"The evidence for evolution is overwhelming. It's in the fossil record, carefully dated using radioactivity, the release of particles from radioactive isotopic decay, which works like a very precise clock. Rocks from volcanic eruptions (igneous rocks) buried near a fossil carry certain amounts of radioactive material, unstable atomic nuclei that emit different kinds of radiation, like tiny bullets. The most common is Uranium-235, which decays into Lead-207. Analyzing the ratio of Uranium-235 to Lead-207 in a sample, and knowing how frequently Uranium-235 emits particles (its half-life is 704 million years, the amount half a sample decays into Lead), scientists can get a very accurate measure of the age of a fossil.

But evidence for evolution is also much more palpable, for example in the risks of overprescribing antibiotics: the more we (and farm animals) take antibiotics, the higher the chance that a microbe will mutate into one resistant to the drug. This is in-your-face evolution, species mutating at the genetic level and adapting to a new environment (in this case, an environment contaminated with antibiotics). The proof of this can be easily achieved in the laboratory (see link above), by comparing original strands of bacteria with those subjected to different doses of antibiotics. It's simple and conclusive, since the changes in the genetic code of the resistant mutant can be identified and studied."


http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2012/01/18/145338804/why-do-so-many-have-trouble-with-evolution?sc=fb&cc=fp



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/19/2012 04:30PM by helamonster.

I couldn't agree with you more. I just wanted to add another great source from the science background...Mutant Planet on the Science Channel shed a lot of light on evolution in animals and it can be related right back to humans. Curiosity is what drives me.

http://science.discovery.com/tv/mutant-planet/

haha...I remember a couple years ago and maybe it is still up in SLC- the billboard that had the ape man to man on it...and then had a huge red X through it. It's like they want to deny all of the different fossils found of our cousins that went extinct. It cracks me up kind of to see how people can be so uninformed/uneducated and take a stance on evolution. New Zealand is one of the greatest examples out there...the land of the birds...sigh...I want to go there.

I recall right after my brother was baptized and became an instant TBM, he was telling us how radio carbon dating could be off by 14,000 years, so how could you trust it to date anything younger than 6,000 years (obviously when Earth was created).

Your brother sounds like he's been reading too much literature from the Institute of Creation Research.

Like your bro, this organization perverts science to "prove" creationism, and calls themselves a non-religious organization, but still uses the bible as their basic text.

Then they smugly troll here under handles like "thunderstealer" and act as if they somehow have truth on their side.

Assholes.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/19/2012 05:38PM by helamonster.

Well, they can decry the accuracy of carbon dating all they want, but I'd rather be off by 10,000 than 10 million.

...is that the scientist, as soon as s/he makes a discovery or has an idea...immediately begins to try and falsify it.

A theory that is spared attempts to falsify it is untested. If it were a bridge, a building, a plane, or anything that we depended on to hold up for safety's sake, we wouldn't tolerate for a minute the same wishful propaganda that props up things like, say, religion. Or, for that matter, all the other bogus products out there that pander to the immense wishful-thinking market.

People who say things like "carbon dating is inaccurate", or "we don't know what really happened", should put their money where their mouth is and stop demanding that engineering, medicine, forensics, finance, and any number of disciplines be held to empirical standards.

What hypocrisy to demand everyone elses math adds up but not your own.

I'm definitely with you on that one.

Evolution is now becoming an experimental science.

Just read today in Science (the U.S. counterpart to Nature) about experiments getting yeast cells to form multicellular quasi-organisms - one of the huge leaps of evolution. Nobody ever thought they would see that in the lab.

after the yeast infects the malt sugar.

Damn, but I love a nice pint of yeast infection.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2012 08:01PM by jaredsotherbrother.

Maybe it is that I am understanding terms differently. Maybe I am using terms the wrong way.

I believe evolution occurred. I always have.

I also believe the existance of the earth is not a random (/chance) occurance.

So what am I a creationist?

You can believe in God the creator AND evolution, but that also means you are NOT a Creationist. Creationists believe all species, including humans and dinosaurs, appeared instantly 6000 years in the Garden of Eden and have never changed since then.

there must have been a time before life and higher organisms.

Don Bagley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> there must have been a time before life and higher
> organisms.


Yes, Billions of years of it.

Hmmm. I'm totally perplexed by this. Maybe I'd be an old earth creationist. I mean, I'm an orthodox catholic & evolution is basically a non-issue. However, to proclaim authoritatively to know intimately the nature of God, such as methodology of creation & time limitations (i.e. God created the earth in 6-24 hour periods) is extremely offensive & only shows how idiotic they are, since if one were to visit Sitka, Alaska, one would see that as utterly f*cking annoying as it is, it daytime for 335 days per year. So, if a "day" is the rising/ setting of the sun, then the upper northern hemisphere is apparently some strange anomaly.
On a totally unrelated note, those black-out curtains are super handy here in AZ. I wish I would've nicked them!