The More We Learn, the Less Room There is for Evolution

[sealybobo]

The more we learn the more retarded the Bible, Koran and the Torah sound....

Evolution sound damn near college level next to that caveman shit. I don't care if it isn't perfect either.

Many feel threatened knowing they will be held accountable to a higher authority.

I feel comfortable meeting my maker. I doubt his test is believing Paul Moses Joseph Smith or Mohammad. Or your church.

 

[Vastator]

The more we learn the more retarded the Bible, Koran and the Torah sound....

Evolution sound damn near college level next to that caveman shit. I don't care if it isn't perfect either.

Many feel threatened knowing they will be held accountable to a higher authority.

I feel comfortable meeting my maker. I doubt his test is believing Paul Moses Joseph Smith or Mohammad. Or your church.

If there were a god, and he were interested in meeting me... I presume he'd know where I live...

 

[deanrd]

For the past few decades most of the DNA was considered filler, and evolutionists claimed it was how DNA had the ability to become more diverse.

But now we know that everything within DNA has a purpose.

In January, Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, made a comment that revealed just how far the consensus has moved. At a health care conference in San Francisco, an audience member asked him about junk DNA. “We don’t use that term anymore,” Collins replied. “It was pretty much a case of hubris to imagine that we could dispense with any part of the genome — as if we knew enough to say it wasn’t functional.” Most of the DNA that scientists once thought was just taking up space in the genome, Collins said, “turns out to be doing stuff.”

Is Most of Our DNA Garbage?

Is Most of Our DNA Garbage?

Only if you are a conservative.

 

[Wyatt earp]

Still no empirical evidence of any species turning into another species, either.

Well it's already happened millions of years ago. The atmosphere was different back then. More carbon dioxide or monoxide. Point is science has an answer for that.

What about a duck billed web feet platipus? Seems stuck in the middle, no?

And OK, how about this? They found a new bacteria at the bottom of the Dead Sea. Maybe there was a mammal bacteria, bird, reptile, amphibians. Maybe they were all started separately. Still they all crawled out of the water and became what they are today.

If not, how did the first giraffe get here? Were they babies to start off? How did they get here?

I've never doubted the possibility. It seems logical that different sites containing the same organic materials could produce chains of information with similarities between the different offshoots.

We can observe a Finch evolve into a different kind of Finch, but we will never see one evolve into a turtle. Until a species becomes one not of its own kind, the answers we have come up with are lacking at best in my book.

There are fossils in the Karoo that clearly show the evolution of the therapsids to mammals.

http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/jspui/bitstream/10539/16395/1/1997.V33.GOW.KAROO FOSSILS MAMMAL ORIGINS.pdf

Linking to propaganda proves nothing. I can just as easily link to a report saying the opposite.

Fact remains, there are many species around today that are just like their ancestors from "millions of years" ago. Evolution of one species into another is a myth.

But you understand no land animals started out a land animal, right?? God didn't produce gerbils goats and eagles. They evolved from fish. It's true. God didn't poof them into exist

I still want to know how you think it's possible to de evolve from a strong as hell , fury creature ...to a weak ass pink creature (oh wait you think the skin is black under furry creatures)


In the wild..... Where the strong get the mates....??



Was it like proof with shopping malls and McDonald's and stuff?

 

[SixFoot]

The probability of a perfectly reasonable OP, with the potential to garner intellectually stimulating discussions and evolving views, devolving into a circle jerk of thin-skinned faggots fighting over black letters on a gray background, appears to be 0.999 across the entire internet. Man, differing views must be physically hurting people these days. lol

 

[ScienceRocks]

If I were to go by the evidence as you wish with evolution then there's no question there's no god....

Prove to me that there is...

 

[sealybobo]

Well it's already happened millions of years ago. The atmosphere was different back then. More carbon dioxide or monoxide. Point is science has an answer for that.

What about a duck billed web feet platipus? Seems stuck in the middle, no?

And OK, how about this? They found a new bacteria at the bottom of the Dead Sea. Maybe there was a mammal bacteria, bird, reptile, amphibians. Maybe they were all started separately. Still they all crawled out of the water and became what they are today.

If not, how did the first giraffe get here? Were they babies to start off? How did they get here?

I've never doubted the possibility. It seems logical that different sites containing the same organic materials could produce chains of information with similarities between the different offshoots.

We can observe a Finch evolve into a different kind of Finch, but we will never see one evolve into a turtle. Until a species becomes one not of its own kind, the answers we have come up with are lacking at best in my book.

There are fossils in the Karoo that clearly show the evolution of the therapsids to mammals.

http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/jspui/bitstream/10539/16395/1/1997.V33.GOW.KAROO FOSSILS MAMMAL ORIGINS.pdf

Linking to propaganda proves nothing. I can just as easily link to a report saying the opposite.

Fact remains, there are many species around today that are just like their ancestors from "millions of years" ago. Evolution of one species into another is a myth.

But you understand no land animals started out a land animal, right?? God didn't produce gerbils goats and eagles. They evolved from fish. It's true. God didn't poof them into exist

I still want to know how you think it's possible to de evolve from a strong as hell , fury creature ...to a weak ass pink creature (oh wait you think the skin is black under furry creatures)


In the wild..... Where the strong get the mates....??



Was it like proof with shopping malls and McDonald's and stuff?

Simple. If life is easy then we get weaker not stronger. If we look for beauty and not the biggest woman who can pull a plow then we get smaller.

We do it with dogs. We make them bald, small, gentle, smarter

 

[Wyatt earp]

I've never doubted the possibility. It seems logical that different sites containing the same organic materials could produce chains of information with similarities between the different offshoots.

We can observe a Finch evolve into a different kind of Finch, but we will never see one evolve into a turtle. Until a species becomes one not of its own kind, the answers we have come up with are lacking at best in my book.

There are fossils in the Karoo that clearly show the evolution of the therapsids to mammals.

http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/jspui/bitstream/10539/16395/1/1997.V33.GOW.KAROO FOSSILS MAMMAL ORIGINS.pdf

Linking to propaganda proves nothing. I can just as easily link to a report saying the opposite.

Fact remains, there are many species around today that are just like their ancestors from "millions of years" ago. Evolution of one species into another is a myth.

But you understand no land animals started out a land animal, right?? God didn't produce gerbils goats and eagles. They evolved from fish. It's true. God didn't poof them into exist

I still want to know how you think it's possible to de evolve from a strong as hell , fury creature ...to a weak ass pink creature (oh wait you think the skin is black under furry creatures)


In the wild..... Where the strong get the mates....??



Was it like proof with shopping malls and McDonald's and stuff?

Simple. If life is easy then we get weaker not stronger. If we look for beauty and not the biggest woman who can pull a plow then we get smaller.

We do it with dogs. We make them bald, small, gentle, smarter

Avoiding the question, we are talking in the wild...



You ever skin a dear? What color is underneath?


Again what do you think poof shopping malls just happened and match.com?



.

 

[sealybobo]

If I were to go by the evidence as you wish with evolution then there's no question there's no god....

Prove to me that there is...

They can't. You need to be afraid that if you doubt you'll go to hell or won't go to heaven. Or you have to want it to be true so you suspend logic.

You have to believe in miracles, virgin births and visits from God himself.

No way this would be a gods test, so we know all religions are made up.

Ultimately this is where we were before Moses lied. Some people believed something must have made us and some didn't. Throw out every religion and what do they have? To me it's so obvious the Moses and Jesus stories were man made up

 

[sealybobo]

There are fossils in the Karoo that clearly show the evolution of the therapsids to mammals.

http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/jspui/bitstream/10539/16395/1/1997.V33.GOW.KAROO FOSSILS MAMMAL ORIGINS.pdf

Linking to propaganda proves nothing. I can just as easily link to a report saying the opposite.

Fact remains, there are many species around today that are just like their ancestors from "millions of years" ago. Evolution of one species into another is a myth.

But you understand no land animals started out a land animal, right?? God didn't produce gerbils goats and eagles. They evolved from fish. It's true. God didn't poof them into exist

I still want to know how you think it's possible to de evolve from a strong as hell , fury creature ...to a weak ass pink creature (oh wait you think the skin is black under furry creatures)


In the wild..... Where the strong get the mates....??



Was it like proof with shopping malls and McDonald's and stuff?

Simple. If life is easy then we get weaker not stronger. If we look for beauty and not the biggest woman who can pull a plow then we get smaller.

We do it with dogs. We make them bald, small, gentle, smarter

Avoiding the question, we are talking in the wild...



You ever skin a dear? What color is underneath?


Again what do you think poof shopping malls just happened and match.com?



.

What made match.com? A human. It can be scientifically explained. So can all the things we don't know. There's an answer we just don't know it, yet. And some things we may never know like what happens when you die.

What a racket. Telling people you know what happens

 

[sealybobo]

W

There are fossils in the Karoo that clearly show the evolution of the therapsids to mammals.

http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/jspui/bitstream/10539/16395/1/1997.V33.GOW.KAROO FOSSILS MAMMAL ORIGINS.pdf

Linking to propaganda proves nothing. I can just as easily link to a report saying the opposite.

Fact remains, there are many species around today that are just like their ancestors from "millions of years" ago. Evolution of one species into another is a myth.

But you understand no land animals started out a land animal, right?? God didn't produce gerbils goats and eagles. They evolved from fish. It's true. God didn't poof them into exist

I still want to know how you think it's possible to de evolve from a strong as hell , fury creature ...to a weak ass pink creature (oh wait you think the skin is black under furry creatures)


In the wild..... Where the strong get the mates....??



Was it like proof with shopping malls and McDonald's and stuff?

Simple. If life is easy then we get weaker not stronger. If we look for beauty and not the biggest woman who can pull a plow then we get smaller.

We do it with dogs. We make them bald, small, gentle, smarter

Avoiding the question, we are talking in the wild...



You ever skin a dear? What color is underneath?


Again what do you think poof shopping malls just happened and match.com?



.

We are in the wild. Do you think you live in a bubble? Humans have protected the weak for thousands of years.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Linking to propaganda proves nothing. I can just as easily link to a report saying the opposite.

Fact remains, there are many species around today that are just like their ancestors from "millions of years" ago. Evolution of one species into another is a myth.

But you understand no land animals started out a land animal, right?? God didn't produce gerbils goats and eagles. They evolved from fish. It's true. God didn't poof them into exist

I still want to know how you think it's possible to de evolve from a strong as hell , fury creature ...to a weak ass pink creature (oh wait you think the skin is black under furry creatures)


In the wild..... Where the strong get the mates....??



Was it like proof with shopping malls and McDonald's and stuff?

Simple. If life is easy then we get weaker not stronger. If we look for beauty and not the biggest woman who can pull a plow then we get smaller.

We do it with dogs. We make them bald, small, gentle, smarter

Avoiding the question, we are talking in the wild...



You ever skin a dear? What color is underneath?


Again what do you think poof shopping malls just happened and match.com?



.

What made match.com? A human. It can be scientifically explained. So can all the things we don't know. There's an answer we just don't know it, yet. And some things we may never know like what happens when you die.

What a racket. Telling people you know what happens

And using it to judge people and to tell people how to live their lives. That is what really pisses me off. Making social and political based on a myth is sad.

 

[Weatherman2020]

But you understand no land animals started out a land animal, right?? God didn't produce gerbils goats and eagles. They evolved from fish. It's true. God didn't poof them into exist

I still want to know how you think it's possible to de evolve from a strong as hell , fury creature ...to a weak ass pink creature (oh wait you think the skin is black under furry creatures)


In the wild..... Where the strong get the mates....??



Was it like proof with shopping malls and McDonald's and stuff?

Simple. If life is easy then we get weaker not stronger. If we look for beauty and not the biggest woman who can pull a plow then we get smaller.

We do it with dogs. We make them bald, small, gentle, smarter

Avoiding the question, we are talking in the wild...



You ever skin a dear? What color is underneath?


Again what do you think poof shopping malls just happened and match.com?



.

What made match.com? A human. It can be scientifically explained. So can all the things we don't know. There's an answer we just don't know it, yet. And some things we may never know like what happens when you die.

What a racket. Telling people you know what happens

And using it to judge people and to tell people how to live their lives. That is what really pisses me off. Making social and political based on a myth is sad.

Really pisses you lefties off at people being told the greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. The left foam at the mouth at anyone saying they should not be self centered, your post attests to that.

 

[sealybobo]

I still want to know how you think it's possible to de evolve from a strong as hell , fury creature ...to a weak ass pink creature (oh wait you think the skin is black under furry creatures)


In the wild..... Where the strong get the mates....??



Was it like proof with shopping malls and McDonald's and stuff?

Simple. If life is easy then we get weaker not stronger. If we look for beauty and not the biggest woman who can pull a plow then we get smaller.

We do it with dogs. We make them bald, small, gentle, smarter

Avoiding the question, we are talking in the wild...



You ever skin a dear? What color is underneath?


Again what do you think poof shopping malls just happened and match.com?



.

What made match.com? A human. It can be scientifically explained. So can all the things we don't know. There's an answer we just don't know it, yet. And some things we may never know like what happens when you die.

What a racket. Telling people you know what happens

And using it to judge people and to tell people how to live their lives. That is what really pisses me off. Making social and political based on a myth is sad.

Really pisses you lefties off at people being told the greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. The left foam at the mouth at anyone saying they should not be self centered, your post attests to that.

There are three essential questions we may ask, none with a simple answer: When did life originate? Where did life originate? How did life originate? How does a mix of nonliving chemicals become living? From a scientific perspective, we may find clues for how life may have originated by finding the oldest signs of life possible. We can't ever be sure that what we find is the oldest life on Earth.

We do know that for the first 600 million years or so of its existence, Earth was not a safe environment for life. But around 3.9 billion years ago, things quieted down, after what is known as the Late Heavy Bombardment.

One of the oldest pieces of accepted evidence for life dates from 3.25 billion-year-old hydrothermal vent deposits at Pilbara Craton in Australia. The dates there can be pushed to 3.48 billion years ago. How do scientists date such old rocks? Using well-known radioactive decay techniques based on unstable isotopes found on the site.

Interestingly, chemical fingerprints from the mineralization process show that those living creatures had already a complex metabolism, indicating that earlier, simpler life existed.

Life shouldn't be hard to find in other planets or moons out there, including Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, or Enceladus, belonging to Saturn. Both have oceans of liquid water under a thick icy crust and show promising signs of hydrothermal vent activity.

However old first life was, we know that living creatures with sophisticated metabolisms were moving about and reproducing at least 400 million years after the Late Heavy Bombardment, a blink of an eye in geological time. If anything, this tells us that whatever that early life was, it took advantage of the primal Earth environment to blossom. And, since then, it never stopped — at least on this planet.

 

[Weatherman2020]

Simple. If life is easy then we get weaker not stronger. If we look for beauty and not the biggest woman who can pull a plow then we get smaller.

We do it with dogs. We make them bald, small, gentle, smarter

Avoiding the question, we are talking in the wild...



You ever skin a dear? What color is underneath?


Again what do you think poof shopping malls just happened and match.com?



.

What made match.com? A human. It can be scientifically explained. So can all the things we don't know. There's an answer we just don't know it, yet. And some things we may never know like what happens when you die.

What a racket. Telling people you know what happens

And using it to judge people and to tell people how to live their lives. That is what really pisses me off. Making social and political based on a myth is sad.

Really pisses you lefties off at people being told the greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. The left foam at the mouth at anyone saying they should not be self centered, your post attests to that.

There are three essential questions we may ask, none with a simple answer: When did life originate? Where did life originate? How did life originate? How does a mix of nonliving chemicals become living? From a scientific perspective, we may find clues for how life may have originated by finding the oldest signs of life possible. We can't ever be sure that what we find is the oldest life on Earth.

We do know that for the first 600 million years or so of its existence, Earth was not a safe environment for life. But around 3.9 billion years ago, things quieted down, after what is known as the Late Heavy Bombardment.

One of the oldest pieces of accepted evidence for life dates from 3.25 billion-year-old hydrothermal vent deposits at Pilbara Craton in Australia. The dates there can be pushed to 3.48 billion years ago. How do scientists date such old rocks? Using well-known radioactive decay techniques based on unstable isotopes found on the site.

Interestingly, chemical fingerprints from the mineralization process show that those living creatures had already a complex metabolism, indicating that earlier, simpler life existed.

Life shouldn't be hard to find in other planets or moons out there, including Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, or Enceladus, belonging to Saturn. Both have oceans of liquid water under a thick icy crust and show promising signs of hydrothermal vent activity.

However old first life was, we know that living creatures with sophisticated metabolisms were moving about and reproducing at least 400 million years after the Late Heavy Bombardment, a blink of an eye in geological time. If anything, this tells us that whatever that early life was, it took advantage of the primal Earth environment to blossom. And, since then, it never stopped — at least on this planet.

The question of when did life originate is a very simple question. And the answer does not involve dirt evolving into humans creating Beethoven's 5th or David Copperfield without assistance.

 

[Syriusly]

There are fossils in the Karoo that clearly show the evolution of the therapsids to mammals.

http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/jspui/bitstream/10539/16395/1/1997.V33.GOW.KAROO FOSSILS MAMMAL ORIGINS.pdf

Linking to propaganda proves nothing. I can just as easily link to a report saying the opposite.

Fact remains, there are many species around today that are just like their ancestors from "millions of years" ago. Evolution of one species into another is a myth.

But you understand no land animals started out a land animal, right?? God didn't produce gerbils goats and eagles. They evolved from fish. It's true. God didn't poof them into exist

I still want to know how you think it's possible to de evolve from a strong as hell , fury creature ...to a weak ass pink creature (oh wait you think the skin is black under furry creatures)


In the wild..... Where the strong get the mates....??



Was it like proof with shopping malls and McDonald's and stuff?

Simple. If life is easy then we get weaker not stronger. If we look for beauty and not the biggest woman who can pull a plow then we get smaller.

We do it with dogs. We make them bald, small, gentle, smarter

You ever skin a dear?



.

I hope none of you have ever skinned a dear.....

 

[Syriusly]

Avoiding the question, we are talking in the wild...



You ever skin a dear? What color is underneath?


Again what do you think poof shopping malls just happened and match.com?



.

What made match.com? A human. It can be scientifically explained. So can all the things we don't know. There's an answer we just don't know it, yet. And some things we may never know like what happens when you die.

What a racket. Telling people you know what happens

And using it to judge people and to tell people how to live their lives. That is what really pisses me off. Making social and political based on a myth is sad.

Really pisses you lefties off at people being told the greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. The left foam at the mouth at anyone saying they should not be self centered, your post attests to that.

There are three essential questions we may ask, none with a simple answer: When did life originate? Where did life originate? How did life originate? How does a mix of nonliving chemicals become living? From a scientific perspective, we may find clues for how life may have originated by finding the oldest signs of life possible. We can't ever be sure that what we find is the oldest life on Earth.

We do know that for the first 600 million years or so of its existence, Earth was not a safe environment for life. But around 3.9 billion years ago, things quieted down, after what is known as the Late Heavy Bombardment.

One of the oldest pieces of accepted evidence for life dates from 3.25 billion-year-old hydrothermal vent deposits at Pilbara Craton in Australia. The dates there can be pushed to 3.48 billion years ago. How do scientists date such old rocks? Using well-known radioactive decay techniques based on unstable isotopes found on the site.

Interestingly, chemical fingerprints from the mineralization process show that those living creatures had already a complex metabolism, indicating that earlier, simpler life existed.

Life shouldn't be hard to find in other planets or moons out there, including Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, or Enceladus, belonging to Saturn. Both have oceans of liquid water under a thick icy crust and show promising signs of hydrothermal vent activity.

However old first life was, we know that living creatures with sophisticated metabolisms were moving about and reproducing at least 400 million years after the Late Heavy Bombardment, a blink of an eye in geological time. If anything, this tells us that whatever that early life was, it took advantage of the primal Earth environment to blossom. And, since then, it never stopped — at least on this planet.

The question of when did life originate is a very simple question. And the answer does not involve dirt evolving into humans creating Beethoven's 5th or David Copperfield without assistance.

The question is simple- the answer is not.

Even for the fairytalists who believe a fairy poofed life into existence, it begs the question- where did the fairy come from?

Of course where life came from is not central or necessary for the theory of evolution.

Even if your fairy created the first hint of life, life then evolved from that.

No fairy poofed dinosaurs and giraffes into existence 6,000 years ago.

 

[Syriusly]

I still want to know how you think it's possible to de evolve from a strong as hell , fury creature ...to a weak ass pink creature (oh wait you think the skin is black under furry creatures)


In the wild..... Where the strong get the mates....??



Was it like proof with shopping malls and McDonald's and stuff?

Simple. If life is easy then we get weaker not stronger. If we look for beauty and not the biggest woman who can pull a plow then we get smaller.

We do it with dogs. We make them bald, small, gentle, smarter

Avoiding the question, we are talking in the wild...



You ever skin a dear? What color is underneath?


Again what do you think poof shopping malls just happened and match.com?



.

What made match.com? A human. It can be scientifically explained. So can all the things we don't know. There's an answer we just don't know it, yet. And some things we may never know like what happens when you die.

What a racket. Telling people you know what happens

And using it to judge people and to tell people how to live their lives. That is what really pisses me off. Making social and political based on a myth is sad.

Really pisses you lefties off at people being told the greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. The left foam at the mouth at anyone saying they should not be self centered, your post attests to that.

Really pisses you righties off at people being told that they should love their enemies as yourself. The right foam at the mouth at anyone saying that they should not be hate centered.

Your post attests to that.

 

[Syriusly]

For the past few decades most of the DNA was considered filler, and evolutionists claimed it was how DNA had the ability to become more diverse.

But now we know that everything within DNA has a purpose.

In January, Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, made a comment that revealed just how far the consensus has moved. At a health care conference in San Francisco, an audience member asked him about junk DNA. “We don’t use that term anymore,” Collins replied. “It was pretty much a case of hubris to imagine that we could dispense with any part of the genome — as if we knew enough to say it wasn’t functional.” Most of the DNA that scientists once thought was just taking up space in the genome, Collins said, “turns out to be doing stuff.”

Is Most of Our DNA Garbage?

Just to remind you of my post responding to your specious OP

Since that was never a part of the evolution argument- there really isn't anything to lose, other than to watch you fairytalists flail around and deny science.

Genetics | The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program
DNA is thus especially important in the study of evolution. The amount of difference in DNA is a test of the difference between one species and another – and thus how closely or distantly related they are.


While the genetic difference between individual humans today is minuscule – about 0.1%, on average – study of the same aspects of the chimpanzee genome indicates a difference of about 1.2%. The bonobo (Pan paniscus), which is the close cousin of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), differs from humans to the same degree. The DNA difference with gorillas, another of the African apes, is about 1.6%. Most importantly, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans all show this same amount of difference from gorillas. A difference of 3.1% distinguishes us and the African apes from the Asian great ape, the orangutan. How do the monkeys stack up? All of the great apes and humans differ from rhesus monkeys, for example, by about 7% in their DNA.


Geneticists have come up with a variety of ways of calculating the percentages, which give different impressions about how similar chimpanzees and humans are. The 1.2% chimp-human distinction, for example, involves a measurement of only substitutions in the base building blocks of those genes that chimpanzees and humans share. A comparison of the entire genome, however, indicates that segments of DNA have also been deleted, duplicated over and over, or inserted from one part of the genome into another. When these differences are counted, there is an additional 4 to 5% distinction between the human and chimpanzee genomes.


No matter how the calculation is done, the big point still holds: humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos are more closely related to one another than either is to gorillas or any other primate. From the perspective of this powerful test of biological kinship, humans are not only related to the great apes – we are one. The DNA evidence leaves us with one of the greatest surprises in biology: the wall between human, on the one hand, and ape or animal, on the other, has been breached. The human evolutionary tree is embedded within the great apes.


The strong similarities between humans and the African great apes led Charles Darwin in 1871 to predict that Africa was the likely place where the human lineage branched off from other animals – that is, the place where the common ancestor of chimpanzees, humans, and gorillas once lived. The DNA evidence shows an amazing confirmation of this daring prediction. The African great apes, including humans, have a closer kinship bond with one another than the African apes have with orangutans or other primates. Hardly ever has a scientific prediction so bold, so ‘out there’ for its time, been upheld as the one made in 1871 – that human evolution began in Africa.


The DNA evidence informs this conclusion, and the fossils do, too. Even though Europe and Asia were scoured for early human fossils long before Africa was even thought of, ongoing fossil discoveries confirm that the first 4 million years or so of human evolutionary history took place exclusively on the African continent. It is there that the search continues for fossils at or near the branching point of the chimpanzee and human lineages from our last common ancestor.

Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is the director of the Human Genome Project. His most recent book is "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief."

ROCKVILLE, Maryland (CNN) -- I am a scientist and a believer, and I find no conflict between those world views.

As the director of the Human Genome Project, I have led a consortium of scientists to read out the 3.1 billion letters of the human genome, our own DNA instruction book. As a believer, I see DNA, the information molecule of all living things, as God's language, and the elegance and complexity of our own bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of God's plan.

I did not always embrace these perspectives. As a graduate student in physical chemistry in the 1970s, I was an atheist, finding no reason to postulate the existence of any truths outside of mathematics, physics and chemistry. But then I went to medical school, and encountered life and death issues at the bedsides of my patients. Challenged by one of those patients, who asked "What do you believe, doctor?", I began searching for answers.

I had to admit that the science I loved so much was powerless to answer questions such as "What is the meaning of life?" "Why am I here?" "Why does mathematics work, anyway?" "If the universe had a beginning, who created it?" "Why are the physical constants in the universe so finely tuned to allow the possibility of complex life forms?" "Why do humans have a moral sense?" "What happens after we die?" (Watch Francis Collins discuss how he came to believe in God

)

I had always assumed that faith was based on purely emotional and irrational arguments, and was astounded to discover, initially in the writings of the Oxford scholar C.S. Lewis and subsequently from many other sources, that one could build a very strong case for the plausibility of the existence of God on purely rational grounds. My earlier atheist's assertion that "I know there is no God" emerged as the least defensible. As the British writer G.K. Chesterton famously remarked, "Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative."

But reason alone cannot prove the existence of God. Faith is reason plus revelation, and the revelation part requires one to think with the spirit as well as with the mind. You have to hear the music, not just read the notes on the page. Ultimately, a leap of faith is required.

For me, that leap came in my 27th year, after a search to learn more about God's character led me to the person of Jesus Christ. Here was a person with remarkably strong historical evidence of his life, who made astounding statements about loving your neighbor, and whose claims about being God's son seemed to demand a decision about whether he was deluded or the real thing. After resisting for nearly two years, I found it impossible to go on living in such a state of uncertainty, and I became a follower of Jesus.

So, some have asked, doesn't your brain explode? Can you both pursue an understanding of how life works using the tools of genetics and molecular biology, and worship a creator God? Aren't evolution and faith in God incompatible? Can a scientist believe in miracles like the resurrection?

Actually, I find no conflict here, and neither apparently do the 40 percent of working scientists who claim to be believers. Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.

But why couldn't this be God's plan for creation? True, this is incompatible with an ultra-literal interpretation of Genesis, but long before Darwin, there were many thoughtful interpreters like St. Augustine, who found it impossible to be exactly sure what the meaning of that amazing creation story was supposed to be. So attaching oneself to such literal interpretations in the face of compelling scientific evidence pointing to the ancient age of Earth and the relatedness of living things by evolution seems neither wise nor necessary for the believer.

I have found there is a wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. God can be found in the cathedral or in the laboratory. By investigating God's majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship.

Collins: Why this scientist believes in God - CNN.com

Thanks for posting another Scientist supporting the theory of evolution:

Quoting your article:
Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.

Collins directly contradicts everything you have said in this thread- and all of your threads denying evolution.

Your post begs the question- if even your own sources believe in evolution- why are you so determined to express your ignorance?

 

[sealybobo]

Avoiding the question, we are talking in the wild...



You ever skin a dear? What color is underneath?


Again what do you think poof shopping malls just happened and match.com?



.

What made match.com? A human. It can be scientifically explained. So can all the things we don't know. There's an answer we just don't know it, yet. And some things we may never know like what happens when you die.

What a racket. Telling people you know what happens

And using it to judge people and to tell people how to live their lives. That is what really pisses me off. Making social and political based on a myth is sad.

Really pisses you lefties off at people being told the greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. The left foam at the mouth at anyone saying they should not be self centered, your post attests to that.

There are three essential questions we may ask, none with a simple answer: When did life originate? Where did life originate? How did life originate? How does a mix of nonliving chemicals become living? From a scientific perspective, we may find clues for how life may have originated by finding the oldest signs of life possible. We can't ever be sure that what we find is the oldest life on Earth.

We do know that for the first 600 million years or so of its existence, Earth was not a safe environment for life. But around 3.9 billion years ago, things quieted down, after what is known as the Late Heavy Bombardment.

One of the oldest pieces of accepted evidence for life dates from 3.25 billion-year-old hydrothermal vent deposits at Pilbara Craton in Australia. The dates there can be pushed to 3.48 billion years ago. How do scientists date such old rocks? Using well-known radioactive decay techniques based on unstable isotopes found on the site.

Interestingly, chemical fingerprints from the mineralization process show that those living creatures had already a complex metabolism, indicating that earlier, simpler life existed.

Life shouldn't be hard to find in other planets or moons out there, including Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, or Enceladus, belonging to Saturn. Both have oceans of liquid water under a thick icy crust and show promising signs of hydrothermal vent activity.

However old first life was, we know that living creatures with sophisticated metabolisms were moving about and reproducing at least 400 million years after the Late Heavy Bombardment, a blink of an eye in geological time. If anything, this tells us that whatever that early life was, it took advantage of the primal Earth environment to blossom. And, since then, it never stopped — at least on this planet.

The question of when did life originate is a very simple question. And the answer does not involve dirt evolving into humans creating Beethoven's 5th or David Copperfield without assistance.

Not true. Give this 1 million years and who knows what this fungus will turn into



I told you a new bacteria was found at the bottom of the dead sea. Never been seen before