OK, I'll play.
Rather than "playing", as you so often do on these discussions, wouldn't it be more productive for you to be serious?
Kindly define "Evolution". But please avoid "change over time", which is utterly bereft of content.
Just how many times are you going to ask this question before you understand the answers you've received dozens of times on earlier threads?
Evolution is the study of how species change across generations, and why. That's the "definition". A definition of the process itself is quite similar: "Evolution is a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations."
If you want to know more about the theories active in that field, you're going to have to ask more specific questions. Currently, your question is akin to "define physics". Um, okay...
Would you agree that science has its own set of standards that have nothing to do with "Creationism"?
No. If the evidence supported "Creationism", then science would arrive at the conclusion that "*poof*" Creationism was the best theory for how modern life came about. Science has no a priori presumption that things (not just biology, but all the fields of study) are due to entirely natural causes. It *does*, however, work from the presumption that our universe (which includes perhaps God himself) does not play tricks, and that evidence can be relied upon to be a fair representation of reality, and not "faked" by a cosmic practical joker to make things look like what they are not.
Thus, dinosaur bones are taken as evidence that dinosaurs once lived on the Earth, and not presumed to be "planted" by a capricious God who actually made the world last Tuesday.
If you don't, you have no understanding of science.
On the contrary, you're the one who seems pretty fuzzy on these concepts.
If you do, why do you mention Creationism?
I mention creationism because creationists keep bringing it up and I respond to them.
How do you reconcile 250,000-to-millions of species with virtually no transitional forms in the fossil record?
They're *all* "transitional forms". Life is always in flux. The form of your question reveals a gross misunderstanding. But contrary to your claim that there are "virtually no" transitional forms, in fact even as a creationist understands the term, there are thousands already found and more found virtually every day.
Why has no one demonstrated Evolution in the lab, despite countless years of trying?
They have, actually, both with living species and with genetic algorithms on various types of non-biological entities (electronic circuits, etc.)
Fruit flies have been bred into monster fruit flies that rapidly revert to the norm when subsequently left to their own devices. They have never been selectively bred into anything but fruit flies. No new species has ever been created in the lab.
They have, actually (and also here) -- you obviously have an incorrect notion of what constitutes a "new species".
What is the mechanism of evolution?
Mutation and non-mutational genetic variation, coupled with reproduction and natural (and other kinds of) selection. This is Biology 101, were you sleeping?
Mutation? If so, it remains to be demonstrated.
Wrong, it has been demonstrated time and time again.
Mutation destroys genetic information.
Sometimes, yes, not always. Again, were you sleeping through biology class? Selection strongly tends to weed out the harmful mutations while preserving and propagating the beneficial mutations. Genetic drift of neutral mutations also provides additional variation.
You might as well say "magic".
You might as well lay off answering your own questions, since you're giving incorrect answers.
There is no evidence, from the fossil record or from the lab, that mutation drives Evolution.
There is, actually. Your ignorance of the evidence does not count as lack of evidence.
Well, help yourself to this one. You may wish to note, however, that I am quite good at parsing rhetoric, if I do say so myself.
Actually, I remain distinctly unimpressed. You're fond of flinging it, but that doesn't constitute actual skill.
How is it that species appear fully formed in the fossil record
Define "appear", and "fully formed", please. Your sloppy terminology leaves holes big enough to drive trucks through. What was that you were saying about being adept at "rhetoric"? I'm not impressed with your sloppy, imprecise questions.
and remain virtually unchanged for millions of years,
Millions of years is a short time in the history of life on Earth. And define "virtually", while you're at it -- how much change are you going to try to write off as "well, that's *virtually* unchanged"?
then disappear?
Yes, some species do go extinct -- or evolve into something else. No surprise there, even Darwin acknowledged that his theory predicted such things.
But to answer the (sloppily formulated) apparent thrust of your question, species do not appear "fully formed" with no expected precursors. For example, fully ocean-going whales "appear" after semi-aquatic species which share features with whales and with no other living beings, and before them in the fossil record are shore-adapted mammals which share unmistakable characteristic features with the semi-aquatic species, and so on.
No species appears unexpectedly out of "nowhere" in the fossil record, they are always preceded by very plausible precursors (often which are separated from the "new" species by a single altered feature). The fossil record is an amazingly compelling "roadmap" of evolutionary change and common descent -- at least for those who bother to look at it.
Explain the Cambrian Explosion.
*snicker*. Actually, I'd love to see the *creationists* take a stab at explaining it. It poses immense, apparently insurmountable problems for their hypothesis.
It's true that there are still some open questions regarding it under an evolutionary view, but none undermine the theory itself. In fact, the only debate is over which of several competing evolutionary scenarios turns out to be right, since there are *several* ways that the Cambrian Explosion makes sense under evolution. It's just the shortage of evidence that makes resolving the issue a problem, since Cambrian and pre-Cambrian fossils are in short supply, given their enormous age, and the fact that the older a geologic layer, the more deeply buried it's likely to be, on the whole.
If you thought that the Cambrian Explosion was some sort of insurmountable problem for evolution, you're quite simply wrong. And if you think that an unresolved issue or two destroys a field of science, you're grossly mistaken. All fields of science have open questions, for the obvious reasons.
Now please don't give us Punk Eek, which says it happens when/because we don't see it.
That's not what punctuated equilibrium says -- are you sure you understand evolution as well as you like to think you do?
Tell us about that mysterious force, Natural Selection which, boiled down to facts, is nothing more than the passive environment.
Again, this is Biology 101 -- you'd save us a lot of time if you'd crack a book once in a while before you come to us asking for explanations of the basics.
There's nothing "mysterious" about it. Natural selection is just the obvious (and unarguable, unless one is in idiot) fact that not all individuals in a population will be able to reproduce at the same rate -- some will produce more offspring in the next generation than others (and some will produce no offspring at all). And that those which are better "equipped", genetically, to successfully survive and reproduce in "the environment" will (statistically) more often tend to be the ones to actually do so compared to their lesser-adapted brothers and sisters.
Then explain why there are 3 species of sharks alive today in the worlds waters that 1) lay eggs, 2) give live birth and 3)something in-between.
Because all are effective reproductive strategies. A better question would be, "why would God create so damned many species of sharks? (There are thousands.) Wouldn't a few suffice?"
Which came first and which is dominant on the Evolutionary scale?
Laying eggs came first.
As for being "dominant on the Evolution scale", that's a completely nonsensical question. There is no "Evolutionary scale", except in the minds of those who have a very poor grasp of evolution.
Yeh, I know. Tough questions.
Not at all. Mostly misguided questions, actually, but none rise to the level of "tough".
They have yet to be answered with anything other than empty rhetoric by the Darwinists.
Translation: You didn't understand the answers because they clashed with your misconceptions about what evolution actually is.
Darwin was a Master Sophist, as are his acolytes.
No, actually, he was an amazingly intelligent person who managed to work out almost all the ramifications of a complex field long before there was much direct evidence to lead the way. In the 150 years since, his conclusions have been incredibly well supported by the evidence. Seldom in the field of science is an entire branch of study laid out in such detail by a single man (except perhaps for Einstein's single-handed discovery of Relativity).
It's the facts they have trouble with.
No trouble at all -- it's the creationists who get bogged down trying to explain away all of the facts which are inconvenient to their hypothesis.
Now I ask you, where has it been necessary in all the foregoing that there be any appeal to God or Creationism?
Nowhere -- do you have some sort of point to make here, or are you just being rhetorical again?
Darwinism is Bunk,
You have yet to establish firm ground for your thesis.
Gould was a Sophist
Wrong again.
and Dawkins is an Atheist.
True enough, but how does that prove anything?
Conclusion: Evolutionism ain't science.
Odd, your conclusion fails to follow even from your own arguments. Even if there were as many unanswered questions in evolution as you (falsely) assert, that would in no way prove it "ain't" science. Something is science if it meets certain rigorous criteria for how it goes about formulating and testing its hypotheses, and *not* whether it has some as yet unresolved issues.
Before you again attempt to opine on whether something is "science" or not, please go off and learn more about both science in general, and the specific topic itself.
Rhetoric is a poor substitute for logical argument.
Ich: Yes indeed, it is. (link)
Links are fine to support a point. But they are also used by those also who can't think, write, summarize or make cogent arguments, as well as by those who wish to mislead and/or waste others time. You have linked to talkorigins.org, just possibly the most dishonest site on the web. I know this because I've deconstructed their stuff before. All further links in your reply to me will therefore be ignored. Kindly remember this. The Link Chase Game is an infamous Evol tactic, misleading and a vast time-waster, but nothing more.
As an aside, if Evolution has nothing to do with abiogenesis, why is the site address "talkorigins"?
Ich: Rather than "playing", as you so often do on these discussions, wouldn't it be more productive for you to be serious?
This is just gratis snottiness, so typical of you Evolutionists. It is No-substance Nastiness. Grow up, Ich.
Just how many times are you going to ask this question before you understand the answers you've received dozens of times on earlier threads?
More snottiness. The "answers" are obviously non-answers, as I will show yours to be here.
Evolution is the study of how species change across generations, and why.
OK, we will stay with this definition, no matter how ardently you may try to amend it later in this post or on this thread.
Here's the refutation. First, species have not been shown to change, they have been shown to remain stable, in many instances over millions of years. This is the evidence, shown by study. Second, neither has there ever been any credible mechanism of change demonstrated. Mutation as a change agent is widely speculated about by the Evols, but has never been shown. Ergo, Evolution is not a theory, it is a failed hypothesis, and Evolutionism is thus not science.
Phaedrus: Would you agree that science has its own set of standards that have nothing to do with "Creationism"?
Ich: No ...
Then we have established that you do not understand science. End of subject.
I mention creationism because creationists keep bringing it up and I respond to them.
I didn't, so forget about it in your responses to my posts.
Phaedrus: How do you reconcile 250,000-to-millions of species with virtually no transitional forms in the fossil record?
Ich: They're *all* "transitional forms". Life is always in flux. The form of your question reveals ... yadda yadda.
This is a classic non-answer. No, they're not (all transitional forms). They've been shown not to be in transition but stable. You are practicing rhetoric.
... genetic algorithms on various types of non-biological entities (electronic circuits, etc.)
Algorithms are Intelligently Designed by human beings. And do a little research on Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. And note well that my links are there to educate, not mislead. You are not wasting your time when you follow them.
Phaedrus: Fruit flies have been bred into monster fruit flies that rapidly revert to the norm when subsequently left to their own devices. They have never been selectively bred into anything but fruit flies. No new species has ever been created in the lab.
Ich: They have, actually (and also here) ...
More talkorigins links. Sorry. Rejected.
Phaedrus: What is the mechanism of evolution?
Ich: Mutation and non-mutational genetic variation, coupled with reproduction and natural (and other kinds of) selection ...
Mutation has been discredited. It's a non-starter. The rest is speculation and nonsense, not evidence.
This is Biology 101, were you sleeping?
More gratis nastiness. You are wasting my time, Ich. I have patiently, faithfully, gone through your response to my post to this point and have discredited it, item by item, without exception. You are practicing sophistry. There is no substance. I've heard it all before and I've discredited it all before.
Come back when you have something substantive to say.