over time. While some evolutionists are Secular Humanist or Straight-Edge, not all evolutionists follow these lifestyle choices; (in fact, most do not).

4) Synonymous with atheism. The solid majority of evolutionists are theists. And since evolution says nothing about the start of life on Earth, it neither denies or admits the existence of gods. It is true that any god who uses evolution as a means to generate new species must necessarily be wasteful, malevolent or both, because only 0.1% of all plant and animal species that have ever existed still do exist, meaning that a god would have had to waste 99.9% of his or her effort on designing species that led nowhere and died, with individual members of those species dying painful deaths, in competition for food, resources, territory and mating rights that would eventually only end in extinction, despite their merciless competition to live.

5) A desire to live immorally. Evolution says nothing about morality and no statistical correlation between acceptance of evolution and "immoral" behavior is shown. As an aside, rudimentary forms of morality are found throughout the animal kingdom, especially among higher primates, suggesting that morality has much more to do with thinking than with the supernatural.

6) A political ideology. Evolution is not synonymous with liberalism or socialism. Some evolutionists are liberal, some are conservative, some are right of Rush Limbaugh.

7) An integral part of evolutionists' lives. While people who are creationists tend to place great value on their faith views, evolutionists almost never think about their evolutionism. Once again, evolution is the change in allele frequency in a community of organisms over time. People are defined by what they are, not what they are not. For example: you probably accept that the sun is at the center of the solar system, but I sincerely doubt that you waste brain cells thinking about your 'heliocentrism.'

8) A philosophy. evolutionists hold to a variety of different philosophical views. Evolution is JUST the change in allele frequency in a community of organisms over time.

9) Hatred of/anger at god. Evolutionists are not angry with God. The last two Popes and countless denominations of Protestant Christian churches have accepted evolution and issued public statements supporting it. Are you angry at God because you accept that the Earth is round? Are you angry at God because you accept the fact of gravity?

10) The idea that men came from monkeys. Evolution says nothing about existing species giving birth to members of other existing species. If something of this sort were to happen it would be evidence of creationism, not evolution. And this is exactly what we DON'T see. Ever.

11) "Just" a theory. First of all, the word "theory" doesn't mean the same thing in science that it does in typical English vernacular, where it means "educated guess," or "hunch," or "hypothesis;" rather, a theory, in science, is an explanation that binds together all facts, being contradicted by none. In the case of evolution, the numbmer of individual pieces of evidence is in the millions and is from several independent fields of research, which all converge on evolution as the only possible description of all available evidence.

Secondly, the only scientific theory which has challenged Darwinian evolution is the theory of Lemarckian evolution, which was discovered to be incorrect in the 1860's. A search of all American scientific journals reveals over 56,000 peer-reviewed published papers on Darwinian evolution, with not one paper debunking it. This is extremely significant, too, because the one thing that would guarantee the exorbinant fame and fortune of any scientist is the debunking of a long-standing scientific theory. And even with such guaranteed success at stake, nobody has been able to debunk evolution.

Thirdly, while evolution is a scientific theory, it is also a scientific fact; the theory we use to describe that fact is called evolutionary theory.

11) A controversy. While there is constant debate among evolutionary scientists about the mechanisms of evolution, there is no debate whatsoever among the hundreds of thousands of them about the fact of evolution itself. The vast majority of the scientific community and academia supports evolutionary theory as the only explanation that can fully account for observations in the fields of biology, paleontology, anthropology, genetics, anatomy and others. One 1987 estimate found that "700 scientists, (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists), give credence to creation-science". An expert in the evolution-creationism controversy, professor and author Brian Alters, states that "99.9 percent of scientists accept evolution". A 1991 Gallup poll of Americans found that about 5% of scientists identified themselves as creationists; importantly, almost all of those 5% were non-biologists, whose training in and relevance to the questions of biology are questionable and whose creationism was based not on their scientific understanding but on their religious beliefs.

In 1986, an amicus curiae brief, signed by 72 US Nobel Prize winners, 17 state academies of science and 7 other scientific societies, asked the US Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard, to reject a Louisiana state law requiring the teaching of creationism (which the brief described as embodying religious dogma). This was the largest collection of Nobel Prize winners to sign anything up to that point, providing the "clearest statement by scientists in support of evolution yet produced."

There are many scientific and scholarly organizations from around the world that have issued statements in support of the theory of evolution. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest general scientific society with more than 130,000 members and over 262 affiliated societies and academies of science including over 10 million individuals, has made several statements and issued several press releases in support of evolution. The prestigious United States National Academy of Sciences, which provides science advice to the nation, has published several books supporting evolution.

Needless to say, the so-called "evolution controversy" is not a scientific controversy, since there are virtually no scientists who dispute evolution, but is a (very well funded) political campaign that seeks to skip the entire process of science and place faith-based hypotheses about the development of life on earth in to public school class rooms.

12.) Up for debate. Most people accept that the sun is at the center of the solar system, that the Earth is round, that gravity is a fact, that atoms exist, and they do so without questioning the round-Earth theory, the heliocentric theory, gravitational theory or atomic theory. Yet, there is significantly more evidence to support evolutionary theory, inasmuch as nobody has ever stood outside of the solar system and watched the Earth orbit the sun, and inasmuch as nobody has ever watched an electron orbit the nucleus of an atom; but scientists have witnessed evolution occur numerous times, both in the wild and in the lab. In fact, speciation (evolution) has been witnessed so many times that four distinct routes of speciation have been identified: allopatric, sympatric, parapatric and peripatric.

Needless to say, you find evolutionism with or without religion, but you NEVER find creationism WITHOUT religion.

(November 28, 2011 at 2:40 pm)mayor of simpleton Wrote: "Scopes (Monkey) Trial redux".