Evolution Has No Supporting Proof, Only Evidence Against It.

Thanks Pro. On a side note, the debate headline could end up screwing you over in the voting. There is a fundamental misunderstanding of evolutionary theory; that micro-evolution is somehow a different process from macro-evolution, as if they are different theories altogether. This is a fallacy. Micro-evolution is macro-evolution. Does Pro mean to imply that we evolved from unique, created animals, ie: the biblical account? Unless Pro elaborates on this point, then the debate becomes simply invalid – we had to come from somewhere, and if you concede that micro-evolution exists, then you concede that life has been evolving. Pro must stipulate at what point we must have evolved from then, if any. Parts of Pro’s proof against micro/macro being separate are hardly proof at all, unless he wants to elaborate on what the University of Chicago conference revealed, and let’s not forget that 1980 was thirty-five years ago. Micro-evolutionary mechanistic theories are the ways biologists explain the long-term processes of macro-evolution. Macro-evolution is easily provable and generally isn’t controversial – when you start toying with intelligent design, that’s when all these so-called problems start to arise, mostly based on weak or distorted evidence. C1. The Fossil Record If Pro wants to prove that micro is separate from macro he will have to begin by attacking the fossil record, which shows evolution on a grand scale. If we had to guess what the fossil record would look like using macro-evolutionary theory, we would indeed hypothesize a common ancestor, and therefore would expect to see the generational changes and slow introduction of different species as time ticked on. The answer to this theory is that yes, we resoundingly do see a slow progression in the complexity of life in the fossil record. Here’s an example based in reality: If we were to presume that, for example, life evolved from Chordates some 500 plus Million years ago, we would expect to see fossils slowly evolving along a carefully dated timescale, bit by bit. In 505 Ma, some 30 million years after Pikaia, a simple worm-like fish ‘came on the scene’, we start to see fossils of creatures like the ostracoderms begin to appear, a slight evolution, jawless still, but vertebrate. By 480 Ma, we start to see the placodermi, prehistoric jawed fish with rudimentary scales. By 390 Ma, we see some fresh water lobe-finned fish begin to develop very, very, rudimentary legs, for example, the Sarcopterygii, which lived in freshwater shallows. By 375 Ma we see Tiktaalik fossils, fish who have evolved flipper-like fins. By 365 Ma we get the first properly ‘legged’ amphibians, for example, Acanthostega. Tetrapods have begun to take over. I can continue in this fashion if Pro wants me to, but you get the idea. The theory predicted that we would see such a transition, and indeed, we have. There is overwhelming proof in the fossil record of such changes. C2. “Leftovers” I ask Pro to check out his own eyeball the next time he looks in the mirror. The plica semilunaris is a vestigial remnant from a third eyelid we long ago evolved out of – you mostly see it in birds and lizards. Indeed, there is only one species of primate left that uses it, the Calabar Angwantibo. Vestigial structures are rampant: whether it’s flightless birds, hind legs on whales, our own wisdom teeth – even in plants, for example, the sexual organs that remain unused in dandelions. C3. Genome evidence The fact that we can see patterns and connections between species in the genome should be more than enough proof to safely assume macro-evolution is a reality. We find enormous evidence for common ancestry in all creatures. Why? A few reasons. All of life contains in it the same biochemical organization, that is, genetic info in DNA, into RNA, through protein and RNA enzymes, then into proteins by ribosomes, etc. etc. Also, the genetic code is almost universally identical among all of life. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about bacteria or mammals, they all share 23 universal proteins. This is definitive evidence. Indeed, statistical comparison conducted by biochemist Douglas Theobald showed that the many alternative hypotheses against the single ancestor idea were all significantly less probable. From the National Geographic article – “The "best competing multiple ancestry hypothesis" has one species giving rise to bacteria and one giving rise to Archaea and eukaryotes, said Theobald, a biochemist at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. But, based on the new analysis, the odds of that are "just astronomically enormous," he said. "The number's so big, it's kind of silly to say it"—1 in 10 to the 2,680th power, or 1 followed by 2,680 zeros. Theobald also tested the creationist idea that humans arose in their current form and have no evolutionary ancestors. The statistical analysis showed that the independent origin of humans is "an absolutely horrible hypothesis," Theobald said, adding that the probability that humans were created separately from everything else is 1 in 10 to the 6,000th power.” Sources: http://evolution.berkeley.edu... http://humanorigins.si.edu... http://evolutionfaq.com... http://evolution.about.com... http://www.livescience.com... http://news.nationalgeographic.com... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...