So being truthful is not allowed? I didn't say my knowledge was weak, I simply admitted that I am still in the process of learning. Whose knowledge is complete in any area? Are you saying I should stop discussing this?
No you shouldn't stop discussing this, but it wouldn't hurt to be a bit less arrogant in your assumptions. You are questioning the validity of a complex scientific theory and the work of many thousands of learned individuals who dedicated their lives to studying, researching and documenting in this particular field since the 19th century. And this isn't just people having random ideas or opinions and jotting them down but methodical peer-reviewed and openly documented research.
You don't see how it is a bit presumptuous to assume that you, with no more than some recently acquired introductory knowledge of it, are seeing obvious holes that all these people somehow missed? Chances are pretty good that any questions you currently have are more than adequately answered in the literature if you would just actually read it first before trying so very hard to debunk it. Even if you are making an admirable attempt at actually investigating all of this which certainly is more than most creationists are willing to do, I still cannot help but feel from the way you are responding in this thread that the only acceptable outcome for you, which you seem to constantly be steering towards, is to consider evolution as just another idea that has no more merit than religious theories.
I'm also a bit confused why you are so adament about keeping ID out of the discussion when you yourself repeatedly state that you are trying to read information from "both sides" (which I infer to mean evolution vs creationism because there is no other "side" to this argument that I am aware of) to form the most "objective" standpoint. Which both seems contradictory and also somewhat odd considereing scientific documents are by far the most objective thing you will find (they are based on scientific methodology and peer-review rather than just some random guy's baseless opinion on something). Creationist debunking theories do not offer an alternative that is on equal footing with the scientific theories of evolution which has already been pointed out and explained by many people (including myself) in both this thread and the previous religion thread.
My knowledge may be limited, but look at you guys. You can't defend evolution without comparing it to intelligent design. [...] You misread and/or deisregard what I say and I have to keep repeating the same points.
....
You guys seem to accept evolution without really understanding or questioning its claims. That's faith.
What exactly have you offered so far that we are supposed to defend? I read through this entire thread and only found two of these supposed points you made and that was only in response to my previous post. Aside from that I fail to see any established points on your part that require any defense and any of the points you do make are the usual argument of ignorance style that you've been displaying a lot so far.
"The overwhelming evidence in the fossil record points toward instantaneous existence and stasis of species."
Assuming you are talking about the Cambrian explosion and the supposed lack of transitional fossils:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC300.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html (or for a more extensive explanation:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html)
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200_1.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC201.html
"The mechanism by which macroevolutionary change happens on the level required to explain what we have before us is not known."
Says who? How much have you actually read to even justify making this claim? Genetic mutation is not exactly the great mystery you're making it out to be and even if not all of the processes as to how it happens are understood (for instance what role the large percentage of DNA sequences that seemingly goes unused plays in this), the fact that it does happen is undisputable and there is plenty of evidence to back it up.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB901.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB902.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB102.html
Well then, instead of telling me how much I don't know, tell me why I am wrong.
Tell me, for example, what else science calls fact. What is the precident for scientific fact, and does evolution stand up to the type of proof that was required to establish that?
The definition of what science considers fact was already given earlier and you said you understood it which I take to mean you find it an acceptable definition. If not we might as well cut this discussion short right now because no other definition of fact is ever going to apply to science for reasons I outlined twice before which is that science never claims to be the unequivocal truth for all eternity. So a scientific fact is never going to be claimed to be "100% probable never to be proven wrong ever" if that is the kind of fact you are looking for.
The fact that we are even having this discussion where you are seemingly annoyed by the fact that science considers evolution to be a fact says that yes, science considers that the theory of evolution does stand up to the type of proof that was required to establish it as a scientific fact. If you want to argue this then I suggest you first investigate all of this proof instead of bits and pieces of it like you are doing now.
What weight should we give to the lack of fossil evidence? What weight should be given to Darwin's statement:
"....innumerable transitional forms must have existed but why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? ....why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain, and this perhaps is the greatest objection which can be urged against my theory". ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES.
There is a huge amount of information written on this topic, again, you need to actually read it first if you want to argue against it (see the links earlier in this post for a start). The quote from Darwin is from the very first publication of the theory published in 1859 and has been addressed
many times by scientists since then. (again, see links)
Your insistance that trusting the results of scientific process is the same thing as "faith" is also pretty aggravating. I explained the fundamental difference between the two earlier in this thread and won't bother to repeat myself and rather just quote from my previous post.
...the only way there is any "faith" involved in the evolution theory is if you insist that science claims it to be the perpetual truth which it simply doesn't. The evolution theory is a fact based on what we currently know. That means that the amount of evidence that supports it is so huge that to consider any other currently existing alternative (like ID, for which there is no evidence) is simply ridiculous. That doesn't mean it will forever remain an absolute truth. As I said, maybe a 100 years from now the theory will have been revised somewhat or will have been replaced with an altogether different theory that explains things to a more satisfactory level. The evolution theory isn't "done" or anything. It's not like scientists are patting eachother on the back, congratulating eachother on a job well done and moving on to other ventures. It represents what we know now. And that may very well differ from what we know ten years from now. If you were asked to consider the evolution theory to be the unequivocal truth for all eternity then yes it would require faith. But no scientist has ever asked or claimed that to be the case. This in stark contrast with religion and theories like ID which are based upon it, which simply state a "truth" that they feel cannot and should not be challenged and that will never evolve. That requires faith.
If you truly want to continue arguing this debate on philosophical terms (i.e. in a way everything requires "faith" unless you are able to assertain the unequivocal truth in person which we obviously do not and can not do in most cases for lack of time or expertise or simply the fact that it is impossible to establish that level of truth) then we might as well drop the argument here because it will never reach any kind of productivity that way (not to mention make it incredibly dull).
