Evolution

One thing that is important to note is that the theory of evolution is no longer controversial within the scientific community, but only in the public domain. To scientists, the experts who have researched and tested the more-than-just-a-theory for 150 years, it is an accepted fact on which all of biology is predicated. While scientists debate the fine details of evolution and the evolutionary history of earth (which is completely natural and unsurprising in the scientific community), no serious scientist doubts the validity of the theory as a whole.

The reason it is controversial in the public domain is simple: it contradicts some people's religious beliefs regarding creation. While the United States is officially a secular country, the majority of people are Christian. Many, but not all, Christians believe evolution detracts from God's role in creating life, while many others have managed to reconcile their beliefs with modern science. But even in the face of overwhelming evidence, some still insist upon special creation and the literal truth of Genesis. These people are known as creationists.

The main controversy with evolution regards how it should be incorporated into public school curriculum. Some think it should be eliminated, while others think it should be taught alongside and have equal standing with the "theory" of Biblical creation. While the teaching of creationism/intelligent design in the science class has been banned by Supreme Court in US public schools, some school boards and teachers still manage to circumvent the law, and evolution is often not taught effectively.

To draw a parallel of a scientific theory - At the time when we realized that Earth was revolving around the Sun, religious leaders understood this to mean that Earth was not the center of the universe. After a lot of controversy and arguing between the religious leaders and scientists, the evidence was presented to prove the theory, and there was no longer a dispute.

Scientific laws such as the Law of Biogenesis (Life only comes from life) and the Second Law of Thermodynamics (the so-called Law of Entropy) run directly counter to it. These laws are some of the best known and widely demonstrated laws of science and they have no known scientifically verified exception.

The addition of millions of years, even billions, does not strengthen the case for evolution. It has been likened to the case of a salesman who, though making a loss on every sale, thought he could break even by drastically increasing his volume. Genetics amply demonstrates that evolution is not possible. Harmful mutations build up and helpful ones can be lost. No mechanism for new information to be written into the genetic code of an organism exists in nature. Natural selection acts upon the existing genetic make-up of an organism or species. It cannot create new information necessary for one species to change into another.

Regarding Dating and Dating Methods

'The age of our globe is presently thought to be some 4.5 billion years, based on radiodecay rates of uranium and thorium. Such "confirmation" may be short-lived as nature is not to be discovered quite so easily. There has been in recent years the horrible realization that radiodecay rates are not as constant as previously thought, nor are they immune to environmental influences.

And this could mean that the atomic clocks are reset during some global disaster, and events which brought the Mesozoic to a close may not be 65 million years ago but, rather, within the age and memory of man.'

Frederic B. Jueneman, FAIC, 'Secular catastrophism'. Industrial Research and Development, June 1982, p.21.

'All the above methods for dating the age of the earth, its various strata, and its fossils are questionable because the rates are likely to have fluctuated widely over earth history. A method that appears to have much greater reliability for determining absolute ages of rocks is that of radiometricdating.'....

'It is obvious that radiometric techniques may not be the absolute dating methods that they are claimed to be. Age estimates on a given geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often quite different (sometimes by hundreds of millions of years). There is no absolutely reliable long-term radiological "clock". The uncertainties inherent in radiometric dating are disturbing to geologists and evolutionists....".

William D. Stansfield, Ph.D.(animal breeding)(Instructor of Biology, California Polytechnic State University)in The Science of Evolution, Macmillan, New York, 1977,pp.82 and 84.

'In conventional interpretation of K-Ar age data, it is common to discard ages which are substantially too high or to low compared with the rest of the group or with other available data such as the geologic time scale. The discrepancies between the rejected and the accepted are arbitrarily attributed to excess or loss of argon. '

A. Hayatsu(Department of Geophysics, University of Western Ontario, Canada), 'K-Ar isochron age of the North Mountain Basalt, Nova Scotia'. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, vol. 16, 1979,p.974.

'Thus, if one believes that the derived ages in particular instances are in gross disagreement with established facts of field geology, he must conjure up geological processes that could cause anomalous or altered argon contents of the minerals.'

Prof. J. F. Evernden (Department of Geology, University of California, Berkeley, USA) and Dr. John R. Richards (Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra),'Potassium-argon ages in eastern Australia'. Journal of the Geological Society of Australia, vol. 9(1), 1962,p.3.

What is the evidence evolution has occurred? The fact organisms can be arranged into a nested hierarchy is evidence for common ancestry. "Race circles" are obviously related neighboring species that can interbreed, where further separated groups cannot. Ancient common viral genetic insertions are also evidence for common ancestry, as are shared broken genes such as L-gulonolactone oxidase. The fossil record, to which I will return, is yet more excellent evidence for evolution. Also, evolution has been observed. Simply type "observed examples of speciation" into Google.

As for the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, this applies to closed systems. Our beloved earth is anything but a closed system. There is a huge fusion reactor in our sky, not all that far away, that bathes earth's surface in rich, warm energy, every day. If local entropy could not be reversed, it would be impossible for people to build houses, for snowflakes to form (self organization of matter), or for crystals to grow. A moment's thought reveals what is ridiculously wrong with the assertion that entropy prohibits evolution. Babies could not grow into adults, except by (apparently) violating entropy.

As for nuclear isotope decay rates undergoing change, we only wish that might be true. Because if it WERE true, we could solve the problem of nuclear waste disposal. Instead, we have conducted many thousands of experiments, just to make certain heat, pressure, cold, vacuum, acids, bases, nor any conceivable chemical catalyst might alter nuclear decay rates. Instead, what we find are that the rates are the same now as the were when we first began measuring them at the turn of the 20th century.

None of these things are controversial from a scientific standpoint. The only controversy is whether or not one's personal religious beliefs are offended. Scientists from all of the world's major religions are perfectly content with reconciling evolution with their religious views.

Finally we come to the fossil record, with stromatolites dating back several billion years. Some 650 million years ago we notice the first multicellular organisms, all of which are marine flora and fauna. By the Ordovician earth's oceans teem with life, including jawed fishes, but there is no life on land. In the Silurian simple vascular plants and insects invade the land. In the Devonian we find the first amphibians, which bear uncanny resemblance to earlier sarcopterygian lungfish. By the Permian we have pelycosaurs--primitive sail-backed reptiles. A mass extinction marks the close of the Permian.

You just don't get this kind of multidisciplinary congruence without being onto something. Evolution is that thing. It is abundantly clear and obvious it has occurred. There is considerable scientific evidence in support of Darwin's theory of evolution, and there is no well supported scientific alternative to it. The controversy is simply a mental block towards facing reality.

Possibly because it clashes with beliefs which are notsimply to be dropped because man says they've discovered something to the contrary. Since many believe man was out on the earth as we are now, without having to change in appearance or instincts and such, and these beliefs normally accompany believing in The Creator, it's only natural it'll be highly controversial when someone says otherwise because it is a very sensitive subject to delve into and counter.

acquired a long tongue for taking nectar from flowers, a structure similar to that of

butterflies, some moths, and hummingbirds, and used to accomplish the very same task.

Phylogenesis, a form of branching evolution that is, usually, allopactric speciation.

Anagenesis is the process of one species changing over time and not branching out from common ancestry. Perhaps sympatric in nature.

Evolution is a process by which organisms pass slowly and by degrees to a different stage or state; those organisms most suited to their environment advance and become more dominant, while those which don't 'keep up', or 'measure up' - in other words, don't survive as successfully - gradually disappear, or lose their contra-survival characteristics and evolve into a more successful strain.

If humans have a major predator and that predator evolves to become a better predator, then the evolution of that predator is harmful to humans. But humans will develop new survival characteristics and strategies to deal with such threats; over time it balances out.

Humans have no major predators in the higher animal kingdom; there do exist creatures which occasionally kill or injure us, but we aren't usually their natural prey; our most important predators are microscopic organisms such as viruses and bacteria.

We can develop our own immune systems to cope with these as they develop more efficient ways to attack our immune systems. More visibly, our researchers constantly work on new ways to block these tiny predators, as well as on new ways to fight their adverse effects on us.

The little predators have predators of their own, which evolve with them in a constant effort to beat them.

So, we cannot say that evolution is harmful to humans; the pendulum swings both ways, back and forth, and keeps swinging all the time.

Of course, like all scientific theories, the concept of evolution is frequently at odds with religious groups and other scientific groups who believe there is no such thing. Fundamentalist Christians, for example, believe that the entire earth was created as it now is in a few days by a supreme entity, and that it has remained and will remain just the same forever.

Given this conflict, which can involve powerful and influential political factions within churches - not just Christian churches - it might do you little good to chat cheerfully about evolution if you live and work in a community where the dominant church and its scientists demand people (not simply the church's own members) reject the concept of evolution in favour of whatever that church believes to be true.

In that situation, evolution could prove in some ways harmful to you as far as career prospects and a peaceful life are concerned, but such fundamentalist communities are pretty rare and easily avoided.