How many users on these boards actually support "The Theory of Evolution"?

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Aquietguy said:
Everyone wants some evidence on ID. Understandable since most haven't heard any before. But here is an example of how science supports ID more. I was debating someone else on anther MB about the same thing. I said that "are we supposed to believe that we come from a fish that swam on a beach". He responded by saying "and we supposed to believe that we were just poofed out of no where". My IP addresses banded before I could respond. Go figure! I guess academia isn't the only place that can't tolerate outside the box thinking.

Any way, some of us have heard of the relationship between matter and energy. That energy and matter are the same and are just in different states. But energy can be turned into matter and matter can be turned into energy. This has already been done in laboratories but only at the atomic level. This is what the replicators on Star Trek The Next Generation was based off of. Those Star Trek writers really did their homework. They were able to create food by turning energy into matter. Something that is obvious beyond what we can do. But for how long? Also their was an episode where Commander Riker was beamed up from an away mission. He made it back to the ship but some kind of way his transporter signature was reflected back and another Riker materialized on the planet. So there were two of them. Of which they found the other Riker years later. I know that this is a TV show, but we know that the relationship between energy and matter is real. How long before we have transporter or replication ability?

If you can create an object using energy, then is it safe to say that you can also create life or a life? No you can't poof life into existence but you can use energy to create life if you had the know how. So in a sense you can say that it is possible for some higher power to just poof us into existence. So their is a valid view for creation.

Where are the valid view of evolution? Where is the observation, which is part of the scientific method? Where is the evidence that cell mutation has benefited the cell? All the evidence that I have seen show that mutation harms and destroys the cell.

Hadn't seen this until it was quoted recently but I'll give a bit of a reply:

First your point about energy and mass is absolutely true and is literally expressed in Einstein's famous equation E=mc^2 (Energy expressed in joules, mass expressed in kg, and the speed of light expressed as meters per second).  This is where the energy comes from in the nuclear reactions we see from nuclear weapons (fusion and fission) and the source of energy for the sun (fusion). What might surprise some is that nuclear fusion and fission are both inefficient ways of releasing this energy compared to what is possible in the best case scenario of anti-matter obliteration (which also might surprise some folks to know is very real, and is something we can produce, albeit in pathetically small quantities).

Now as for how this applies to ID...it really doesn't.  Yes it is possible for an omnipotent being to poof us into existance since we are just energy but you don't need E=mc^2 to make that possible.  If there is an omnipotent being responsible for our presence here there is no reason to think he would be constrained by the physical laws he is ascribed as having put in place.

Finally, the valid view of evolution you were asking about is all over the place actually.  There are tons and tons and tons of examples of micro-evolution of how small changes in a population benefited those who had the trait and allowed them to survive where others died off.  Some of the more popular ones are of House Sparrows which were introduced to North America in the 1800s and exhibit a number of divergent traits in the various regions that they have evolved in with little crossover between populations.  I know the peppered moths during the industrial revolution  is another example of a population that changed in order to survive that is often used as well.

 

PS - As an interesting note on the anti-matter subject our best nuclear plant has 7 reactors producing a combined average of about 44, 500 GW-hours per year.  Just a single gram of matter contains enough energy to produce 25 GW-hours nearly instantaneously compared to the thousands and thousands of kilograms used to produce the 44, 500 GW-hours over the course of a year.