Then I shall respond to what you have quoted here.
In a nutshell, for me, the incredible complexity of life and the vastness of the universe point to an Intelligent Designer.
How so? Life is overly complex - detrimentally so. There are many excesses that could be simplified and/or combined. There are more efficient ways to do things. What purpose does the third eyelid (the Nictitating membrane) have in humans, for example? It doesn't do anything but get irritated. The uses of a tail bone (in a creature with no tail) could easily have been made in a more functional, and less fragile form.
Intelligent design, this is not.
When it comes to the universe: "Vastness"? I can make a movie lasting five hours with the camera staring at a rock the entire time. Sure, it's designed, and "Vast", but intelligent?
I would contend that if anyone were foolish enough to claim credit for designing the universe, (s)he should immediately be labeled an idiot.
There are so many assumptions, hypotheses, and floating variables behind crucial areas of it.
Creationism is nothing but assumptions and floating variables. First up: Assuming there is a god, assuming it's the god of the bible, assuming the creation story is accurate, and assuming that all the years, translations, pastors, priests, and popes haven't screwed it up too badly since it was written.
When we ask a hard question; we get thrown the central floating variable "No one can know the mind of God".
You have no evidence, you ignore the data that is actually presented, and you throw up barriers whenever someone starts investigating and you have the gall to put down a
scientific explanation that has more evidence than the
Theory of Gravity for having too many
assumptions!?I doth protest, good sir.
But perhaps you could enlighten us as to what you think are these "assumptions", "educated guesses", and "floating variables" that do so much harm to it?
In addition, I see very little, if any, benefit derived from phylogenetics. In fact, it only demonstrates that different species have similar DNA which could point to an Intelligent Designer just as easily as it could to a common ancestor.
Fix'd that for ya.
Why do creatures need such similarities in their genetics? It is exceedingly inefficient for the creatures themselves. Why should a mouse have a genome that is so close to a human? The differences between us are vast, so why wouldn't the "creator" actually build a new creature instead of breaking down an existing one and splicing it together? If nothing else, it's certainly
lazy design for a supposedly "omnipotent" being.
Convincing evidence of beneficial random mutation is virtually non-existent.
Correction: You've ignored it.
12% (3 out of 26) random mutations in a strain of bacteria improved fitness in a particular environment
Numerous studies have shown genotype-by-environment (G×E) interactions for traits related to organismal fitness. However, the genetic architecture of the interaction is usually unknown because these studies used genotypes that differ from one another by many unknown mutations. These mutations were also present as standing variation in populations and hence had been subject to prior selection. Based on such studies, it is therefore impossible to say what fraction of new, random mutations contributes to G×E interactions. In this study, we measured the fitness in four environments of 26 genotypes of Escherichia coli, each containing a single random insertion mutation. Fitness was measured relative to their common progenitor, which had evolved on glucose at 37°C for the preceding 10,000 generations. The four assay environments differed in limiting resource and temperature (glucose, 28°C; maltose, 28°C; glucose, 37°C; and maltose, 37°C). A highly significant interaction between mutation and resource was found. In contrast, there was no interaction involving temperature. The resource interaction reflected much higher among mutation variation for fitness in maltose than in glucose. At least 11 mutations (42%) contributed to this G×E interaction through their differential fitness effects across resources. Beneficial mutations are generally thought to be rare but, surprisingly, at least three mutations (12%) significantly improved fitness in maltose, a resource novel to the progenitor. More generally, our findings demonstrate that G×E interactions can be quite common, even for genotypes that differ by only one mutation and in environments differing by only a single factor.
All mutations are random, and occasionally they are beneficial. How do you think you gain a resistant strain of bacteria? They don't target what medicine they become immune to, they mutate. The beneficial mutation is the one that they were lucky enough to aquire before treatment was applied; any bacteria that didn't obtain that mutation died off. So not only do we repeatedly show beneficial mutations - we apply natural selection every time we practice medicine (on infected patients).
Why has evolution not eliminated schizophrenia?
Why has God not eliminated schizophrenia? You're shooting yourself in the foot with this one. Evolution is an undirected process; it isn't going to target specific things to "fix". If it fails to fix something that is a detriment to the species' procreation then the species takes a hit in its population or just outright goes extinct. Schizophrenia doesn't actually affect that capability; so what does it matter as far as evolution is "concerned"?
Now lets compare to the
directed force of a supposedly "intelligent" creator.
Is he willing to eliminate schizophrenia, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh schizophrenia?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then how the hell did he create the universe?
~Epicurus (Sorta)
Evolution cannot explain our desire to create things like art and music.
Sure it can; but before we even go into it, why does it need to?
Evolution cannot explain why animals have been known to flee an area just before a tsunami occurs.
Most animals have more acute senses than humans, which
is explained by evolution. However, this particular idea about animals fleeing may very well be a myth. I cannot find anything more concrete than "eyewitnesses" who may very well have only noticed odd behavior because there was a tsunami (or earthquake, as that is what they would have felt) to corelate it to.
Some articles on the matter:
National Geographic get mixed results.
Research on both acoustic and seismic communication indicates that elephants could easily pick up vibrations generated from the massive earthquake-tsunami, she said.
Poole has also experienced this firsthand.
"I have been with elephants during two small tremors, and on both occasions the elephants ran in alarm several seconds before I felt the tremor," she said.
One of the world's most earthquake-prone countries is Japan, where devastation has taken countless lives and caused enormous damage to property. Researchers there have long studied animals in hopes of discovering what they hear or feel before the earth shakes. They hope that animals may be used as a prediction tool.
Some U.S. seismologists, on the other hand, are skeptical. There have been documented cases of strange animal behavior prior to earthquakes. But the United States Geological Survey, a government agency that provides scientific information about the Earth, says a reproducible connection between a specific behavior and the occurrence of a quake has never been made.
"What we're faced with is a lot of anecdotes," said Andy Michael, a geophysicist at USGS. "Animals react to so many things—being hungry, defending their territories, mating, predators—so it's hard to have a controlled study to get that advanced warning signal."
In the 1970s a few studies on animal prediction were done by the USGS, "but nothing concrete came out of it," Michael said. Since that time the agency has made no further investigations into the theory.
Snopes is pretty sure it's coincidence.
Some folks place their faith in the unusual reactions of animals, recalling that before at least a few major quakes, strange behavior was observed in critters local to the event. However, that animals have occasionally acted strangely just prior to the onset of a devastating earthquake doesn't mean they always do. A great many quakes have happened where everyone's cats, dogs, and even the wild critters in the field continued behaving in quite normal fashion right up until the moment that they hit.
As to why folks tend to believe animals can sense impending quakes, or the weather or time of day having something to do with an increase in seismic activity, humans look to make sense of their world and the sometimes terrifying forces at work within it through application of patterns. They examine tragedies in search of elements common to them, then look to apply whatever patterns they think they've found to future events, in hopes of seeing trouble coming before it arrives and thus of having a chance of getting out of its way.
The TOE cannot account for why or how sexual reproduction evolved.
While I'll admit the "how" is still fuzzy; your "why" is a tad rediculous, if I interpret your meaning of it correctly. If you are looking for a
directed purpose, then remember that I said evolution is an undirected process - "purpose" is the wrong question to ask there. However, the "why does it still exist" would be a much better question, and one we do have answers for. Spread of advantageous traits, novel genotypes, deletrious mutation clearance,
etc.Why do chickens return to their coop at the same time and in the same order everyday?
Probably because of their evolved social hierarchy - but really this is less of an evolution question and more of a "lets just throw as much random crap as possible and maybe I'll confuse them" question. It does not bode well for you.
.and on and on I could go.
As could I, but I'll settle for not having more inanity like the chicken question thrown about.
These may seem like trivial issues but attempts to explain how the processes of evolution would/could account for them does not fit.
Care to explain how they don't fit?
[/quote]Also, I could add dozens and dozens of more unanserable questions to the list. And this says nothing of the BIG blank that alleged abiogenesis creates. [/quote]
And I could probably answer a few of them, but your questions show your true level (lack) of knowledge on the topic. It's almost painful to read. Really, go read up on the "unanswerable question" before you ask it. It might
actually be answered.
I never said that evolution was not a valid theory. What I said was that it lacks the power to invalidate God and/or the Bible. [...] There is nothing CERTAIN about it and that’s the whole point of my argument….it does not have the power to dismantle Christianity yet it is continually used for that purpose.
You have it a tad backwards. Evolution is there, it doesn't care about Christianity, Islam, Hinduism or what-have-you. You are the one putting it at odds with your god, thus it is your own refusal to even look at the evidence, stubborn ignorance of the topic, and futile rambling off of inane questions that invalidate your god far more than anything evolution could or does say.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t science seek the truth and avoid trying to proclaim a certainty ? Wouldn’t it be much more sensible and reasonable to assert that evolution simply offers an alternate way of explaining how life as we know it evolved ?
Science attempts to find truth, yes, but it
wants certainty - and it puts its weight behind the most powerful explanation available. Evolution fits all of the evidence, predicts future evidence, and neatly ties together multiple fields of science. It is one of the most certain scientific theories we have. Creationism, on the other hand, has to ignore most of that in order to get anywhere.
Quoting yourself when you were asking stupid questions makes them no less stupid. You have some reading to do on the topic of evolution if you want to convince anyone you know what you're talking about.
