What is your opinion on evolution?

[nygreenguy]

Im curious as to what everyones specific beliefs/opinions are on this topic. However, a belief w/o justification is useless, so please throw your $.02 in!


I know this has been discussed ad nauseam here, but Im now and wanna get a better feel of CURRENT feelings, not old ones!

[Skyler]

I'm voting for option 2.

Natural selection is a well-defined, observable phenomenon, and it most certainly is resulting in diversity of species.

However, I believe that the different families were created by God, along with everything else, in 6 literal days.

[nygreenguy]

I'm voting for option 2.

Natural selection is a well-defined, observable phenomenon, and it most certainly is resulting in diversity of species.

However, I believe that the different families were created by God, along with everything else, in 6 literal days.

I would say the last option best defines what you are hitting at.

How recent was the 6 literal days? If it was recent, then I totally think the last is the best, but if it was much more ancient, then I can understand your pick.

[JoeyKnothead]

1

Abiogenesis looks to be sound in my limited understanding of it. If it were shown to be incorrect I still wouldn't think a god started it.

Evolution looks so sound to me as to be the only explanation for the diversity of life. So if abio were to go, I would still hold onto evolution.

It is a fascinating question, 'what, where, when, how', but I just can't see a 'who' in the origins. Surely not the 'who' proposed by any religion I'm aware of.

[nygreenguy]

Ok, if your voting you should be talking!

Im gonna remove the poll and make you all start speaking up!

[nygreenguy]

I guess I should post my own!.

I voted option 1. Abiogenesis with natural selection. This is because evolution is a scientific fact, and natural selection is a darn good theory to explain how it happened.

We have piles upon piles of transitional fossils that show macroevokution at work and we can see microevolution every single day. We have seen many beneficial mutations which proves adaptation.

We have created the building blocks for life in the lab by simulating early earth conditions.

By looking at the evidence first, we can only say this was a totally natural process.

[McCulloch]

Abiogenesis and natural selection explain the diversity of life on the planet.

Is the closest to what I believe. However, I do not believe that abiogenesis did much for diversity of life. From what we can tell, this process does not generate much variety.
Natural abiogenesis explains the introduction of life on Earth and natural selection and a few other factors such as sexual selection, explains the diversity.

[Ilias Ahmad]

Evolution is a theory. We should leave it at that.

[nygreenguy]

Evolution is a theory. We should leave it at that.

Here, lets let some professionals shed some light on this:

In the American vernacular, "theory" often means "imperfect fact"--part of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess. Thus the power of the creationist argument: evolution is "only" a theory and intense debate now rages about many aspects of the theory. If evolution is worse than a fact, and scientists can't even make up their minds about the theory, then what confidence can we have in it? Indeed, President Reagan echoed this argument before an evangelical group in Dallas when he said (in what I devoutly hope was campaign rhetoric): "Well, it is a theory. It is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science--that is, not believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was."

Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.

Moreover, "fact" doesn't mean "absolute certainty"; there ain't no such animal in an exciting and complex world. The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us falsely for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Evolutionists have been very clear about this distinction of fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (theory) by which evolution (fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory--natural selection--to explain the mechanism of evolution.

- Stephen J. Gould, " Evolution as Fact and Theory"; Discover, May 1981

It is time for students of the evolutionary process, especially those who have been misquoted and used by the creationists, to state clearly that evolution is a fact, not theory, and that what is at issue within biology are questions of details of the process and the relative importance of different mechanisms of evolution. It is a fact that the earth with liquid water, is more than 3.6 billion years old. It is a fact that cellular life has been around for at least half of that period and that organized multicellular life is at least 800 million years old. It is a fact that major life forms now on earth were not at all represented in the past. There were no birds or mammals 250 million years ago. It is a fact that major life forms of the past are no longer living. There used to be dinosaurs and Pithecanthropus, and there are none now. It is a fact that all living forms come from previous living forms. Therefore, all present forms of life arose from ancestral forms that were different. Birds arose from nonbirds and humans from nonhumans. No person who pretends to any understanding of the natural world can deny these facts any more than she or he can deny that the earth is round, rotates on its axis, and revolves around the sun.

The controversies about evolution lie in the realm of the relative importance of various forces in molding evolution.

- R. C. Lewontin "Evolution/Creation Debate: A Time for Truth" Bioscience 31, 559 (1981) reprinted in Evolution versus Creationism, op cit.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html

So, when something is called "only a theory" its actually quite a compliment. It is a group of ideas that have managed, despite many, many tests, to hold strong. There has yet to be a single piece of information that gives even a shadow of doubt evolution did NOT happen. Now, the debate has shifted to how, exactly, it has happened.

[nygreenguy]

Abiogenesis and natural selection explain the diversity of life on the planet.

Is the closest to what I believe. However, I do not believe that abiogenesis did much for diversity of life. From what we can tell, this process does not generate much variety.
Natural abiogenesis explains the introduction of life on Earth and natural selection and a few other factors such as sexual selection, explains the diversity.

Polls are tough! I didnt want to exclude the origins of life in this discussion, so I worded them the best I saw fit!