Evolution

Very well. I accept. Thank you for actually trying, unlike last time (http://www.debate.org...) 1) The evolutionary riddle of Birds' Wings has already been solved, and not in the way you think it did (using half-grown wings to climb trees...what?). Birds evolved from Dinosaurs, specifically the therapods. There is fossil evidence that during the Cretaceous period, certain smaller species of therapods started to evolve feathers for the purposes of insulation and helping increase lift while jumping to catch insects. Therapods slowly evolved larger and larger feathers, and arms that looked more and more like wings, until bird-like dinosaurs such as Archaeopteryx and the Microraptor had evolved. From there it is quite easy to trace their lineage down to modern day birds. 2) "Evolutionists line up the most promising choices to present a gradual progression from monkey to modern man. They simply fill in the big gaps with make-believe creatures to fit the picture." And your proof for this is... where? You have no idea what behind-the-scenes work has been done to prove evolution. Scientists never "make up information". There are many measures for avoiding that kind of thing within the scientific community such as allowing others to reproduce their experiments and study their findings. The only person I see making up information here is YOU. And P.S. we have discovered fossils that clearly represent the ancestors of elephants and giraffes. 3) Have you ever heard of the Miller-Urey experiment? It is very famous and CLEARLY CREATED 20 different amino acids just by simulating the conditions of primitive earth with only inorganic matter. Almost all the types of organic matter have been determined to basically be rearrangements of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Sulfur, and Phosphorus atoms. In addition, water (H2O) and formaldehyde (CH2O) often react to produce Ribose, a primary component of RNA. 4) I don't understand what you said about gametes or how it disproves evolution. Please explain more clearly. 5) We only notice lethal mutations more than beneficial mutations because lethal mutations are much, much, more obvious (e.g. Cancer, missing limbs). The ones that are beneficial make such small changes that most people don't notice. That is why it takes hundreds of generations for even a small change in phenotype to occur within a population. I myself have a mutation which has made my all ligaments extremely loose. As a result, I have dislocated both my knees and one of my shoulders at least once, but at the same time I'm much more flexible than ordinary people. We don't really notice the subtle mutations that don't kill us, but those small non-lethal mutations have been the driving force behind evolution for 4.5 billion years. And by the way, we HAVE been able to witness new species of bacteria evolving via gradual mutations over millions of generations within just a few months because of their minuscule life spans. 6) I personally am religious, however I still believe in evolution, like most religious people. God created life through evolution by causing "random" mutations in self-replicating organic compounds like DNA and RNA. I suppose this is where the theist evolutionists and atheist evolutionists diverge: whereas atheists believe that such complex organisms evolved by pure chance from random mutations, theists believe that the evolution of the complex organisms was directed by a divine power via purposeful mutations. In other words, I also believe your point that the universe is too complicated to have assembled itself into such a complex form by pure luck, and that it must have had some help from God. Religion and Science can both be true if only we will realize the truth that scripture wasn't meant to be taken literally. How do I (and most theists) know this? Because the guys who wrote the scripture weren't trying to write a science textbook or history textbook; they were trying to provide spiritual instruction and moral examples to live by.