There are evolutionist who are not Christians that believe evolution must be directed based on the evidence.
And I think think they’re wrong. After examining their claims, I think they’ve been confused by the science (usually because a theist propagated a misunderstanding), their arguments are flawed, and based on false analogies.

I also notice that it is often the evolutionist, not the creationist that brings religion into the discussion. Sometimes it is used as an excuse to stop all discourse.
(Shrug.) What does that have to do with me? It doesn’t look like you are accusing me of that, so it’s just a complaint about other people.

Since you say it isn’t part of evolutionist theory are you willing to concede that God created it? I didn’t think so.
No, I’m saying it’s a legitimate question to raise, but it’s a separate question of evolution over the past 3 billion years. In other words: you can’t disprove evolution over the last 3 billion years by arguing God created the first single-celled organism.

The idea that science somehow has to pretend there is no God appears to be a fairly recent phenomenon. Newton, for example, believed that science should be used to help us better understand God… I believe the attitude expressed in the following quote is irrational: ‘Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.’
If decent evidence can be produced for God, I’m willing to accept it. Unless some blatantly obvious evidence for divine intervention exists, I think the proper place of science is to stay silent in cases where no scientific/naturalistic explanation exists. The problem is that I don’t think this “blatantly obvious evidence” exists. I don’t think even decent evidence exists. There are some reasons to tread carefully when you consider injecting divine explanations into science: (1) many, many people rush to put God into any unexplained phenomena in order to justify their religious beliefs and make it serve an missionary purpose; many of these people are scientifically illiterate, involved in twisting the evidence, playing rhetorical games, or playing on society’s erroneous preconceived notions. This can turn bad very quickly. For example, Turkey allowed creationism to be taught in schools, and this, in turn, resulted in only creationism being taught in schools because most teachers were Muslim, and Harun Yahya became involved in a nasty slander campaign against professors teaching evolution. (2) Using divine explanations cut-off potentially fruitful areas of research. When you think phenomena X is caused by God, it prevents people from discovering naturalistic explanations for it. If you say that lightning or disease is caused by demons, it prevents real explanations from being discovered. (“all diseases of Christians are to be ascribed to demons” – Augustine) Neil DeGrasse Tyson has some commentary on this when he talks about how many great scientists of the past (he specifically talks about Newton, Huygens, etc) stopped discovering things whenever they inserted “God” as the explanation for phenomena. While I don’t think this completely bars divine explanations from science, it should make people very nervous about inserting God. Of course, science can remain silent when it doesn’t have explanations. I don’t think science needs to remain silent on origins because evolution does work. I can certainly understand Lewontin’s reason for the quote, and maybe you can too, when you think about these issues.

DCave: Back to the Lewontin quote, you still cannot make it say what it doesn’t say. He talks about the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories… Not a word about wave-particle duality.

Then go back to my comment and read it again. The larger quote says, “Carl Sagan accepts, as I do, the duality of light, which is at the same time wave and particle”. He’s specifically mentions wave-particle duality, despite your assertion: “Not a word about wave-particle duality.”

DCave: All the observable evidence on real life animals with real life experiments is that there are limits beyond which you cannot go. Breeders have been able to develop dogs from chihuahuas to great Danes, but they are still dogs.

I’ve already explained this.

DCave: When a dedicated evolutionist such as Dr. Colin Patterson can wake up one morning and realize that after 20-years of studying evolution that there was not one thing he knew about it, that should at least cause us to wonder if the hypothesis is all its cracked up to be.

I’ve already explained this and why he wasn’t saying what you think he was saying.

DCave: Purely beneficial mutations are rare if they exist at all.

You’re not even sure that purely beneficial mutations can exist?

DCave: They generally are beneficial within a certain setting, but harmful if conditions change. There is no free lunch.

Uh huh. What exactly is the mathematical basis for saying that mutations + natural selection can’t get these mutations into species? You have none. But, I have a mathematical basis showing that it can produce beneficial mutations. There is a “free lunch”. Evolution is very capable of optimizing genes.

DCave: Here are what some prominent evolutionist have said about random mutations (I know, you don’t care, but somebody might)…

First of all, you NEED to realize that creationists are involved in quote-mining. I already talked about this in my last post. Quote-mining is the dishonest practice of taking evolutionists’ quotes out of context to make them appear to be saying something different than they actually said. You NEED to stop and realize that the information creationists are giving you is very often BAD. I will continue to hammer you on this point until you realize that creationists are being dishonest when they feed you these quotes. I don’t reject them because I don’t care what prominent evolutionists say, I reject them because I know creationists are being dishonest about these quotes. I would also add that the original Quote Book (a book of quote-mines by AnswersInGenesis) underwent substantial revision to become the Revised Quote Book after they discovered that many of their “quotes” were actually fabricated.

You quote Pierre-Paul Grassé as a “prominent evolutionist”, but he’s *not* an evolutionist. He’s a neo-lamarkian. He rejects neo-darwinism, so he cannot be used as an example of what a “prominent evolutionist” has said.

“A mutation doesn’t produce major new raw material. You don’t make a new species by mutating the species…. That’s a common idea people have; that evolution is due to random mutations. A mutation is not the cause of evolutionary change”. Gould, Stephen J.

I believe Gould is talking about the importance of natural selection here. Mutations don’t create *major* new raw material. And mutations alone (without natural selection) would be disastrous because the accumulation of bad mutations would lead to extinction.

“Accordingly, the great majority of mutations, certainly well over 99%, are harmful in some way, as is to be expected of the effects of accidental occurrences.”

That’s obviously a false statement. Nearly one-third of all possible point-mutations would be silent mutations – i.e. they cause no change in the amino-acid sequence. Hence, the 99% number is most definitely false. But, then hey, Muller made that comment in 1950 – which was three years before we discovered that DNA is the hereditary molecule.

DCave: You brought up probabilities, but if you are looking for support for evolution through probabilities you won’t find it. Most evolutionist shy away from probabilities like you would shy away from the plague.

That’s your fiction, not reality.

DCave: Since almost all living things, whether plant or animal, are built from the same building blocks, it should not be surprising that they share some defects in common. After all they had a common designer.

If that’s your answer, you have failed to provide any decent answer. Are you saying your omniscient God is fallible? Are you saying that we know more than he did – since we discovered problems that He did not? This train of thought can only lead you to inconvenient conclusions.

“If evolution from goo to you were true, we should expect to find countless information-adding mutations. But we have not even found one.” Sarfati, Jonathan

Sarfati bloviates an awful lot. The creationist trick is this: anytime a new mutation is found, they claim it was always there. Nevermind that we can take a single bacteria in the laboratory, allow it to multiply (creating clones), and discover that some bacteria (due to mutations) have gained some beneficial genetic change that was not in the original parent. Some examples of beneficial mutations: Antibiotic resistance in bacteria, Bacteria that eat nylon, Lactose tolerance, Resistance to atherosclerosis, human Immunity to HIV, HIV immunity to anti-viral treatments…
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mutations.html

In fact, there’s a quite a bit of research on lactose tolerance – it is a mutation that has occurred multiple times throughout the world (based on genetic studies), and it allows humans to digest milk into adulthood.
http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2007/02/26/in_the_footsteps_of_my_lactose.php
http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2006/12/11/6246

DCave: I am not making it up that you cannot find one transitional form that all evolutionist agree on.

Evolutionists DO agree that claimed transitionals were closely related to the true transitionals. Was Tiktaalik actually in our ancestry, or was it merely a cousin species to our ancestors? Not all evolutionists will agree because we can’t answer that definitively due to the natural limitations of fossil evidence. Your argument sounds relevant, but it’s not really a big deal.

DCave: When you say I would be amazed at the incredible similarity of chimpanzee and human DNA, it appears that you are using that gene similarity as evidence of our “common ancestry”. I do know that geneticist have placed the similarity at least as high as 98.5%, but by recent reports that number is probably closer to 95, and may still come down some more. Even a 4-5% difference would result in about 200,000,000 differences between chimpanzees and humans. How many random mutations is that?

How many random mutations is that? A single insertion or deletion can account for a number of differences in a single event. So, That’s not 200 million mutation events. (And, by the way, humans and chimps have 3.2 billion base pairs. A “4-5%” difference would be 128-160 million differences.) According to this, the insertion-deletions tended to be small, although they did find some that were several hundred nucleotides in length, and one that was 4,263 nucleotides long. That’s one mutation event that contributes 4,263 changes.

And most of those mutations are in non-coding DNA (likely has no effect), and I’ve seen a number of mutations that are silent mutations. I only know of one case where human and chimpanzee versions of the same gene differs by more than 3%. In the case of cytochrome-C, human, chimpanzee, and gorilla versions produce the identical protein, but they differ in the genetic sequence because of a few silent mutations. Cytochrome-C comes in lots of different varieties in the animal world, and they are interchangeable. You can inject the human version into yeast, and it works perfectly well. My point is that a vast majority of genetic differences between humans and chimps are going to be neutral.

DCave: Also, the chimpanzee genome is reportedly larger than the human, and humans have 46 chromosomes, whereas chimpanzee’s have 48. So according to evolution theory, which one is the most evolved?

Yup. But, you have the details wrong again. You say that chimpanzees have 48 chromosomes and humans have 46. Then you *assume* this means chimpanzees have a larger genome than humans. That is wrong. The fact that you learned about the 46/48 chromosome difference from creationist websites, but they never actually told you about the facts should tell you something about the abysmal level of information creationists are giving you. The fact that they would omit the facts about this is ridiculous, and it should make you question their integrity when they fail to fully-disclose the facts. There was a fusion event in the human lineage (i.e. two chromosomes fused together to become a single chromosome). The fact that there are obvious telomeres in the middle of a human chromosome is a little bit of evidence that the human-ancestors once had 48 chromosomes – just like chimpanzees and gorillas. You should be counting this as evidence for common ancestry with apes.

I would also point out that the Apologetics Press website has some extremely ridiculous statements about this (1, 2). Example:

Because DNA is a linear array of those four bases—A, G, C, and T—only four possibilities exist at any specific point in a DNA sequence. The laws of chance tell us that two random sequences from species that have no ancestry in common will match at about one in every four sites. Thus even two unrelated DNA sequences will be 25 percent identical, not 0 percent identical. Therefore a human and any earthly DNA-based life form must be at least 25% identical. Would it be correct, then, to suggest that daffodils are one-quarter human?

How dumb. It wouldn’t be “one-quarter human” even if 25% of the genome were identical. To think this is even an argument against evolution is depressingly stupid. Second, if one species had a genome of 1 million random nucleotides, and another species had 2 million random nucleotides, then we would expect a match of 12.5% (missing nucleotides are “misses”). I’m just shaking my head at their attempts to persuade the reader that high sequence similarity isn’t all that significant. I think I really need to show some actual genetic comparisons, because they’re playing games to mislead readers (and I’d guess they’d never seen a genetic sequence comparison in their whole lives).

Common sense would necessitate that organisms that share a common ancestry would possess the same number of chromosomes.

And common sense would be wrong. Creationists always seem to rely on intuition rather than actual knowledge, which is a major part of the problem.

This quote was incredibly stupid:

A strict comparison of chromosome numbers would indicate that we are more closely related to the Chinese muntjac (a small deer found in Taiwan’s mountainous regions), which also has 46 chromosomes.

Sorry, that quote is SO misinformed and stupid, it makes my brain hurt.

If the blueprint of DNA locked inside the chromosomes codes for only 46 chromosomes, then how can evolution account for the loss of two entire chromosomes? … To put it another way, humans always have had 46 chromosomes, whereas chimps always have had 48.

The Apologetics Press completely missed the point, and didn’t even address the relevant issue. Take a look at this picture. It shows a human, chimpanzee, gorilla, and orangutan chromosome right next to each other. Can you figure out what happened to the “missing” chromosomes? They fused together to become one chromosome. You see, on the ends of every chromosome are things called telomeres. They act sort of like caps on the ends to prevent damage to the chromosome. Also, chromosomes normally have one centromere in the middle of the chromosome. In the human version of chromosome #2, we find telomeres on the ends, but we also find some right in the middle of chromosome #2. Additionally, we have two centromeres on chromosome #2. This makes no sense unless you start with two separate chromosomes and fuse them together at the ends. Human ancestors had 48 chromosomes, just like all the other apes. The alternative theory: that God created us one chromosome where apes have two, and created telomeres in the middle of chromosome #2, and created two different centromeres on chromosome #2 makes no logical sense. Well, no logical sense if we assume God isn’t going out of his way to deceive us into thinking we’re related to apes.

Here’s a 4 minute Ken Miller video on the fusion of the human chromosome:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi8FfMBYCkk

This information was brought up at the Dover trial, and the “Intelligent Design” advocates never even attempted to dispute the evolutionary explanation. They had no rebuttal.

DCave: So according to evolution theory, which one is the most evolved? Remember before you answer, that it goes from simple to complex.

Sorry, you don’t understand evolutionary theory. First, the number of chromosomes has *nothing* to do with complexity, and the size of the genome is *not* any kind of measure of complexity. Second, evolution doesn’t predict life must be increasing in “complexity” (whatever that is, or however you measure it). There are many cases where evolution leads to a smaller genome, or the loss of genes. Species that change from independent organisms to parasites often lose genes. Tapeworms, for example, have done this. Because they can get various nutrients from their hosts, they no longer need all their old biochemical pathways (which allowed them to synthesize nutrients while living independently). Evolution is about survival and differential survival rates, not about an increase in complexity. In the far future, when the earth heats up due to the expansion of the sun, it will likely be the large multicellular organisms which die-off first. A billion years from now, the only living organisms might be tiny single-celled organisms. It’s about survival – not some unstoppable increase in complexity.

In fact, the genetics of tapeworms should lead you to a few conclusions. There are over a thousand species of tapeworms – each with their own genetics. Did your God create the tapeworms? They certainly aren’t capable of living a non-parasitic lifestyle anymore, and based on their genetic diversity, it’s been a long time since they’ve been capable of a non-parasitic lifestyle.

The rest of your post I’m just going to skip because it relies on your subtle misunderstandings of evolution and reality. I don’t feel like going out of my way to give you a complete remedial education — one that you will resist anyway.

So there are Christians who subscribe to evolution based on the evidence. So what. There are evolutionist who are not Christians that believe evolution must be directed based on the evidence. Evolution has been the standard teaching in schools for 40 or 50 years. I know because my oldest son is 45 and they were teaching it to him as fact in grade school, and to me in high school in the 50’s. They did not have the facts then and they do not have them today.

As far as Christian’s quoting the Bible in opposition to evolution, I believe that makes sense if you are arguing from a theological position. I do not believe it is appropriate to make the statement “That’s not what the Bible says” in a scientific discussion. I also notice that it is often the evolutionist, not the creationist that brings religion into the discussion. Sometimes it is used as an excuse to stop all discourse. Other times, they probably see it as to their advantage to use Christian evolutionist as useful idiots (I didn’t say they were idiots). But those theistic evolutionist better not be so bold as to try to publish papers in scientific journals supporting intelligent design or suggesting that God created life.

You are right, I have talked a lot about biogenesis, because, whether life started here on earth or was brought here by aliens it still had to originate somewhere. Since you say it isn’t part of evolutionist theory are you willing to concede that God created it? I didn’t think so.

The idea that science somehow has to pretend there is no God appears to be a fairly recent phenomenon. Newton, for example, believed that science should be used to help us better understand God. As I recall, he was no scientific slouch, even if at least one of his theories needed a little refinement. So whether you agree with Newton’s theology or not, you cannot dismiss his scientific accomplishments. I believe the attitude expressed in the following quote is irrational: ‘Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.’ Todd, S.C., correspondence to Nature 401(6752);423, 30 Sept. 1999. If all the evidence pointed to an intelligent designer, I believe it would be reasonable to at least consider that as a possible explanation.

I realize that you said it doesn’t matter to you what “prominent evolutionist” have said. Im pretty sure what some prominent creationist has said wouldn’t cut any ice with you, so I prefer to quote evolutionist. Whether you care or not, I believe the fact that evolutionist cannot even convince their own of some of their extravagant claims presents compelling evidence that those claims are greatly exaggerated. As far as me defending what “prominent theologians” have said, I would only feel compelled to do so it I thought they were right. The only person that speaks for me in theologic matters is me.

Back to the Lewontin quote, you still cannot make it say what it doesn’t say. He talks about the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, a prior commitment to materialism, science does not compel acceptance of a material explanation, we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to a set of concepts that produce material explanations, and that materialism is an absolute. In other words, we are going to look for material causes no matter where the evidence leads. Not a word about wave-particle duality. I do not read it that we should reject lots of modern science. I do believe we should reject “just-so stories” (Lewontin isn’t the only evolutionist to refer to them), human ancestors constructed from a few fragments of bone and vivid imaginations (same goes for whales), fourteen (or whatever the current number is) different versions of horse evolution and on and on it goes. So we agree on planetary orbits and gravity, which are observable and testable. The only evolution that has been observed is variation within kind (micro-evolution), but nobody has ever observed macro-evolution. All the observable evidence on real life animals with real life experiments is that there are limits beyond which you cannot go. Breeders have been able to develop dogs from chihuahuas to great Danes, but they are still dogs. After countless thousands of experiments on simple (biologically speaking) fruit-flys where mutations should have the greatest effect, geneticist have developed fruit-flies with an extra set of useless wings, and snooty fruit-flies that won’t breed with other fruit-flies, but much to their chagrin they are still fruit-flies. You can only push the genetic variation built into almost all living organisms so far before you run into a stonewall. If evolutionist had the evidence they claim, it would have been totally unnecessary for Stephen Jay Gould, among others, to revive a modified version of Goldschmidt’s hopeful monster (punctuated equilibrium).

When a dedicated evolutionist such as Dr. Colin Patterson can wake up one morning and realize that after 20-years of studying evolution that there was not one thing he knew about it, that should at least cause us to wonder if the hypothesis is all its cracked up to be. When he can pose that question to the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and get only silence, what does that say about the soundness of the evolutionist position. When he tries it on the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar at the University of Chicago and the only response is, “I do know one thing, it ought not to be taught in high school”, is it any wonder that some of us wacky creationist refuse to take evolutionist word that it is an established fact. (See 15 Answers to John Rennie and Scientific American’s Nonsense at http://www.ApologeticsPress.org for full quotes citing references). Yes, its been a few years since the now deceased Dr. Patterson made those remarks, and I am not implying he became a creationist because I don’t know. But even back then when apparently a good number of credible evolutionist could not point to one thing they actually knew to be true, it was still being presented as fact. As far as I can tell, things haven’t changed much in the interim. So pardon me if I don’t jump on the bandwagon.

When I refer to information, I am talking about the genetic code. A quaternary code that is thought to be optimal from an engineering standpoint (ain’t it wonderful what blind chance can do?). I am acquainted with Shannon’s theory, but that is about as far as it goes. I did not say beneficial mutations are not information. What I am saying, and many biologist on both sides of the aisle agree, they do not provide any new information that would propel evolutionary change, i.e., changing a porcupine into a pig (just for example). Purely beneficial mutations are rare if they exist at all. They generally are beneficial within a certain setting, but harmful if conditions change. There is no free lunch.

You say, “Random mutations occur. Random mutations will (according to probability), hit on beneficial changes.” Here are what some prominent evolutionist have said about random mutations (I know, you don’t care, but somebody might):

“Some contemporary biologists, as soon as they observe a mutation, talk about evolution. They are implicitly supporting the following syllogism (argument): mutations are the only evolutionary variations, all living beings undergo mutations, therefore all living beings evolve. This logical scheme is, however unacceptable: first, because its major premise is neither obvious nor general; second, because its conclusion does not agree with the facts. No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution…. The opportune appearance of mutations permitting animals and plants to meet their needs seems hard to believe. Yet the Darwinian theory is even more demanding: a single plant, a single animal would require thousands and thousands of lucky, appropriate events. Thus, miracles would become the rule: events with an infinitesimal probability could not fail to occur…. There is no law against day dreaming, but science must not indulge in it.” Grassé, Pierre-Paul (1977), The Evolution of Living Organisms, pp. 88, 103, (New York: Academic Press).

“A mutation doesn’t produce major new raw material. You don’t make a new species by mutating the species…. That’s a common idea people have; that evolution is due to random mutations. A mutation is not the cause of evolutionary change”. Gould, Stephen J. “Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?,” Hobart College speech, 2-14-80; quoted in Luther Sunderland (1984), Darwin’s Enigma (San Diego, CA: Master Books).
Actually, mutations of any kind are rare, and beneficial mutations are exceedingly rare. How rare? Hermann J. Muller, Nobel laureate in genetics, said: “Accordingly, the great majority of mutations, certainly well over 99%, are harmful in some way, as is to be expected of the effects of accidental occurrences.” Well over 99% are harmful, that doesn’t leave much for beneficial ones. Then consider how unlikely it is for two random mutations to occur that would ‘push evolution’ in the same direction, and you are really talking ‘fairy tale for grownups”. You brought up probabilities, but if you are looking for support for evolution through probabilities you won’t find it. Most evolutionist shy away from probabilities like you would shy away from the plague. Either that, dismiss them, or put out faulty computer programs with a target, whereas random mutations do not have a target.
Some of the posts you gave I had already read, some I haven’t. They are still the same old thing, guesses presented as science. As far as I am concerned, evolutionist have cried wolf too often for me to get excited. Doesn’t mean I won’t look at my leisure, but I am not going to get in a sweat about it. Since almost all living things, whether plant or animal, are built from the same building blocks, it should not be surprising that they share some defects in common. After all they had a common designer.
You keep talking about random mutations. I have already quoted some “prominent evolutionist” on this subject, so I will quote a creationist; “If evolution from goo to you were true, we should expect to find countless information-adding mutations. But we have not even found one.” Sarfati, Jonathan (2002a), .15 Ways to Refute Materialistic Bigotry,. [On-line], URL: http://www.answersingenesis.org/news/scientific_american.asp.
I am not making it up that you cannot find one transitional form that all evolutionist agree on. All the ones that have been around long enough to be studied thoroughly have questions surrounding them.
You took issue with my statement that “Evolution predicts that the more two classes of animals resemble each other the more genes thy share, but often that is not true.” I didn’t state it very well, but it appears you are not in total disagreement. When you say I would be amazed at the incredible similarity of chimpanzee and human DNA, it appears that you are using that gene similarity as evidence of our “common ancestry”. I do know that geneticist have placed the similarity at least as high as 98.5%, but by recent reports that number is probably closer to 95, and may still come down some more. Even a 4-5% difference would result in about 200,000,000 differences between chimpanzees and humans. How many random mutations is that? Also, the chimpanzee genome is reportedly larger than the human, and humans have 46 chromosomes, whereas chimpanzee’s have 48. So according to evolution theory, which one is the most evolved? Remember before you answer, that it goes from simple to complex.
In older biology textbooks homologous structures were presented as being caused by similar genes. In fact, Darwin saw homology as strong evidence of his theory. When molecular biology came along, that upset the apple cart, because often homologous structures between classes were produced by different genes. Another evolution prediction bites the dust. Never, fear, they can always adjust the theory to make it fit. Actually, I never read about evolutionary predictions until after the fact.
You are going to have to provide a little more context for your Francis Crick quote. Saying “Nowadays we would have a more open mind about the nature of the first replicating system” does not imply one way or another whether he changed his views on the probability of abiogenesis.
The fossil record does not represent simple to complex, since practically all phyla known today, and some that are now extinct are represented in the Cambrian explosion. It isn’t from simple to complex, but from marine sessile (growing in place) to free swimming to terrestrial. This progression doesn’t represent when the organisms lived but where they lived.
Evolution is not well supported by the evidence, unless you believe blind chance can produce miracles. It is accepted on faith, and defended with all the fervor that some people have for religion. And is in fact a religion that dispenses with God.
I just remembered in another post which I don’t have time to look up, you mentioned random complex patterns produced at a Santa Fe lab. I believe the patterns you are talking about, as do mineral crystals and snowflakes merely repeat the same information multiple times. Some would refer to them as ordered, or lacking specified complexity (à la Dembski). At any rate they do not come remotely close to the complexity of even the simplest of biological organisms. The string AB AB AB AB AB AB AB AB is ordered, but carries little information or complexity. The same value repeated 8 times. The string SOC NEOW LANO BOE SKLVOSO NNE is complex but not ordered, and carries no useful information.
I know I probably have not responded to everything, but my time is limited, and I have just taken on a project that is going to keep me busy at least for a while. So everyone can breathe a big sigh of relief.

No, this was quote-mined to make it appear that Dawkins “[wasn't] completely convinced”. A quick search in Amazon.com allows me to put Dawkin’s quote in context:

“The Cambrian strata of rocks, vintage about 600 million years [evolutionists are now dating the beginning of the Cambrian at about 530 million years], are the oldest in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists.” Evolutionists of all stripes, believe, however, that this really does represent a very large gap in the fossil record, a gap that is simply due to the fact that, for some reason, very few fossils have lasted from periods before about 600 million years ago. one good reason might be that many of these animals had only soft parts to their bodies: no shells or bones to fossilize.

In fact, this is the view among evolutionists. More reading on the Cambrian here:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/11/the_cambrian_as_an_evolutionar.php

And you can see Dawkin’s addressing this quote-mining here:

I once introduced a chapter on the so-called Cambrian Explosion with the words: “It is as though the fossils were planted there without any evolutionary history.” Again, this was a rhetorical overture, intended to whet the reader’s appetite for the explanation. Inevitably, my remark was gleefully quoted out of context. Creationists adore “gaps” in the fossil record. (Link)

[Colin Patterson] also stated there was not one transitional form for which you could make an airtight case (I would have to look this one up). Again, this was several years ago, but evolutionist were commonly claiming transitional forms then just as they do today. Many of these fossils are assembled from the barest evidence and require a great deal of imagination.

Nah – you’re just buying into the creationist’ myth about it. It’s my guess that Colin Patterson’s quote was about being able to prove ancestry. That’s a tricky thing to do. For a long time, it wasn’t known whether Neanderthals were humans’ parent species, or a cousin species. The problem is that evolution causes organisms to branch into species, and figuring out whether (say) Neanderthals were a parent species to humanity, or a cousin species is difficult because in both cases, they would have lots and lots of similarities. Was archaeopteryx the ancestor to modern birds? Or was it merely a cousin species to birds’ true ancestor? Those are tricky questions, and it can’t be answered absolutely. But, to say that we don’t *know* archaeopteryx *was* a parent species versus a side-branch that was an evolutionary dead-end isn’t that relevant. It’s played up as if “unless you *know* absolutely, then you know nothing”, which is a complete fallacy. There is information on the internet about how Patterson’s words have been twisted, you know. Here’s some information (from Patterson himself) that validates everything I was saying in this paragraph: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/patterson.html

There is a lot of information around about creationists twisting people’s words (also known as lying) to make evolutionists appear to say things they never said: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/project.html

It might also be enlightening for you to discover that creationists aren’t always being honest – and that’s not really their goal, when you think about it. Their goal is to convince people that their God exists. Lying or twisting about the facts is done in “service” of a much larger goal. I could quote Michael Behe on that topic (and he’s among the more legitimate creationists among the bunch): “The danger to Christians from osmosing alien, materialistic presumptions, I think, far outweighs the danger of being wrong about any particular scientific point.” Behe is arguing that reinforcing theistic beliefs are far more important than accurate science.

Trilobite you say. An ancient, simple creature with one of the most highly developed optical systems known to man… Must have been a case of punctuated equilibrium to have that degree of “apparent design” at that early stage in evolutionary development.

Getting information from creationists, again? “Trilobites” represents over 10,000 different species over a span of 300 million years. If you’re going to talk about trilobites, you should at least identify whether you’re talking about early or late trilobites. Not all Trilobites had the correct structure that would give them a good visual depth of field.

The Law of Biogenesis (only life begets life)… there are no known exceptions. Until this law is overturned, evolution theory is dead in the water.

I have a law called “the law of I can’t win the lottery jackpot”. It’s never been violated, and therefore, I conclude that it is impossible for me to win. It’s a law, and there are no known exceptions. Anyway, I provided you with links to my earlier article on abiogenesis – though, it seems you didn’t read them. I don’t really think you’re that interested in reading anything, just trying to convince me that evolution can’t work. Believe me – I’m familiar with everything you’re saying, and it’s either (A) completely wrong – like your hypothesis/theory/law argument, or (B) relies on misunderstanding or skewing the facts to fit a preconceived creationist perspective. I don’t really feel that anything I do or say can convince you otherwise, so I’m getting tired of the run-around.

Seriously man, I can’t even read your posts anymore. The ignorance of basic scientific method and theory drips off it like grease from a fast food burger. And your little charade of pretending you don’t believe in creationism for religious reasons is just a blatant lie. I want you to tell me that you aren’t christian–and I want it to be true. I have never heard of a creationist (at least none that want people to think they base their ideas off of science) who isn’t christian. If I could find one then I might think that there was something more to the idea than people getting mad because science disagrees with their fairy tale book. But as it stands the only people who believe in creationism as some kind of scientific theory are christians which is either a statistical oddity or evidence that it is a religious belief which is inherently unscientific. You do not understand scientific method, nor do you realize how the scientific community operates. Not only that but you refuse to acknowledge this because it would prove that creationism is unscientific and end your petty argument. I’m going to stop replying to you know because I feel as though I’m playing a game of basketball with someone who looks at the rules as flexible while I realize they are necessary to play the game correctly. Or even more accurately it’s more like I’m trying to play basketball and instead you have decided to play tennis on the same court.

Your statement that the theory of gravity is taught as fact even though it is only a theory is patently false. In science there are hypothesis, models, theories and laws. There may be others in the hierarchy, as I am working from memory at the moment. Anyway, laws are established by theory and experimental evidence. A law has no known exceptions. If an exception is discovered, then it is no longer a law. If evolution had no known exceptions, it would be a law…

I don’t have time to go through all your claims yet, but I should point out that you misunderstand the terms “law” and “theory”. Theories don’t “graduate” to become laws.

Some reading on that subject (I’m quoting them, but the articles should be read in their entirety; I’m just quoting them to give you a hint about what they contain):

“No theory ever becomes a law. No law ever becomes a theory. They are apples and oranges. Also, neither theories nor laws are necessarily to be thought of as more tentative or “less proven” than the other. Theories explain why the laws exist in the first place—atomic theory explains why the gas laws “work.” A given theory will subsume/explain a multiplicity of different laws. A theory can cause a law to be discarded. Relativity theory has resulted in Newton’s law of gravity having been shown to be not necessarily so.”
http://therestlessmind.blogspot.com/2007/07/law-theory-and-hypothesis.html

“A scientific law is like a slingshot. A slingshot has but one moving part–the rubber band. If you put a rock in it and draw it back, the rock will fly out at a predictable speed, depending upon the distance the band is drawn back… An automobile has many moving parts, all working in unison to perform the chore of transporting someone from one point to another point. An automobile is a complex piece of machinery. A theory is like the automobile.”
http://wilstar.com/theories.htm

“A hypothesis is an educated guess, based on observation… A scientific theory summarizes a hypothesis or group of hypotheses that have been supported with repeated testing… A law generalizes a body of observations. At the time it is made, no exceptions have been found to a law. Scientific laws explain things, but they do not describe them. One way to tell a law and a theory apart is to ask if the description gives you a means to explain ‘why’. Example: Consider Newton’s Law of Gravity. Newton could use this law to predict the behavior of a dropped object, but he couldn’t explain why it happened.”
http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistry101/a/lawtheory.htm

A law simply summarizes observations. For example, the gas laws: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_laws . Like gravity, they are written as formulas – they describe how variables are observed to behave. You could essentially say that hypothesis are educated guesses about how things might behave. Laws are simple observations about how things do behave (without a deep understanding about why they behave that way). Theories are the marriage of hypothesis and observation (which validate the hypothesis).