Xyln

Just wanted to get some people's opinion on this topic.

I personally do not believe in Evolution.I'm not 100% sure where this all came from,but am pretty darn sure all this didn't just come from one single cell mutating for billions of years until we reach what we are today.


This isn't intended to be a spiritual debate,I'm just curious what everyone else thinks.

BTW,if this is discussed somewhere else I couldn't find it.

Sanchek

Without the theory of evolution, we couldn't have the Darwin awards. It must be good.

Qaman

The world as we know it was created last Thursday. I am 100% sure this is true.

ThePerfectFlaw

Qaman evolved from a warm bowl of pudding.

Qaman

It was chocolate pudding.

Mukaz

If you don't believe in evolution then what is your alternative non-spiritual explanation of the origin of life?

Gulor Gularin

I firmly believe that mechanics of evolution has played the major role in our development. Anyone who breeds animals for certain traits has seen it in action. We see it every day in the mutation of diseases and microbes. We humans have vistigial organs/traits that clearly once served a purpose and would have no real purpose in a creationist scenario. Why have an appendix? Why do men have nipples? Evolution provides a plausible explanation while creationism just says "because God made us that way".

Fossil records would indicate life far predates the mere 5000 years or so the creationists claim to be the age of the earth. You can claim that carbon dating is all wrong, etc., but no one is going to convince me that the fossils I have seen first hand are only a few thousand years old, not when they are found in strata far deeper than that. Count the freaking layers in the Grand Canyon for Pete's sake.

Keep in mind that belief in a supreme diety and evolution are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps God used evolution as his tool to create the life he wanted. Who knows? I just know that from what I have seen, evolution has evidence I can see, measure and evaluate for myself. It makes sense, I see it in action all around me and science is beginning to understand how to manipulate it artificially as we speak. On the side of creation, I have a book written long ago by people now dead, retranslated several times by people who were largely ignorant of the world and the universe at large. Now which one do you think I should believe?

Slant Earthshaker

Evolution itself is fact, it isnt something for you to 'believe in'. The means of evolution are readily apparent to anyone willing to look, and their results are easily visible and explainable. On a small scale, evolution is observed within human timespans. All animals that we have domesticated - from dogs and cats to cows, pigs, chickens, etc. - have easily traceable and visibile evolutionary paths. None of those listed animals are the same as they were 1000 years ago. On a smaller scale it is easy to see evolution in selective breeding practices with animals (like dogs for example) and plants. The AID's virus has been observed to evolve, generations of the virus gaining immunity to advanced medication, while losing immunity to medication that no longer threatens its well-being.

Im especially fond of what would initially be a perplexing example of evolution that Carl Sagan uses in his 'Secrets of the Cosmos'. The Heike crab living off the coast of Japan that at first seems inexplicable without a functional theory of evolution. It is said that the young Emperor of the Heike, beset on all sides by revolutionary samurai on the shores of Danno-ura, chose to commit suicide by throwing themselves into the ocean rather than be dishonored by giving in. There they roam the bottom of the ocean floor of all time, in the guise of crabs, that bear the likeness of a samurai warriors face.



It really is amazingly like the scowling face of a samurai warrior... How else could this exist unless they REALLY WERE reincarnated as crabs, scouring the ocean floor for all time?

Fortunately there is a much simpler explanation. For thousands of years, probably long before the events at Danno-ura, if you were a crab your chances of survival were much greater if your shell looked a little bit like a human face. Generations of superstitious fisherman, thinking it bad luck to consume a crab that bears a human face, exercised caution around these curious looking crabs, choosing to throw them back into the water rather than risk angering whatever forces might be there to anger. On the crabs part, there was no conscious descision to look this way, it was totally passive - The more your shell looked like a human face the more likely that the humans that lived above the water would choose not to eat you, but to throw you back, to be given more chances to copulate with other crabs, thus insuring that your vaguely human countentance survives for another generation. Over thousands of years, this process of human selection evolved out a crab with not a human face, not a JAPANESE face, but the face of a scowling Japanese samurai warrior. Its truly amazing what time can acheive.

When I hear people speak of a lack of belief in evolution, I invariably think that instead what they have is a lack of understanding of scale. In this particular instance, a lack of understanding of what the apparently benign ability of adaptation can acheive given almost infinite time. We are 'stuck' in a way in our own time, and it can be difficult to really appreciate true galactic scale - the scale of time, the scale of universal size and the scale of the incredibly small. I fall back on Carl Sagan once more when describing how short a time we've lived. If you imagine the entire span of time as a calendar, the big bang as the first second on Janurary first, the earth forming around September 3rd, life springing up around September 22nd. On this scale, the entirety of human existence is squeezed into the last 2 minutes of the last day of December. Agriculture is developed at 11:59:35. The Pyramids are built at 11:59:49. Kepler and Galileo prove the Earth orbits the Sun - 11:59:59. We are but a blip of time, dont lose sight of scale, its very important.

Master Damoiel Mindbend
Retired Enchanter of the 60th Season

ThePerfectFlaw

Even creationists argue over the origins of mankind as far as time goes. I've had people all my life say anywhere from 5k BC to 40k BC.

Anyways.

Do I believe in evolution? Yeah. I don't think any rational human being can doubt the insurmountable evidence in favor of the existence of the evolutionary process.

Do I believe evolution is the source of life in the universe? No.

Thormir

At this point, there's just no question that evolution happens, both on the macro and micro scale. The evidence for it is overwhelming across disciplines, and biology as a science just doesn't work without it. There are plenty of questions about the mechanisms involved, but as science evolution is built on a firm and ever-growing foundation.