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js1138, first I want to thank you for your polite manner in discussing these issues!

I didn't come into this thread to prove anything to anyone. I stated in an earlier post that this debate involves an unhittable ball and an unmissable baseball bat. Those who have faith in evolution and those who do not can argue back and forth here day after day and change nothing. Neither side can prove its case, so it's an unending fight.

I've been at FreeRepublic for over two years and have never participated in one of these evolution-creation debates before, for the very reason that they'll never go anywhere. However, i did finally chime in on this one because it does concern me that proponents of evolution treat those who don't accept it as if we were, well, houseboys.

I would propose that when a theory is as tentative as the theory of evolution is, that perhaps it might be offered up a little less arrogantly. In a previous post to you I linked a little article that contained this sentence near the end:

#####That raises the question, are we likewise in the dark as to how higher organisms evolved?#####

The reason I bring this up is that I see sentences such as that quite often, not in creationist literature but in the writings of evolutionists themselves.

Now, you'll note that such writings never question whether or not evolution occurs. They assume that it does. But might they be assuming a little too much?

The theory of evolution came along at a very politically opportune time. It was an era in which an influential segment of the intellectual class was working overtime to drive God, religion (particularly Christianity), and faith from the public sphere. Socialism, with its view that the world was a work of evolutionary progress, culminating eventually in the Marxist utopia, was gaining ground. And yes, Darwin's emphasis on natural selection caught the favorable eye of conservative free enterprise proponents.

But might I suggest that the leftist and secularist forces of the day set to work to enshrine evolution, not just as a theory, but as a fact? Certainly over the years we've seen evolutionists from Julian Huxley to Stephen Jay Gould who had separate lives as secularist ideologues.

I'm somewhat reminded of the SwiftVet's debate. Kerry's defenders claimed that all the guys on Kerry's boat supported him. When it was noted that Mr. Gardner did not, they'd shrug and write him off as the nutty exception.

But, of course, the guys on Kerry's boat were his buddies. They were the ones who had a personal interest in wanting to protect him.

Could a defense system such as this have arisen to defend the theory of evolution? Possibly. If evolutionists are as faithfully committed to their cause as creationists are to theirs, then we might rightly expect there was a weeding out of critics of evolution from the scientific disciplines. As time passed, the tenure track, secularist control of the media, and just ridicule and ostracization drove nearly anyone who suggested that evolution might not be right from the relevant disciplines. Just look at the ridicule the mainstream media heap upon anyone who dares to question evolution, and imagine what it must be like for a young grad student who has some problems accepting the theory.

Think this couldn't happen? Just look at what's happened in the field of psychology with regards to homosexuality. Rare and daring is the psychologist today who would say homosexuality is abnormal. Rare is the Psych 101 textbook that would label homosexuality as anything other than just as normal as heterosexuality. Brave are the rare souls in that field who are offering conversion therapy, a process by which homosexuals are helped to abandon their deviancy. The mainstream psychological community shouts them down and there have even been demands for outlawing such therapy.

So over time, everyone on evolution's boat supports evolution. If they don't, then they're the odd nut case like Mr. Gardner on Kerry's boat. Everyone closest to the situation...the scientists who were taught by evolutionist professors from evolutionist textbooks and who wouldn't have gotten tenure if they weren't evolutionists and who would be sneered at if they questioned whether or not evolution occurred....all of them say evolution is on firm ground, right? It's a politically self-fulfilling prophecy.

So it's okay to say that maybe everything we've thought about how evolution works is wrong, as long as we quickly assert that evolution must have worked some other way. But we can never say that maybe evolution simply isn't right. We can never say that. Never.

And might I add that it isn't conservatism that benefits from the evolutionist worldview. It isn't conservatism that has politically enshrined the theory.

You asked if I can differentiate between DNAs use in determining parentage in humans and its relatedness across species. No, I can't, because DNA is the building block of life. Does this fact in and of itself fit in with evolution? Yes, because evolution would expect all life forms to have the same building block as a template. But lots of things fit the theory of evolution. Lots of things also fit the theory of intelligent design. What's inconsistent about DNA being what it is, and intelligent design? Neither ID nor evolution can be proven. Both have evidence to support them, but that's it. Beyond that it's faith.

You also asked about human experience and limits to variation. You noted correctly that speed limits of the past have been broken, inferring that breeding limits might someday be broken. Perhaps they will, but we don't know that. Maybe we'll breed fruit flies for 10,000 years and end up with fruit flies. Maybe we'll end up with a honeybee. We just don't know because we're in theoretical territory.

My request is that those of us who think we'll end up with fruit flies no matter how long we breed them not be ridiculed as religious fanatics!