Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests evolution in the news again!!

Interesting things going on this week. New fossils found in the Indonesia islands, National Geographic has a major article on Darwin. Thought starting this always interesting subject might be fun again.
The work of the 19th-century English naturalist shocked society and revolutionized science. How well has it withstood the test of time?


(from the national geographic website)
Get a taste of what awaits you in print from this compelling excerpt.

Evolution by natural selection, the central concept of the life's work of Charles Darwin, is a theory. It's a theory about the origin of adaptation, complexity, and diversity among Earth's living creatures. If you are skeptical by nature, unfamiliar with the terminology of science, and unaware of the overwhelming evidence, you might even be tempted to say that it's "just" a theory. In the same sense, relativity as described by Albert Einstein is "just" a theory. The notion that Earth orbits around the sun rather than vice versa, offered by Copernicus in 1543, is a theory. Continental drift is a theory. The existence, structure, and dynamics of atoms? Atomic theory. Even electricity is a theoretical construct, involving electrons, which are tiny units of charged mass that no one has ever seen. Each of these theories is an explanation that has been confirmed to such a degree, by observation and experiment, that knowledgeable experts accept it as fact. That's what scientists mean when they talk about a theory: not a dreamy and unreliable speculation, but an explanatory statement that fits the evidence. They embrace such an explanation confidently but provisionally���?�taking it as their best available view of reality, at least until some severely conflicting data or some better explanation might come along.

The rest of us generally agree. We plug our televisions into little wall sockets, measure a year by the length of Earth's orbit, and in many other ways live our lives based on the trusted reality of those theories.

Evolutionary theory, though, is a bit different. It's such a dangerously wonderful and far-reaching view of life that some people find it unacceptable, despite the vast body of supporting evidence. As applied to our own species, Homo sapiens, it can seem more threatening still. Many fundamentalist Christians and ultra-orthodox Jews take alarm at the thought that human descent from earlier primates contradicts a strict reading of the Book of Genesis. Their discomfort is paralleled by Islamic creationists such as Harun Yahya, author of a recent volume titled The Evolution Deceit, who points to the six-day creation story in the Koran as literal truth and calls the theory of evolution "nothing but a deception imposed on us by the dominators of the world system." The late Srila Prabhupada, of the Hare Krishna movement, explained that God created "the 8,400,000 species of life from the very beginning," in order to establish multiple tiers of reincarnation for rising souls. Although souls ascend, the species themselves don't change, he insisted, dismissing "Darwin's nonsensical theory."

Other people too, not just scriptural literalists, remain unpersuaded about evolution. According to a Gallup poll drawn from more than a thousand telephone interviews conducted in February 2001, no less than 45 percent of responding U.S. adults agreed that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." Evolution, by their lights, played no role in shaping us.

Only 37 percent of the polled Americans were satisfied with allowing room for both God and Darwin���?�that is, divine initiative to get things started, evolution as the creative means. (This view, according to more than one papal pronouncement, is compatible with Roman Catholic dogma.) Still fewer Americans, only 12 percent, believed that humans evolved from other life-forms without any involvement of a god.

The most startling thing about these poll numbers is not that so many Americans reject evolution, but that the statistical breakdown hasn't changed much in two decades. Gallup interviewers posed exactly the same choices in 1982, 1993, 1997, and 1999. The creationist conviction���?�that God alone, and not evolution, produced humans���?�has never drawn less than 44 percent. In other words, nearly half the American populace prefers to believe that Charles Darwin was wrong where it mattered most.


link to the newly discovered "hobbit"

religions... all of them... are stupid... if there was in fact a religion that was true out there..there wouldnt be 1000's of differant varying beliefs... I can see this however: SAY Christianity is THE religion IT IS TRUE (yeah right) and there are several versions of christianity.. its a choice of those closly related religions not hinduism or some other religion.. does anyone follow me? or at least understand what im trying to say?

i think he may have been referring to the different denominations such as Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, Baptist, Presbyterian, Protestant, Methodist, non-denominational etc...and the varying sub-groups of some of them. There are differences amongst them. they have different creeds in which they base their practices and views on. they agree on the very basic fundamentals completely but often heartily disagree on other issues. The Roman Catholic church didn't even recognize other Christian "religions" officially until very recently.

personally, i find it hard to believe that we came from single-celled organisms and by "chance" happened to evolve into creatures that can do the wonderous things we can do. how many "ape-like man" remains have been discovered? i wouldn't exactly call this concrete evidence that we are evolved monkeys. all we have are some skeletal remains and some preserved samples. There could be other possible explanations for these. Imagine if a million years from now, after we've managed to wipe ourselves out, some "visitors" find the remains of some con-joined twins and announce that the beings of this planet were once two headed unibodies.

<====== Atheist

Originally posted by Jesse the Body:

---

"Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers."

---

Originally posted by Larry Flynt:

---

"Religion has caused more harm than any other idea since the beginning of time. There's nothing good I can say about it. People use it as a crutch."

---

I guess I have the creationist conviction. First being that God wouldn't try to create something that could make people confused about their origin. Let's face it, those who don't believe in God usually gravitate towards evolution.

I've always had doubts abouts how scientist get their dates. Like, how can you really pinpoint the age of something like bones of anything thousands of years old. It's too varied and each scientsist has their own take on matters like fossil-dating. How can you guage the abuse a dead body takes from where they died, how they died, and what they died from.

For all we know it could have been an unfortuate child with genetic mutations that grew up, or if they haven't dated the bones it could be an actual 3 year old...

Just because it's relative to the thread replies...

Quote:

---

Undated:
I'm becoming what I used to be afraid of. When the whole world wants to destroy you, every day is you last day and every performance is your final one. The Antichrist isn't just me, or just one person. It's all of us, a collective state of mind that America needs to have awakened in them. I want to wake it in them. That's the purpose of this tour, maybe even my life, to make Americans realize the don't have to believe in something just because they'be been told it all their lives. You can't have someone who's never had sex or drugs telling you it's wrong. Only through experience can you determine your own morality. Humanity isn't about constantly having to seek forgiveness for being human; humanity is leading a guiltless existence as an individual. That is Armageddon, because, to Christianity, if you forsake the idea of God and believe in yourself, the world is over.

---

Taken from "Long Hard Road Out of Hell" -- Marilyn Manson

Great book... excellent read.

--JamesT