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That is the biggest problem with the scientific community today, whether it be evolution or global warming or epidemiological studies, you claim to know things you do not.

Yet you do the very same thing in your post #231. I don't know if you realize it but you sound just like an evolutionary biologist. ;)

In general, scientists are very aware of the limits of knowledge in their field. However, the media filter makes things sound very strange and there are people with a political agenda who will use anything to get their way. When scientists exact words are quoted here on FR, creationists complain that they use words like "seems to", "it's probable that", or "this evidence suggests". So you can't have it both ways.

In the case of organisms growing arms and legs, Ichneumon's post documents the fossil evidence of this occurring. Alternative points of view to evolution don't address the fossil record. That's why I was being satirical about the previous poster's ID prediction.

The problem for anti-science is that there is an enormous amount of fossil evidence. More than any one individual could view in their lifetime. Creationists can't address it. They're still looking for the origins of seaweed. ID'ers can't address it because they have a rhetorical argument, not a theory. They're still struggling to understand complexity. So they've chosen to pick on something well documented, like the development of flagella or eyes (there are over 3500 different kinds), but have ignored truly complex structures like the brain.

Evolutionary biology is still the best explanation. And our understanding of how this works is growing daily. If we're lucky, we'll be here long enough to see a pill that can grow someone a new kidney. But who knows.

In general, scientists are very aware of the limits of knowledge in their field. However, the media filter makes things sound very strange and there are people with a political agenda who will use anything to get their way.

It's good to know many scientists are.

In the case of organisms growing arms and legs, Ichneumon's post documents the fossil evidence of this occurring.

I have seen many of his postings but I am looking for creatures with partially formed arms or legs that have no apparent purpose and all I ever saw him come up with is that one bird with a claw that becomes a wing or something. A lot of his posts are other theories supporting this theory. But I will keep on looking.

The problem for anti-science is that there is an enormous amount of fossil evidence.

It's not the evidence I have a problem with although dating things is based on a large set of assumptions as well, it is in the interpretation, and the common characteristic = common ancestry is something I find troubling even though the dating of the fossils seems to bolster it.

So they've chosen to pick on something well documented, like the development of flagella or eyes (there are over 3500 different kinds), but have ignored truly complex structures like the brain.

I agree with you on this. It is easier to argue that a leg or an arm or brain is irreducibly complex than it is a flagella, and the refutation made by Miller(as weak as it was) that part of the flagella could exist as a smaller component with a different purpose, is not so easy to do with an arm, which would require probably millions of years to develop, and would not really have any other purpose except some sort of aberration for most of that time until it became a fully functioning arm(you think we would see fossil evidence of partial arms,etc. but would even see that stuff now, but all species seem completely formed).

Evolutionary biology is still the best explanation.

It may be the best one currently, but may not be correct. It is very difficult to piece together what happenened millions of years ago with an incomplete view of the past. Even when a plane crashes today, we can barely find out what happened even with our black boxes and technology because we weren't there and noone survived to tell us.

If we're lucky, we'll be here long enough to see a pill that can grow someone a new kidney.

I hope so. Maybe someone with mutate a brain big enough to figure that out.