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: : That's because you appear to have little understanding of formal logic and the scientific process; and thus your usage of logical concepts like "proof", "induction" and "evidence" is necessarily limited by your lack of logical understanding.: : (I'm not saying that makes you inferior, bad or subhuman; it's just that you're trying to use logical concepts to back up your beliefs when you don't fully understand the concepts you're trying to use.)
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: Why is it logical to believe something is true when it can be proven that it is not?
It's not, of course. Can you prove that evolution is not true, using basic scientific principoles? People have been trying to for 150 years, and every single one of them has failed to do so. Evolution has satisfied every single test of its reality. It is more completely demonstrated than the theory of universal gravitation.
:I'm not talking about the process of proving that the sides of a rectangle are parallel by assuming them not parallel, proving that assumption false, and then assuming your original assumption is true. Is that your idea of proving evolution true by proving it false?
I think you may have misread the post. The goal of science is to reject false hypotheses by testing all reasonable hypotheses and rejecting those that fail to pass the tests. Evolution has passed every test of it so far.
: Sorry, but even if I'm using terms of logic incorrectly (I won't argue against that possibility/probability), we're still talking quantum leaps. Whether evolutionary changes occur suddenly, as in a mouse giving birth to a hippo, or over time, as in a mouse giving birth to a bigger mouse which gives birth to a bigger mouse, etc., until we have a hippo, is not as much the issue as it is that evolution requires NEW genetic information which can not be gained by mutation.
So how is "bigger" not new genetic information? And why do you think mutations can't accomplish this? As has already been pointed out to you, mutations HAVE accomplished this, so you've got to provide some details to support your assertion if you want anyone to take you seriously.
:Somewhere in the process of the bigger mice, we need to add information that makes the organism a hippo, genetically different from a mouse.
Well, as I implied, a big mouse is genetically different from a small mouse, since it has the "grow bigger" genes (whatever those may be) that the small mouse doesn't have. So what's the problem?
: And I'm not convinced that the finches "evolved" different types of beaks. Why could they not have been created with different types of beaks in the first place?
They could have been, they just weren't. Nor were humans, horses, whales, ferns, fruit flies, or any other organisms created that way. The fossils are there, and no amount of hand-waving will make them go away.
:The fact that they share similar genetic information does not inherently require similarity of ancestry -- it could mean that they have the same Designer.
True, I suppose. And the fact that you have similar genetic material to your parents, is that sufficient evidence that you are related to them? Or is it proof that your family was constructed in a lab someplace and those were the parts they had available? Both hypotheses explain the available data, but the former is much more parsimonious, and science prefers the simplest, most elegant hypothesis that adequitely explains all the available data.
:After all, if wings work for one species of birds, I'd probably use them for a second and third species if I were the one creating them --
OK, would you also use the same kinds of wings for bats and bugs? Your hypothetical creator didn't. In fact, wings developed several different times over the course of animal evolution. Again, the fossils are there, you just have to look at them.
:and I can't begin to understand the creative imagination of One who could design mice, hippos, finches, people, and T. Rex's to occupy the same earth which He also designed in a universe that shows His creative ability.
So why do you assume you know how "he" did it? Do you think your hypothetical creator isn't bright enough to come up with a simple system that would do all the work of creation for him? Evolution accomplished exactly what you claim special creation did, but it did so with less work on "God's" part. Don't you suppose your God would be able to figure out a more efficient way of making all the diversity of life than sitting around with a big vat of clay? Sounds like you have a pretty low opinion of your deity, if you ask me.
-Floyd
None.
