PM me and demonstrate how I'm wrong, please. Others are welcome to as well. I don't want to derail the topic, we can start another one if you want.

I'd be happy to clear up any doubts you personally have about evolution, but I'm not doing your research for you. Find any scientific organization that makes any serious progress in biology or an evolutionarily related field and then find its view on evolution. There is more scientific consensus on the issue than virtually any other modern contested theory, except in the US where we have clueless religious figures telling people what to believe instead of asking them to find out for themselves.

The vast majority of scientists who speak out against the theory have no relevant publishings; this is essentially the definition of scientific consensus. If you'd like to provide a counterpoint to that, find a single study published in a scientific peer review journal that seriously attacks evolution. I'd be surprised if you can cite even a single one published in the past decade. Most often, the "PhD's" making the loud and completely unsubstantiated claims about how evolution is garbage or proven wrong have degrees in unrelated fields of study and certainly don't have any credentials in the field whatsoever to make the authoritative statements they do. But hey, their books sell well.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-popularity.html

I have yet to see any evidence of evolution. If the generally accepted theory of evolution as accepted by scientists is true, there should be hundreds, thousands, millions of transitional fossils. There are perhaps 100 on wikipedia, which are fairly debatable.

Keep in mind that I have a problem with macroevolution and evolution from a common ancestor. I have no problem with microevolution, as that agrees with the Bible and is scientifically provable.

You can't cite argument ad populum when statements are made by the people most knowledgeable in the field we're talking about. If a poll on Fox News asked "Do you believe in evolution?" and someone tries to say that's meaningful, that would be argument ad populum. When people at the highest level in their field speak about their subject, absolutely not - that is how we gain knowledge. Here are a vast number of scientific communities that explicitly reject intelligent design, all with cited quotes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_societies_rejecting_intelligent_design

You clearly don't understand how difficult the conditions are to form a fossil. Bones don't just last for millions of years, they decompose quickly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil#Rarity_of_fossils On top of that, transitional species are just that: transitional. They are between one stable species and another, usually due to a change in environment. In evolutionary terms, they don't last long. The only reason so many have been found is because we know these conditions and are actively searching in those areas.

Speciation events aren't exactly common but some have been observed recently. The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_mosquito is the most well known of them, to me. Vestigial organs also make these events very clear. As for the last common ancestor, I can't really say what problem you might have, it's been pretty readily shown that such an ancestor is extremely likely; the alternative is essentially multiple abiogenisis events.

Any other questions, feel free, but saying you haven't seen any evidence of evolution just says to me that you aren't looking very hard.

BAH Lost my PM TWICE

Your argument is still ad populum: "Most scientists believe something, so it must be true". I want cold hard evidence, not hundreds of scientists saying "X is true because we all say it is true and we so pro so it must be true."

I don't know enough about fossils to argue with you about it; I'll have to do some research. From what I understood of the matter, there's enough fossils found of all the currently known species that there should also be many transitional fossils, but very few or no transitional fossils have been found.

As for vestigial organs: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090730-spleen-vestigial-organs.html
Basically, organs thought to be vestigial have been found to actually have uses. Just because we haven't worked out all the uses of all the vestigial organs doesn't mean a use doesn't exist. I'm surprised they still teach that vestigial organs are proof of evolution, I thought they debunked that and stopped using that argument a long time ago. Mind you, they still use those drawn pics of babies going through evolutionary cycles and stuff, even though that was proved to be rubbish a while ago...

The argument is not ad populum, scientists have provided support and evidence for their position in literally millions of peer reviewed journal articles. In them, you'll find the people most qualified to be discussing their field are discussing their field. That is quite literally the definition of argument from authority, the most important aspect of inductive reasoning. There has been no counterargument from authority that even remotely comes close to credibly attacking evolution or providing an alternative theory.

There is no "smoking gun" that's going to show that evolution is true to you, the simple fact is that all evidence that we've ever observed fits easily into our current understanding of evolution. I could compile arguments dozens of pages long and still have fresh material to go on for years, and I've only taken a couple of college level biology courses. Meanwhile, there are NO scientific arguments whatsoever in support of your position. You're arguing as if your religion, which by nature can't be shown to be untrue, has to be disproved before evolution can be believed: that is an impossible task and quite a silly position to take in a debate.

As for the link you gave, I don't think anyone knowledgeable would call the spleen a vestigial organ. The author of that article has no credible experience or degree in biology, going along with what I said earlier. Being able to live without it doesn't mean it's vestigial, you can live with one kidney for example or even without your entire lower half. There are far more clear examples of vestigial structures: hind legs in whales, for example, or the wings of birds that can neither fly nor swim. Have you had your wisdom teeth removed? The human jaw is smaller than the ape jaw, causing teeth to be crammed together. Have you ever had goosebumps? Humans are relatively hairless, so the goosebumps which in other species have kept animals warmer or made them more intimidating now do nothing. There are dozens of other examples of human vestigiality, and that's without even going into the DNA comparisons between species, which make phylogenetic trees incredibly easy to produce.

Scientists don't use anything remotely like this, people lying to you who want to discredit evolution do so. It's called a strawman argument and it's a widely used tool for convincing people of something that they already want to believe. When is the last time you listened to a scientist support evolution, rather than listening to someone who contests evolution describe the theory? It's blatant strawman and it's pathetic, this is why so many ignorant people think evolution means that one day two monkeys just gave birth to a human.

Actually, this thing about babies having gills and egg sacs and tails was posted in the Reader's Digest Book of Facts, and was also thought up by some prominent scientists. I'm told it's still printed in some science books, even though the scientific community at large has debunked and disagreed with it.

I can't be bothered arguing with you any more

What you're talking about is recapitulation theory. It was indeed developed by prominent scientists... over a hundred years ago. It was then shown to be untrue and only appears in biology textbooks today as evidence of competing theories at the time. As we learned more, we found data that didn't fit that model and thus the model was thrown out. I studied this in class and can scan the relevant pages of my textbook next time I'm home, if you'd like. The "Reader's Digest Book of Facts" is not a scientific journal, not peer reviewed, and I can assure you that no one even remotely knowledgeable about evolution was involved in that publishing.

You're told this, but you're too stubborn to intelligently consider that you're being lied to. If you spent 15 minutes and researched it for yourself, instead of being told what to believe, you'd find how absolutely absurd the discussion is. It is a blatant strawman argument, no credible evolutionary biologist has supported that position in nearly a hundred years.

Evolution WAS just a theory. Problem with 'evolution' is that whenever it gets tossed around in a buzzwordy fashion in topics relating to religion - most people think of it in its earliest form, ie. Darwinian. The concept of deep time was proposed decades before Darwin became interested in the subject, by a man called James Hutton (who pretty much created the school of Geology). It was the concept of the earths age, which undermined the credibility of the church (and other religious organisations). The bible say's the earth is 4,004 years old - why? because we added up all the ages of people since adam and... well, yeah, the earth is more than 4 and a half BILLION years old. This is what allowed Darwin to attribute a concept of incremental or gradual change in an organism. Sure, when he first published his works - most notably the Descent of Man - it was all speculation and theory, no hard science, no empirical proofs, no facts, nothing.

But it's 2011, and it is a proven fact that your genotype (genetic makeup/configuration) is all thanks to the chromosomes given to you by your parents - so your traits, your appearance, your mentality is all to a certain degree hard-coded into you at the moment of inception. How you live your life will therefore determine whether or not you get to pass on your genes to another generation and whether or not your genes are better blah blah blah.

This is true for all plants, all animals and us humans. In fact, for pretty much any living organism this is considered to be truth.

If anyone wants to continue from his perspective or has critiques or extensions of the arguments from either side, feel free to contribute. I'm not sure if this will turn into serious discussion, I figured it would be best left here for now but some people might benefit from reading it.

I'm fine with "Goddidit", myself.

The "Goddidit" doesn't quite explain the fossils Also the part about some guy (didn't bother to remember his name) stuffed one pair of every type of animal on the old Earth doesn't make sense, cuz 1) When a guy goes all over the world collecting all kinds of animal and makes a ship that can actually hold and sustain all of them, he means srs bsns. And bible ppl don't mean srs bsns, 2) Wait, so he forgot the hemophrodite (not sure if I spelled it rite) and asexual species? And 3) If a man goes great lengths to learn what every kind of animal eats, gather them and put the bunch of food onto a huge ass ship that he has to build almost alone, he's a dead man before he even finishes.
And no, don't give me the "God helped him".

How does it not explain fossils?

Bible people do mean srs bsns. No, he didn't forget any species. He wasn't almost alone, he had his family of sons to help. He also lived for a rather long time. And yes, God helped him, although God didn't make the ship magically appear.

A scientific theory comprises a collection of concepts, including abstractions of observable phenomena expressed as quantifiable properties, together with rules (called scientific laws) that express relationships between observations of such concepts. A scientific theory is constructed to conform to available empirical data about such observations, and is put forth as a principle or body of principles for explaining a class of phenomena.

See if you can fit "goddidit" into that somewhere.

Please give me something specific to focus on. I'm not a dog, to write paragraphs upon paragraphs detailing how every single word pertains to the theory of God.

You do know that it was a metaphorical way to say "IT'S FRIGGIN IMPOSSIBLE" rite. Even with today's number of specices, they are still far too many and far too widely dispersed for Noah (and his family) to round them up before he (and his family) to die of old age. And as I said, there's the matter of storing food for the animals, as I remember the flood to be long. And there's also nothing (GOD DOESN'T EXIST SO HE CAN'T DO SHIT HERE) to keep the animals from eating each other. And there's no mention of the fate of all the trees.

EDIT: The "Goddidit" didn't explain why the fossils were different from today's animals. And why fossils of the same kind of animals are too different from each other.

----> There's a deleted post of mine here. I can't access it due to the stupid inbox bug so unless Jack has it or a moderator can grab it it's probably gone. Feel free to edit the quote of me below this, Mods, since you can't PM me... =/

Homosexuality causes STDs/AIDS/HIV.

Explain to me, nuderaider, how the tendency for people to be homosexuals can be influenced by something as external and global as population.

At the same time, bring me back my fucking posts. Just because I don't believe that evolution isn't real doesn't mean that my arguments were invalid.

You didn't just say that, right? Seriously, I hope for your own sake that you're just trolling because if not, you need to find someone to explain to you the facts of life. Badly.

Anyways, on that topic, homosexuality might even be a sign of evolution. I don't have numbers, but to me it looks like that the percentage of gays has increased quite a bit the last few decades. At the same time we're facing an increasingly bad over population. Maybe that's nature's way of dealing with it?