I think it's foolish to right-out believe or get on any one side. Obviously ID does not have enough evidence, and Evolution Theory is reaching pretty far to try and explain things we simply can't.

Yes there is variance, mutation, as well as survival of the fittest, but to what extent? Were you there when life started? Have you observed the the evolution of one species into another? No, so stop being so arrogant about your so-called evidence. We don't know how life started, all you can do is speculate with what little you do know to make it seem like it supports such assumed ideas.

Truth is, we don't know. Not saying it won't be discovered in the future or when we die. But don't step further than what is clear, and leave the rest as speculation. Why believe something you haven't experienced? On top of that, History has shown deceit in science and religion constantly, so I don't see why it would be any different.
Humans aren't that smart, that they can understand everything there is in the universe, and I think it's that weakness that drives people to want to be able to know.

My verdict: Don't believe everything you hear. Check it out for yourself. You can have your penchants, but it's foolish to overstep your personal experiences and understandings.
There is not enough evidence to support 100% of evolution and atheism, only certain obvious parts, regardless of how 'convinving' or 'factual' some say some is. ID is no better, because it clearly has almost no concrete evidence.

Solution? Agnosticism.

ps- my first post. :P Hope Im not offending anyone.

First off, welcome to the site

Secondly, No we wont see a species go through all the transitional phases into another in a single life time. Humans can't live the thousands of years to witness every transitional phase in evolution. What we can do though observe very large transitions throught fossil records, it doesn't take much to find these changes, the evolution of the dog is a good one [link]. The dog has evolved from the original species, canis luparis, 15,000 years ago into the hundreds of breeds we see today and this rapid evolution is due to domestication. We have very strong proof for this.

We can also observe small evolutions, in which small changes occur withn a few generations, if you look up the evolution of MRSA [link] you can see how one small mutation has allowed for one species of bacteria to thrive over others. This is a small evolution and will eventually lead tosomething completely different. An example of what will eventually occur can be seen in the 'E.coli long term evolution experiment' (LTEE) [link] which demonstrates how overten years when put in extreme environments, lot of little changes in resistance to harsh conditions can change the entire species over time. This is proof that what is called "macroevolution" by creationists is actually just the accumulation of many smaller evolutions over an indefinate period.

It's silly to suggest we can't observe such a large change directly in our lifetimes because that would require a dog evolving into, say, a bear in three or four generations, it just wont happen, but if we look back through fossil records and co-ordinate it with our observable evolution tests it is simple to see that large scale evolution has occurred in many groups of animals.

Thanks.You seem fairly familiar with evolution, that's cool.

There's definitly a lot of credit due for the research that's been done and we've found out a lot. The only problem I have is that I'm extremely logical, and I keep seeing conclusions from observations and experiments that are far from justified. I don't think it's silly to say that we need be able to see a dog evolve into another species in order to conclude that a dog can evolve into another species, how else can you be sure that it can? We have some nice theories though.

Let's say a dog could evolve into another species; that would just mean that dogs can evolve into that particular species, and it's not logical to conclude from that that other animals can also evolve into other species, or even that the dog, could evolve into anything else besides the species we'd seen it evolve into - it's going beyond the scope of the observations and experiments. Perhaps looking at it with some established theories could make it seem consistant that other things can evolve into different species, but I think in many ways that's illogical; you don't know the entirety of the factors involved, as well as if there are limitations. There are always factors that haven't been thought about, and there are always limitations. The human seems incapable of understanding everything that is entailed. What if there is a certain limit to the kind of variances that can come out of certain species? So we've observed bacteria change a lot, that's cool, but I think it's pretty far-fetched to say that it could eventually become anything more than a bacteria. Of course, I won't rule out the possibility, but we do need clearer evidence than what we have in order to claim that something is the way it is... as "factual" or "proven".

I'm not really debating macro-evolution per se, as I do think that certain animals could potentially change into something "considered" another species, but to claim that we all came from the same first cell of life, is waaaay going beyond what we've observed.

As for life coming from non-life. The probabilities seem to be so low, that I find it's not even believeable to think that it can happen by chance in any amount of time. I think we need to realize that we don't know. There are so many possibilities, and Evolution & ID are just 2 of those. I think it's fair to assume that we also aren't able to detect certain aspects of the universe. Do we understand gravity? No, all we understand are its effects. Why is gravity even there? Why is there even energy and matter? Perhaps there are other substances or forces that are undetectable and have a significant effect on the universe.

Quantum physics is a good example of how abstract certain aspects of the universe can be. So many weird things happen at that level, that aren't 'yet' understood by scientists, and as we know, we're all made of atoms and energy.. so obviously we don't know every factor that influences us.

But anyway. If I had to side somewhere (Evolution or ID), I'd say neither.

I think it's a serious mistake to claim it's "illogical" to consider something proven even if you didn't personally witness it. The evidence for evolution is so massively strong it's unreasonable IMO to not conclude that it or a mechanism extremely similar is occurring.

When you say that even if we observed dogs evolve into a separate species, we STILL couldn't safely say that non-dogs could also evolve into a separate species or even that dogs could evolve into a different separate species. That strikes me as being hyperconservative to the point of silliness. It seems to me that I might just as well say that I don't know that all the other cars on the streets aren't driven automatically, and the drivers are just playing with the steering wheel, with the exceptions of all the cars I've ever been in. At any rate, when you ask for "clearer evidence" that seems disingenuous to me, as it appears to me that by your standard no amount of evidence would ever be enough.

"As for life coming from non-life", evolution is not concerned with that question, as it obviously only covers the evolution of life once it did exist. Although if we can trace life back far enough to the simplest forms, that probably gives a pretty strong hint as to what it was and how it might have come to be.

But most of all, I really wonder why you think ID even rates a "maybe". It's just such a terrible idea, not even really a scientific theory. I can only guess that you are as reluctant to consider it wrong as you are to consider evolution right (which is to say, incredibly).

I've been having a (very) protracted debate on whether we can really "know" much of anything at all, but assuming that we believe the world around us exists more or less as we perceive it, I don't see any way evolution (or something extremely similar) might not be true.

Welcome to the forums.

Not all of the Bible is meant to be taken literally. I've read that Adam and Eve are supposed to be representative of humanity's separation from God through sin as a whole; not two actual individuals. You have to see that the First Testament was spoken in the language of the Hebrews. Jesus himself used parables that were never meant to be taken literally. They needed to learn a certain thing, so they were taught through storytelling.

@sguy.

If you aren't going to take the bible as literal truth you might as well follow the evidence, which implies evolution happened then explain it away under God as the seven days in genesis are not literally seven days, but in reality billions of years (to humans) and as such evolution was the mechaism by which all life on earth formed.

@Wind Shavitor. Welcome to the forums =P

Final is debating the first part of your post so I'll debate the second.

Firstly there are no other ideas that I have heard of other than the fact of evolution (not the scientific theory, the scientifc fact - the observation that species have changed over time) or some form of intelligent design.
Can you give me an example of another way such disparity of life could be reached?

Secondly I don't see how quantum physics is relevant to evolution, the fact is quantum physics is really only used to describe things over very short time periods or at very small scales. The general world can be almost entirely described with traditional physics and the theory of evolution doesn't rely on quantum physics at all.

I believe there's a "god" out there. But he/she/it is the most unbiased thing that will ever exist. This "god" may not even know that it's created the universe we live in, and if he/she/it does, it probably doesn't really care too much. This god also designed humans to be shaped through evolution.

The god I'm talking about probably looks something like this or this.

evolution

Puerto Rico

Evolution- UK.

Its the only theory that actually has any actual evidence to supoort it, from the molecular scale, to microorganisms to visual changes in development and phenotype. We still have no way to prove or disprove the existence of god and the closest thing I can think of that matches the description of god is the concept of energy and the forces found in physics. If god exists I don't think its in the way all the major religions seem to describe it. In fact, I'm somewhat against organised religion as I believe spirituality is something that is personal and not something you're told to follow.

Experiments carried out to try and simulate the environment as it is believed to have been when the Earth formed show that simple polymers can form quite readily including the building blocks to nucleic acids. RNA can fold into shapes that can catalyse reaction that are now carried out by enzymes that include replication of RNA. Its slower then the enzymes that cells carry now but even today we see RNA catalysis can occur. The formation of these show the start of slow evolution and development to more advanced systems. It seems likely the first membrane based life were more similar to viruses, and eventually evolved the ability to replicate themselves using these RNA catalysts before evolving the use of DNA for storage and amino acids and proteins for catalysis and other structural systems.

A number of bacteria are very similar to the organelles (namely chloroplasts and mitochondria) found in eukaryotic cells. This itself was a precursor to the formation of multicellular clusters as found in funghi. The interaction between these cells would then give rise to multicellular organisms. If you look at fossil records you can see the development of the human skull.

If you think about it, evolution is a self-evolving system so in theory we should see evolution speed up. IMO we are seeing this occuring. It took a long time before we went from bacteria to eukaryotes. This then allowed organisms to evolve into multicellular organisms in less time, which allowed for sexual reproduction which again speeds up evolution by adding extra diversity to reproduction. And now? Now we are comming up to a point where we will be able to evolve organisms as we see fit. We're already doing this with microorganisms, and with advances in stem cells and genetics, we're getting to a point where this may be possible in more complicated organisms.

Thanks for the random welcomes through the debate haha.

"it appears to me that by your standard no amount of evidence would ever be enough."

Not all situations "have" enough evidence to be sure. When we have trials to determine if someone was guilty, the jury can't know for certain if the defendent is guilty unless they personally witnessed it, but they make a judgement based on their assumptions, because there's nothing wrong with making assumptions, like you said about your driving example, daily life would be pretty rough if we didn't make assumptions - we'd never amount to anything. I'll assume that gravity will still be in effect tomorow as I go about, but in reality, we don't know if gravity will truly stay in effect, but it'd be overkill to always plan everything in case it stopped. I have no problems with making assumptions... and the same for theroies, as it helps in many ways, but even scientists will admit that theories aren't facts, and only arrogant scientists will declare that the theory of evolution is a proven fact.

There's definite evolution, that's for sure, but the entirety of the "Theory of Evolution" is NOT just about evolution, there are a lot of assumptions in it, and when taken as a whole, there's no room for other factors not thought about, such as God, or even quantum physics!. We are ALL made of of the matter that's affected by these physics, so you can't say that it doesn't factor in. It's on a smaller scale, but that just means that it's even more at the base of how everything is affected, including DNA,Genes, and all matter, and energy. Somebody could say that as they discover other factors it would be added in the theory, but see, that's why I'm saying it's not a fact, because if it was, it wouldn't need to be changed.

And again, it's not a bad thing that the Theory of Evolution is like that, but I can't accept the statement that it's proven or is a fact. I think it's obvious that we evolve on a small scale, through variants and natural selection, and we see it happening, so that much is proven to a certain degree.

"The evidence for evolution is so massively strong it's unreasonable IMO to not conclude that it or a mechanism extremely similar is occurring."

I somewhat agree. I think it's obvious that a similar mechanism is occurring... only to a certain degree! it hasn't been proven beyond the fact that there is change over time, and there's always things that we haven't thought about. There's probably a lot more at play (in my opinion), though I don't know what. Considering the probabilities of many claims, I'd say there's most likely something more that hasn't been factored in for those claims to be even probable (like life coming from non-life, though I know it's not part of the Theory of Evolution, but it's usually seens as part of it).

There's nothing wrong with not fully understanding. We do understand more and more, afterall.

"Can you give me an example of another way such disparity of life could be reached?"

Well. This is just an example; Let's say there was just a natural force that was present in the universe, not unlike gravity, that just constantly affects everything. Undetectable itself, this force's effects could include a sort of natural process that pushes matter towards higher degrees of life, and so this would factor in on top of natural selection and make it more probable that life could emerge from non-life and that evolution has amounted to what we see today. Where would this force come from you say? Well I say, where does gravity come from? and just, where does the way the universe works come from, that other forces and energy come from? It's just the way it is, isn't it?

I wonder if that example is too close to ID though. But the way I see it there doesn't need to be intelligence for things to be influenced towards evolution. And I think it's especially illogical that there'd be some kind of "being" that would have always existed, that's just weird, as well as thinking that it'd be just changes over time. But who knows.