[OneEyed]

I'm Catholic and I've got my own theories unguided by the church. I agree with sawce about it not happening in 7 days. I believe the conversion of those "days" to our modern day is off, by how much I don't know. My other theory is that the paradise that was built, was the entire universe in a process called "the big bang". If you take a look at some pictures taken from the Hubble telescope you can see that our universe is one gigantic paradise of massive proportions.

As for evolution, science tells half-truths, what science has told us is 10 billion years old could really only be 1 billion year old. But science is close enough to fact to suggest that our time-span far exceeds what Christians have estimated people have lived on Earth for, which is about 5000-6000 years. So again, just because the church didn't get numbers 100% doesn't mean there does not exist a God.

Evolution is part of the half-truths, we can't prove we mutated from apes, we can only suggest. It takes about 500,000 years to have a noticable mutation difference in a species, and even that is not a big species changing difference. If life has been on Earth starting from cell organisms, it would take roughly 5 billion years of mutation to get to the point we are at now. Since the last wipe-out its been about 70-100million years. That could be enough time to go from tiny mammal -> apes -> humans. Scientists think we started in Africa, but a Japanese scientist claims we evolved in several places at the same time. Coincidence or evolution?

[Twilight Suzuka]

Wrong. All things evolve in the same way; pressures causing superior elements to reproduce more than inferior elements, thus changing a population over time.

The first things we would regard as "living" were not truely living; they were organic scavengers that had the ability to reproduce. Simplest one would be an RNA strand; it can reproduce if materials are close enough. An advantage would be the ability to gather or store materials, move down the pipe a little and we have simple bacteria that can store and reproduce. Plants come MUCH further down the pipe, as they can produce complex food from simple elements and light; bacteria was the first "true" life.

However, looking into memes (behavior genes) and "living systems", even non-organic things such as stars and the enviroment act exactly like animals and plants and such. This means we are not unique, not even as living creatures; even atoms and molecules seem to exhibit "living" tendencies, such as wants and needs which are not reducible to a more "scientific" element. For instance, why a neutron decays is (as of yet) not capable of being described in more descriptive terms as "a neutron needs to be in an atom to not decay" (without decaying to technobabble that not many people believe).

Why does this matter? It means evolution is easy to see in fads, in production of cars, anything behavioral really. It means living things like humans are inevitable, not unique, because systems evolve, and thus eventually a manner of collecting energy and such will arise as an advantage. And what is life but distinct elements collecting energy and reproducing?

Science does not speak "half truths" as OneEyed says; all it speaks is of facts and theories. NOTHING is provable; things are only disprovable. While we cannot prove that gravity exists, we CAN disprove it. However, as evidence strongly suggests it does, and it doesn't disagree with observations, it is a sound theory. That evolution exists is completely accepted by anyone intelligent or educated in any way; it is logical, it can be observed in fossil records and in bacteria/viruses, etc etc. That we came from great apes is essentially proven to the extent that it can be scientifically proven; just like gravity, the overwhelming amount of evidence supports it.

That anyone would look at the huge amount of evidence and deny that evolution exists is a testimate to the evolutionary abilities of such living systems as religion, which is what I find very ironic.

[sawce]

Originally Posted by stupok69 I overestimated you, sawce.

Im not gonna lie, I originally posted this to find out if some people I had theories about were fundamentalists.

Then I sort of wanted to see how the general population here would respond, considering a lot of you are ~16 years old.

[The Specialist]

Is the experiment complete ?

[Psycho-Path]

I hate evolution, -karma me if you will, I don't care. There are tons of facts to say that it is wrong. Check out Dr. Dino.

[sawce]

Originally Posted by Psycho-Path I hate evolution, -karma me if you will, I don't care. There are tons of facts to say that it is wrong. Check out Dr. Dino.

Dr. Dino is a horribly designed page, but the biggest argument I can find on it is stuff like this:

# Where did the space for the universe come from? # Where did matter come from? # Where did the laws of the universe come from (gravity, inertia, etc.)? # How did matter get so perfectly organized? # Where did the energy come from to do all the organizing? # When, where, why, and how did life come from non-living matter? # When, where, why, and how did life learn to reproduce itself?

Which can all be thrown right back at creationists: Where did god come from?

[6pack]

And the final, most important events leading to the origin of life are perhaps the least understood chapters of the story.

All things said, no-one knows for sure how things ended up the way it is today.
Are we to believe the scientist's? Do we or are we supposed to believe everything that is thought to us? There are too many variables.

As far as evolution is concerned....If it is true...I will tell you what we will look like a million years from now (or less). We either wont be here which is likely or we better start growing some gills because it all will be under water.

WW3 will be fought with nuclear weapons, WW4 with sticks and stones, WW5 on a bacterial level

[Zenith77]

According to evolution (or what I've been taught of it), species mutate due to their environment changing. These adaptations are produced in such a way that an organism can live comfortably (in terms of living conditions) and have the ability to collect the natural resources around them (food).

For example, humans supposedly evolved to the w/e first stage it is (the one before neanderthal), since the rain forest was depleting and humans no longer needed their ape like features to jump/swing/etc from tree to tree. So instead they lost their fur coats for w/e reason and began walking up right (since it would be the more conventional way to get around on a flat peice of land with little to no trees).

Now, someone posted in this thread that it takes 500,000-600,000 years to have a noticeable mutation. As you can see this is an incredibly long time, since mutating isn't cake ;). But, environments however, can undergo dramatic changes in a relatively short amount of time.

So, environmental change can happen fast, mutations can't (it takes generations). Of course, I realize that environments can change slow too, so what happens now? How well can a species "detect" (in the sense that mutations begin) subtle changes in an environment before it's too late?

Here is my hypothesis, environmental changes happen either to fast for a species/organism to keep up with it or they happen to slow for a species to even begin to mutate, but when a dramatic change is noticeable, it'll be half a millennium before they even have suitable change to their new environment (the latter part can easily be disputed in circles, "change is happening slow so therefore species can keep up with it, but then again if it's happening slow then how well does the species mutate with it?" kind of thing).

Another question, if you look back I keep refering to the term "species" many times. When it comes time for mutation (due to the environment), do all the organisms of a species mutate in the same way, or do they mutate differently (most probable outcome would be different genre of species perhaps?).

One more thing, about the fossil thing. Fossils don't prove evolution exists, only an organism did. Now, what about "Lucy" or other fossils of hominids that show different charcateristics of humans? Let's see: the movement of tectonic plates (weak point), birth defects, culture (The mayans used to at birth if you had a high place in society [wealthy family] put something on a baby's head to make it squish back), etc.

[allenwr]

This is probably my last post here, but anyhow, I think that reason all of these conversations start on how it all began or who started it, is that humans cannot not grasp the idea that there was no start nor is there an end, that something just simply excist. In thinking this, I myself have doubts, but this is the one option that seem's to be over looked.

[Roach]

Originally Posted by allenwr This is probably my last post here, but anyhow, I think that reason all of these conversations start on how it all began or who started it, is that humans cannot not grasp the idea that there was no start nor is there an end, that something just simply excist. In thinking this, I myself have doubts, but this is the one option that seem's to be over looked.

This is the absolute dumbest thing I have ever read.

There has to be a start otherwise existance is null and void. How we came to be is a question that has to be asked, you cant just bypass it and go, "Well, im here. Lets make babies!". Its human nature to question why we are here and what we are here for, as well as to wonder as to where we came from. Simply shrugging everything off and just "existing" without questioning makes you incredibly naieve to the world around you.

And OBVIOUSLY there is an end, because all life will DIE at some point in time. Life ends, there isnt any evolution that can change this (at the present time). All species will eventually die. This planet will eventually blow up in a few billion years when the sun goes kaput.

The reason its overlooked is because its not a valid option that should be looked at in the first place. Quote me something on the scientific theory of "just existing" and MAYBE i'll reconsider.