The biggest leap of faith for evolution is that everything started from one common source. Another leap of faith is that monkeys and men have a common ancestor. It's all based on skeletons that they assume are linearly progressive. Science also assumes that everything has been happening the same way since forever. Once they realized how fast our brains would have to be evolving even today they added little footnotes about "evolutionary spurts" that they assumed happened in order to justify why our brains havn't been evolving since recorded history. So really they assume everything is consistant except when it shows how silly their little story is.
It looks like we've got an an omniscient man in the house. I can't wait for him to enlighten us about the origin of species.
Even if you assume what the OP says is fictitious the theory of darwinism was replaced by genetic mutation theory long back it states that sudden genetic change can cause evolution or devolution The mutation can either uplift a species or downgrade it. If next mutation happens for human gene and results in a less intelligent species , will you be surprised ?
Well, not quite true, is it? Punctuational evolutionary theory was borne from evidence and scientific method. The "little footnotes" you mention constitute an incredibly wealthy body of scientific endeavour seeking to explain nature. This is the way science works - when there is a hole in a given theory (the "missing links" of gradual evolutionary theory), you dig deeper to find out more. You use your brains to try to tease out truth. You don't throw your hands up and ascribe it to a Creator. God knows I tire of my fellow atheists who religiously proclaim There Is No God. But I equally tire of explanations which say that science is ill-founded, because it does not yet have all the answers, and therefore we must turn to the divine. I still say that if there is a creator, he, she, it would want us to use what was given to us in the way of grey matter between the ears to uncover the mysteries (he, she, it) set forth.
Rather you throw your hands up in the air and ascribe it to a fluke in history that resulted in a sudden increase in brain size. God wants you to use your brain and see His work in nature. Not use your brain to make up stories that write him out of it. (Human Brain - Monkey Brain) / (years from Monkey to Man) == huge consistant brain growth. The truth is that our brains havn't changed in thousands of years. That little equation indicates that are brain should be a lot different. So Evolutionists have to come up with another fairy tale about a short burst of rapid brain growth to make that inconsistancy go away. There's no proof for it, it just has to be that way because Evolution is True. It's a circular argument. The religious arm of science has no interest in the truth. They just make stuff up that sounds plausible in order to protect what they already accept as fact.
No one is doing this, Kalvin. Punctuational evolutionary theory rigorously explains rapid, quantum shifts among populations - briefly, as much as I understand it, geographic and other structural stressors tend to cause periods of intense, closely-related breeding pairs, leading to a larger percentage of the population pool expressing recessive traits and mutations. With such short, intensive periods of "breakout," the fossil record will necessarily be more limited than with longer period of gradual change, with more "spread out" populations. Such a thing is replicable in the lab, on a smaller scale. It is quite clear to me, anyway. Please explain your conclusion - that they are merely "throwing up their hands?" Actually, on second thought, never mind. I'm quite comfortable in my beliefs, and allow you yours. This ridiculous addiction called the "politics and religion" section gets quite old. All the best.
But that has nothing to do with how it all started. Nobody debates that things change. The debate is over the starting point of it all. An evolutionist sees two non-parallel, non-intersecting line segments moving away from each other on a surface and assumes that at some point in the past they converged. A Creationist sees the well defined starting points and can see the lines don't converge and has no reason to assume they ever did. That doesn't prove that the lines converged. It just explains current on-going change. It doesn't tell us the starting point as that is impossible to know. So really that has nothing to do with the origin of species. Claiming that it does is just science based religion.
A creationist also has absolutely no scientific or rational evidence for believing what they do. Just because science hasn't answered every aspect of the universes creation does not mean that the universe had a divine creator. Ignorance of the way something works is no excuse for saying it is supernatural. Where would we be today if every scientist out there just gave up exploring new theories and wrote them off as "gods doing"?
You've made an attempt to discredit organic evolution and you failed. Now you're moving on to physical cosmology and questioning the validity of the big bang, which has nothing to do with Darwinian evolution by natural selection.
KalvinB, two direct questions if you please. What evidence would it take for you to accept the theory of evolution as truth? What evidence would it take for you to accept the Big Bang as truth?
pretty sure he would need god to come down and personally tell him...... Of course we all know how likely that is (yes, i'm an asshole)
I already answered your two questions. Prove the two lines converged at some point. By definition of a line you can assume they did. But that assumes they are lines. They could be line segments and therefore they never converge. They could be two rays shooting out away from each other. What are they going to do in the future? Maybe they aren't really straight lines. Maybe they're functions of unknown definitions and we're just zoomed in so they look straight. Just looking at those two lines you can only create a religion of baseless assumptions. And that is why as a whole "Evolution" is a religion. Only the parts not based on speculation and assumptions could be reasonably considered. Do things change over time? Yes. Are some things different now than they were in the past? Of course. Do man and monkies have a common ancestor? Did the universe start at a single point in a big bang? Pure fairy tale with scientific overtones. Completely unprovable because they can neither be observed nor recreated. So until you can observe the Big Bang and observe the evolution of a creature from start to man and monkey it's purely religious speculation. Science so far has only observed things they assume indicate a big bang and their version of human history. Those parts of evolution by definition are not science.
Since you're obviously having a hard time getting this, I had created this awhile back to illustrate the point...
Are you a politician or something? Why can't you answer a direct question? Why all the smoke and mirrors? Go ahead, say it outright: "no amount of evidence will make me accept evolution or the Big Bang". A few more questions, if I may: a) Do you accept that every living creature must've had a living parent? b) Do you accept that creatures are very different from each other? c) Do you accept that simple creatures were around on Earth long before complex creatures (as demonstrated by the fossil record)? Finally, by what mechanism do bacteria become immune to antibiotics?
a) irrelavent - creationism and evolution have the same problem here. evolution assumes we all decended from a big bang b) irrelavent - I didn't realize that creationism requires that everything be the same c) assumption - the dating methods have an absurd amount of assumptions built in d) irrelavent -I didn't realize creationism prevents things from changing to adapt. In fact I've stated already that things change. Read, comprehend, apply. You really suck at this. None of those questions have anything to do with how it all started. I already answered you questions. I'm not going to repeat myself just because you keep asking the same silly questions over and over again. Maybe if you put them in 100pt font and bold with a marquee... There is no evidence for the Big Bang. There are just a lot of observations that faith based science assumes is related to something they call the Big Bang.
It's funny how the monkey's (lemurs, gorillas, etc) survived, but our ancestors didn't. If a monkey can survive time, why can't an ancestor of man? *shrug*
I didn't ask you if they were "irrelavent" [sic] - I asked you whether you accepted them or not. Please keep ad hominems out of this. No - they have to do with EVOLUTION. Which can be considered completely separately from ABIOGENESIS, both of which can be considered completely separately from THE BIG BANG. Until you get this into your head, we will not get anywhere. I am trying to establish about EVOLUTION. Are you going to engage seriously or continue with the smoke and mirrors?