I would love to here who your influences are. So please name a few major ones.
Sorry Sasori, but that statement is just false — in fact nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolutionary theory. Please, could you name one thing about biology that you think has an explanation wholly unrelated to evolution?
This is why I ask — if you can come up with some thing that isn't "because god made it that way" then I'll be impressed.
Actually, the nylon consuming bacteria is a fantastic piece of evidence for the ability for mutations to occur in a gene pool that can be quite beneficial. Could you please tell me what about is in fact pathetic?
There is some thing I noticed about your statement that needs to be corrected:
- Minor changes in a gene pool can only be called "adaptations" if they are not detrimental. There for some are adaptive and some are nonadaptive.
- Sickle Cell Anaemia is a nonadaptive mutation which generates blood cells with a less flexible & sickle like shape. The sickling occurs because of a mutation in the hemoglobin gene.
- As to your claim that mutation does not cause an increase in information — it is hard to understand how anyone could make this claim, since anything mutations can do, mutations can undo. Some mutations add information to a genome; some subtract it. You have gotten by with this claim only by leaving the term "information" undefined, there for by any reasonable definition, increases in information have been observed to evolve. We have observed the evolution of ...
† increased genetic variety in a population (Lenski 1995; Lenski et al. 1991)
† increased genetic material (Alves et al. 2001; Brown et al. 1998; Hughes and Friedman 2003; Lynch and Conery 2000; Ohta 2003)
† novel genetic material (Knox et al. 1996; Park et al. 1996)
† novel genetically-regulated abilities (Prijambada et al. 1995)
- According to Shannon-Weaver information theory, random noise maximizes information. This is not just playing word games. The random variation that mutations add to populations is the variation on which selection acts. Mutation alone will not cause adaptive evolution, but by eliminating nonadaptive variation, natural selection communicates information about the environment to the organism so that the organism becomes better adapted to it. Natural selection is the process by which information about the environment is transferred to an organism's genome and thus to the organism (Adami et al. 2000).
Could you please tell me how these examples are inadequate or, to use your language, pathetic? If indeed these do not qualify as "information," then nothing about information is relevant to evolution in the first place.
I would be willing to bet that these scientists you mention, who don't accept evolution as a correct scientific theory, would agree that it is the best explanation we have for the multiple forms of life — evolutionary theory is antithetical to their religious beliefs and there for hold that there MUST be some thing else going on that we haven't figured out yet. However that's not an answer as to why evolutionary theory is NOT the best explanation for variety of life.
A challenge I would put forth to you is this — how old is the earth and can you please give me some facts in support of your answer. Thanks.
This is simply a bad generalization of the human character of atheists, anti-theists & agnostics — might I suggest that a case can be made for those non-theists who do hold to the golden rule but find that it does not need a deity to provide motivation? Because I was one. I know many. If you watch the Atheist Experience, a public access show from TX, profess hold to to the golden rule and further explain that the preservation of life has nothing to do with a divine agent but the understanding that a group of people can help each other in all walks of life.
Not only this but I personally know non-theists who would live and die for ideals and people simply because they believe in those ideas and those individuals who they love.
Also — your right about Christianity being a factor in the creation of the US but a far grater influence was the Age of Enlightenment which took place from 1650—1700. If you don't know that then you simply haven't read history carefully enough.