sure... and I was trying to clarify the point that evolution is not a 'belief', it is a 'scientific theory' that explains how the plethora of lifeforms on this planet has come about.

I make this point not to be a dick, but because its an important point to be made; evolution is exactly analogous to every other scientific theory. What does that mean? ...We will never, ever know everything about the universe, so scientists will always, always say the 'theory of evolution' and the 'theory of gravity' and the 'theory of atomic structure', meaning that contradictory and clarifying evidence should always be sought out to form a better explanation...

Evolution is the best we've got; it explains things that have happened and predicts new things we're still finding (in molecular biology, for example). It is a valuable tool in understanding where WE as animals came from, and what 'life' is. And thats all it is... the sum of our rational understanding of life.

What kind of things don't we understand about life? Well nobody (in science) has quite figured out how life got here on Earth, but it stands to reason that if the development of new lifeforms from other lifeforms over time doesn't necessitate a creator than maybe we can keep pushing back the curtain and see that the first exceedingly simple bit of amino acids with a layer of bubbles around it that replicated and divided into more bubbles with more organized amino acids (or whatever) didn't need a creator... but this is well beyond the current theory of evolution.


In reply to this comment by Quboid:
I seemed to spark off something in the thread too and I've clarified and apologised for my misleading comment. As I said in that thread, I do believe in evolution, I just also believe we don't know all that much about the universe yet.


In reply to this comment by bamdrew:
I'm not going to go into it, but towards your second point... to understand what has come before you, design your own investigation/experiment and gather evidence to test assumptions made on previous findings. This is all that Darwin did, this is all that Einstein did, this is all the Newton did. If you drag yourself through Darwin's wikipedia post, for instance, you'll see that the idea of evolution was around for a long time, and all he did was take a few disparate sources like Malthus' book on populations and his own finding of how species are similar to neighboring species in different parts of the world (but different from animals in the same climates in other parts of the world) and figured out a simple method for evolution... 'natural selection'.

Since the time Darwin and Alfred Wallace were around there have been incredible modifications to the story, but 'evolution by natural selection' is still the foundation for all of biology. Not only is it still the foundation, our understandings based on evolution are actively used predictively in research to form hypotheses, design experiments, and even predict things like the development of bacterial and viral strains.

I'm not going to go into it, but towards your second point... to understand what has come before you, design your own investigation/experiment and gather evidence to test assumptions made on previous findings. This is all that Darwin did, this is all that Einstein did, this is all the Newton did. If you drag yourself through Darwin's wikipedia post, for instance, you'll see that the idea of evolution was around for a long time, and all he did was take a few disparate sources like Malthus' book on populations and his own finding of how species are similar to neighboring species in different parts of the world (but different from animals in the same climates in other parts of the world) and figured out a simple method for evolution... 'natural selection'.

Since the time Darwin and Alfred Wallace were around there have been incredible modifications to the story, but 'evolution by natural selection' is still the foundation for all of biology. Not only is it still the foundation, our understandings based on evolution are actively used predictively in research to form hypotheses, design experiments, and even predict things like the development of bacterial and viral strains.



In reply to this comment by Quboid:
Great ending, I was worried the title was flame bait.

A couple of points:
1) I don't think it's established that it's a snake. Pretty sure it's a talking animal so this is a technicality, but that it's a snake is a myth. I think QI covered this and they are actually are beyond question.

2) I don't believe in evolution. OK, I agree in general, but does it explain what it aims to accurately and completely? I very much doubt it. In fact I'd be amazed if the original work wasn't mostly discredited by now, just like much of Newton's work, Einstein's work and so on. Darwin's work was certainly a big step in the evolution of knowledge

If you think about it, it's arrogant to the point of ludicrous to presume this generation has all the big stuff figured it. I'm sure as hell* not a Christian or Creationist, I just think science is a work in progress and we're at a pretty early stage. I hope so! I quit Christianity when I grew out of invisible friends, but I didn't become an atheist just to join other zealots. Science is our friend, but keep questioning.


* Pun / Ironic choice of phrase intentional.