Both or neither.

Why don't you just call those who believe in evolution "Nazis" and get Godwin's Law out of the way? Do you think that the Deep South, the heart of racism and bigotry, of slavery and degradation in the United States through much of its history, did it because of evolution? Quite to the contrary, the Deep South used to be America's "Bible Belt". The Klu Klux Klan considers itself to be founded on the principles of Christianity.Please, demonizing your opponents is grossly unfair. You might as well have just said "Murderer X believes in evolution, and said that he killed someone because he believes that person is evolutionarily inferior." And then we respond "Murderer Y believes in Christianity, and said that he killed someone because that person is a different religion."... and we go round until we're both thoroughly insulted on a baseless sidetrack.There are the level of fossils found as are to be expected - larger gaps on older fossils and more fragile fossils, smaller gaps on more recent and more sturdy fossils. They are virtually all in the exact layers that they should, and *nowhere else* (this is the reason why evolution was initially proposed; as people kept digging, they couldn't explain why on earth creatures were all perfectly sorted into perfect layers, worldwide, regardless of niche, body size, body shape, etc; in fact, the first theory proposed to explain this was that there were "multiple creations") (the very few exceptions to the rule all match up with their environments - for example, if there's a column of rubble pile above a human body but nowhere else, the human bone isn't anywhere near as fossilized as the bones around it, etc, it's clearly a burial chamber; these are but a *tiny* percentage of total fossils). The level of transitions found is, in most cases, excellent. I am not aware of a single line vertebrates whose transition is unknown up to the Order level; family-level gaps are rare (I think there may be one on bats, because their skeletons are so fragile, but I'd have to check); most transitions are at the genus and species level. What archaeologists have to look at - and the reason why they virtually all had to end up accepting evolution - was because the higher in the strata you collect fossils from, you get such a perfect transition between fossil types, as in Mark's graph. And, not coincidentally, radioisotope dating - all except (note the boldfaces) in cases where it obviously should not work and is not done (i.e., radiocarbon dating an aquatic animal, or a plant that lived very close to a volcanic vent) is generally accurate to within a few percent (a young earth would require not only orders of magnitude of error, but *consistant error of orders of magnitude* between all of the different kinds of dating which not only confirm each other, but are off by the same number of years between each other - which means many very precise, huge levels of inaccuracy, that somehow match up with the fossil sorting and each other). Needless to say, given what they face in the field, creationists comprise less 1% of paleontologists. In fact, in the 19th century, the different sciences didn't interact so kindly with each other. Paleontologists were stating that the Earth was several billion years old. However, the physicsts were insistant that they were wrong, that the world was several tens of millions years old. Both were insistant that the other side had to change their views. The reason that it was held that the universe was tens of millions of years old was that, while scientists had realized that the sun wasn't so hot and bright due to fire, fusion wasn't known yet. The dominant theory at the time was that the sun condensed from a cloud of gas; equations showed that, yes, the sun would generate a lot of heat and light that way (and in fact, that is why early-forming stars glow), but that it would reach the stage that it was at now after a few tens of millions of years, and would die after a few more. Fusion was unknown. However, when fusion was discovered, this was an incredible moment in science - all of the sudden, there was a new possible energy source for the sun, and it was matching up with their readings of the sun. And when they ran the calculations for how long ago the sun would have had to have condensed from a cloud of gas based on its current contents, they an answer of around 4.5 billion years. All of the sudden, the different sciences "fit".Finally, as for abiogenesis, here's some suggested reading:Abiogenesis FAQs: The Origins of Life- Karen------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Rei, 09-15-2003]

I suggest you start with this:Abiogenesis FAQs: The Origins of LifeThe simplest known self-replicator is a mere three subunits long (the SunY self-replicator). There are self-replicators of all kinds in the world; even BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalapathy) is a self replicator. Now, note that BSE requires a very specific type of chemical to make a replica of itself. And in fact, that is precisely what the first self replicators would have been like (although they would have likely been much shorter chains than prions). Self replicators which then became able to utilize a wider variety of materials for replication are selectively superior to the limited ones, and those begin to take over.. etc.I like the graph that contrasts the view of many creationists about abiogenesis with the view of scientists:Creationist:
Simple chemicals -> bacteriaScientists:
Simple chemicals -> polymers -> replicating polymers -> hypercycle -> probiont -> bacteria.To read about the processes believed to cause this, read the attached literature; it's much better than me summarizing it for you. Even if you disagree with it, it's good to understand what your ideological opponents believe, so that you don't inadvertently create straw men.- Karen------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."