Posted on 11/19/2004 10:40:08 AM PST by jcsmonogram
GALLUP NEWS SERVICE
PRINCETON, NJ -- Some 145 years after the publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species, controversy about the validity and implications of his theory still rages. Darwin personally encountered much resistance after his book was published in 1859. Seventy-nine years ago, the famous Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee brought the issue of exactly where human beings came from into sharp public focus in the United States. Indeed, as recently as this month, a court case in Cobb County, Ga., dealing with the treatment of evolution and creationism in school textbooks received nationwide publicity. November's National Geographic Magazine asked on its cover: "Was Darwin Wrong?" and then proceeded to devote 33 pages to answering that question.
Darwin might be surprised to find such debate still raging nearly a century and a half after he published his book. He might also be surprised to find that even today there is significantly less than majority agreement from the American public that his theory of evolution is supported by the evidence.
Gallup has asked Americans twice in the last three years to respond to the following question about Darwin's theory:
Just your opinion, do you think that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is – [ROTATED: a scientific theory that has been well-supported by evidence, (or) just one of many theories and one that has not been well-supported by evidence], or don't you know enough about it to say?
(Excerpt) Read more at gallup.com ...
Your gravity analogy is a "logical fallacy" and irrelevant to that discussion.
If one species evolved into two species every 1000 years, then 16,000,000,000,000 different species would have evololved over the 4 billion year history of earth.
That is, if I have my math correct. Actually, I think I did it wrong, I think it may be way bigger.
It is a theoreticaly huge number. Like the old excersize of investing a penny on the first day of the month with 100% return every day. Day 2 is 2 cents, day 3 is 4 cents, day 4 is 8 cents. Day 31 is $21,474,836.48. Or something like that.
That doesn't seem correct at all. How is it the creationists who are the destructive ones?
The most vitriolic, condescending (and in the case of Mao's China deadly) attacks come from the Darwinist side of the table.
What you call "believing in a miraculous poof creation" others call "believing in a God who created us miraculously". Not a "poof". And it IS a big deal to a lot of people, the belief that God created humans directly, in his own image, and therefore they are special to him. Our morality, intelligence, awareness and faith came directly from Him. The fact that you have never run into a denomination which teaches this (mine does, and it has millions of members) tells me something about you, and not the belief in creation.
See how dismissive and condescending you are? What is it about Darwinism that makes people like you behave this way?
And how can you or anyone deny that there are few scientists who are very religious yet also believe our very existence is random and our origins undirected? I know there are many average people who believe God directed "macro"evolution and while I'd disagree with that belief, that belief is NOT the most prevalent in the "rational", scientific community. Naturalism has been the mainstream in that community for a long time.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I have arrived and now it is time to shut down another thread. It's the furball4paws "kiss of death".
In science there is no such thing as "truth by consensus". Polls do not make truth, in other words. What .00001% or 99.9999% of the people thinks about evolution is meaningless. Polls are for opinions, not science.
"Species" is usually defined as a breeding population. If the two groups won't breed, they are effectively separate species.
Ring speciation is not responsible for every species on the planet. As I pointed out above, anything that isolates to populations of the same critter for any length of time, such that they cannot swap genes, will lead to speciation. It can take quite some time, or it can happen relatively quickly (geologically speaking), especially if there is a new ecological niche to exploit. For example, during the age of the dinosaurs, birds and mammals were relatively few in number because the dinos occupied most of the ecological niches. When they went the way of the ... well, dinosaurs ... there were suddenly lots of niches available. Hence the explosion in bird and mammal species between 65 MYA and 50 MYA.
Barriers between breeding populations need not be all that great; they simply must be impervious to individuals of those populations. Mountain ranges, rivers (the Amazon, for example), newly-appearing land masses (the Isthmus of Panama) -- all these create insurmountable barriers to breeding populations.
Now remember, all this divying up of populations has been going on for 3.8 billion years. And, it's going on all the time, so there has been plenty of time to get the diversity we see now. Figure speciation leads to new species every 5 million years or so. After only 135 million years (the blink of an eye in the life of a planet) you've already got 67 million species. This has been going on, like I said, for 3.8 billion years.
Another implication of darwinisim that darwinists cannot live consistently with. They state that there is no such thing as free will yet they attempt to exert it on these threads. It's a schizophrenic and contradictory worldview that they demand we blindly accept.
I don't maintain citations for these sorts of things, since without some background in the mathematics a citation would be realtively pointless.
I do not believe there is or should be any conflict as far as evolution within a species is concerned. People get bigger, birds who have better camouflage survive better, and so forth. The problem is when evolutionists try to make us believe that we came from a cell which magically appeared from the ooze and cannot explain the origin of the ooze. But it is inconceivable to think that the universe and all it contains were not created by a Creator.
You mean that "scientific polls" is an oxymoron?
Apparently there are a lot of different definitions of "species". I am aware that it is a term that applies to many thousands of different "groups" even though the groups are related.
But I am talking about macroevolution. I am talking about two species that cannot interbreed but are of the "same descent" or one descended from the other.
People claim humans are apes, but humans cannot interbreed with any of the other entities classified as "apes".
Yes. Yes. Yes. If evolution was true, we'd be seeing it happen all around us all the time, newts turning into left fielders, spiders into point guards, etc.
OK, that's a little silly but if Darwin's theory that all species are evolving why aren't we seeing some evidence of that. Everything evolved in the past?
Despite decades of propaganda. Count me in too.
Thanks for the ping!
Reptiles develop air-filled bones and feathers and become birds. And the billions of fossils of failures on the way? The hoax is circling the drain...
FACT: one third of all Americans are stupid.
I'm "afraid" of being conned, and having to pay for it.
With regards to their objections however, I still see no conflict.
Thank you.
I resist submission to any group of lemmings that disallows critical thinking.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.