The Blue Board

Evolution does not equal social darwinism.

Weedline, due to information sharing and elements of the "Enlightenment" we do not cast off the handicapped, the lazy, we do not kill people because they are misshapen. It has been proven though that homo sapiens had competing species of developing sapient beings and we killed them off.

We are entering into an era in which social darwinism is being replaced by the ideals of universal humanity and welfare states that say every human is part of the family and we need to help them as much we can. Through most of human history if an obese person didnt want to work they would be kicked out of the community and they'd die alone and scared. We believe we are "past that".

I'm not claiming to have faith in magic flying abilities. I'm claiming that there is a creator of the universe.

I think this particular list of fossils would hold more weight if they didn't have to draw in pictures of the fossils they haven't found yet. Looks like they are assuming. JMO

How do they know that these are "transitional fossils" and not just a similar looking species or kind?

Again people, the questions I am asking are in no way meant to demean anyone. I really want to know why people believe what they believe and it also makes me dig deeper.

Every fossil is a 'transitional fossil'. All species are changing, including our own.

However, focusing on just the fossil record is only .00...1% of evolutionary evidence. The overwhelming proof comes from genetics and gene sequencing.

If you look at related species, you can see evidence of the change without ever needing a fossil. Before I explain it, a little genetics 101.

Our DNA is made of of 4 different base pairs, labelled A, G, T, and C. It takes 3 of those base pairs to code for 1 amino acid (the building blocks for proteins). But that math doesn't check out, because there are 4*4*4 ways to have a 3 DNA sequence (64 in total) for only 20 amino acids. What does this mean? There are duplicate ways to code for the same amino acid, which would give you the same protein. So, if you see AGT, it's possible (and actually almost likely) that the sequence AGC will code for the same amino acid.

Why does this matter? Because you can see evidence of change across species. Species A will have AGTAGTAGT and Species B might have AGTAGCAGC. Same 3 amino acids coded. Different DNA.

There are only 2 conclusions.
1. God is trying to trick you by making every created species look like the product of random change.
2. Evolution by natural selection.

So because we have similar DNA codes we must all be related. Again... Common creator

I'm not seeing where these random changes prove we weren't created.

Of course, the whole 'god created everything to have a personal relationship with us' argument starts to lose credibility when you think about a few things.

1. The size of the universe. It would take light about 93 billion years to travel from one side to the other. There are hundreds of billions of GALAXIES.

If the entire point of this existence was to judge/talk with us, why the hell is the place so big. This is akin to saying you need a single molecule of water and coming back with a trillion oceans worth.

2. The age of the universe. Roughly 14 billion years. The first 9+ billion, there was no earth. Then there was about a billion and a half years of an earth with no life. Finally, there's a bunch of single-celled organisms. Only in the past hundred to two hundred thousand years has any sentient life emerged.

You say, 'oh well god doesn't care about time'.

Fine - think of the method that he would have chosen for evolution. Evolution, morally, is abhorrent. Survival of the fittest inherently means that the unfit starve and painfully die out. From a god who emphasizes compassion for the poor and helping those in need, it seems absolutely insane he would choose the exact opposite method to generate his creation that he loves so much.

3. Physical features of the earth. If you were going to make a habitat for humanity with all your love, I can assure you it wouldn't come with the following:
Mudslides
Earthquakes
Hurricanes
Tornados
Tsunamis
Volcanic eruptions
Temperatures that oscillate between freezing your ass off and hot as hell
70% of the habitat occupied by water that we can't even drink
Trillions upon trillions of microorganisms trying to kill us that we can't see or defend ourselves from

Holy crap! So much wrong with this post I have no clue where to start. You stated like 10 things as fact that are not proven

Atheists are dumb too. Agnosticism is the only viable stance. We can neither prove nor disprove god whatever you would think god would be. There is a large amount of evidence that we may have been seeded here on earth. If the movie, as clumsy and poorly executed as it was, Prometheus portrayed an accurate situation then would they be "god". I bet you'd say no.

One thing we can say with near certainty is that man kind is TRULY convinced entities came from above and gave us vision and information at certain points in the past. The civilizations that believe they experienced this were scientifically retarded. The actual meaning of the word retarded. They turned this perceivably real experience into over 1,500 other fairy tales to match their own societal ideals, etc over the next few thousand years. If you really believe that you have to be apart of a single religion to go to "heaven" you are part of a process at least 9k years old where each person regurgitates the myopic version of their parents story.

Evolution is based on evidence that has been observed. There is a great amount of this evidence. When evidence is found to contradict previous conclusions, those conclusions are abandoned, and new beliefs based on the new evidence take their place. This "seeing is believing" basis for the theory is exactly the opposite of the sort of faith implied by your claim.

As to macro evolution specifically;

1.We would not expect to observe large changes directly. Evolution consists mainly of the accumulation of small changes over large periods of time. If we saw something like a fish turning into a frog in just a couple generations, we would have good evidence against evolution.

2.The evidence for evolution does not depend, even a little, on observing macroevolution directly. There is a very great deal of other evidence. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA202.html

3.As biologists use the term, macroevolution means evolution at or above the species level. Speciation has been observed and documented. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB910.html

4.Microevolution has been observed and is taken for granted even by creationists. And because there is no known barrier to large change and because we can expect small changes to accumulate into large changes, microevolution implies macroevolution. Small changes to developmental genes or their regulation can cause relatively large changes in the adult organism (Shapiro et al. 2004).

5.There are many transitional forms that show that macroevolution has occurred
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html

Crushing it. +1