How do you define the word Evolution?

Somehow I don't think god resting is part of any definition of evolution.Thanks.

True. It probably should go in "Contradictions: Hint that Genesis 1 and 2 are Allegorical"Edited by CRR, : No reason given.

Sure, but think about it: Where do babies come from?They come from parents, who came from parents, who came from parent, who came from parents.All animals come from a previous generation, so if there are more diversity of species today than there were in the past, then it follows that the species today came from, albeit very gradually over many many generations, the species of the past.No animals just magically pop into existence one day... Or a few... that's the point I'm making: It doesn't have to be one universal common ancestor.

There's nothing unimaginative about using it ONCE. What's unimaginative is doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over again. Well, of course real designers DO develop those things using different methods: flight can be lighter-than-air, heavier-than air, fixed-wing, rotary-wing, etc. Echolocation can be by sound, by radio waves, by lasers, etc. Show me a biological zeppelin. That designer would be a redundancy duct-taped onto an already satisfactory explanation.

So why wouldn't a brilliant designer come up with TWO brilliant designs to do the same thing in totally different ways? Or twenty?

Why? Because you would have done it that way? I won't reduce God to your level, or mine.

As I said Darwin said a few or only one and made it clear in the book that he thought it was only one.Similarly Erasmus Darwin wrote that "... would it be too bold to imagine that, in the great length of time since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of years ... that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which the great First Cause endued with animality, ...": Darwin E: Zoonomia; or the Laws of Organic Life. 1794The tree of life with a single source was depicted by Ernst Haeckel in The Evolution of Man (1879) Current representations likewise start from a single node Dobzhansky, Coyne, Kerkut, and I'm sure many others refer to universal common ancestry.According to Wikipedia "LUCA is the most recent common ancestor of all current life on Earth. LUCA should not be assumed to be the first living organism on Earth."OK, so it doesn't have to be one universal common ancestor but that is certainly the prevailing view today, in Darwin's day, and Darwin's preferred option. Except apparently the first living thing(s). They couldn't have had a living ancestor. Now we are moving into a discussion of Abiogenesis
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Which is the more sensible approach? ... invent a different system for each one of the millions of species of organisms on earth, or use the same system for each one? But on the other hand, humans have a long history of borrowing ideas from nature to build stuff. Would humans have ever thought of flight if they hadn't seen birds doing it?Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.

Dunno. Could be a few years ... or millions ... or billions.---------------------------------I accept that a sheep dog descended from a wolf - this is common descent.I accept that some bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics - this is evolution.But I don't accept that humans and chimps share a common ancestor - this is an atheist myth.Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.

Congratulations, you finally agree with what everyone has been saying for dozens of posts.It seems a hard thing for creationists to grasp but science does not consider Darwin's views to be sacrosanct; his book is not a holy book to be considered true in all respects and forever. Our understanding of life on earth has evolved beyond Darwin, though his core ideas have proven sound and held good despite 150 years of scientific advancement.

1. Humans descending from a microbe is evolution.
2.Lenski's E-coli demonstated evolution.There must be a connection between 1 and 2. Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.

This is both bad science and bad logic.1. The ToE leads us to a working hypothesis that all life has one - or possibly more - common ancestors which must have started with some form of replicating molecule. On the way, one of those ancestors may have been an ancient version of what we now call a microbe. A microbe is any organism that requires magnification to be seen by us - it's a general catch-all term, not part of a taxa.2 The fact that a specific bacterium can evolve the ability to 'eat' citrate does not tell us anything about whether a humans descended from microbes. It's a single piece of evidence that confirms that organisms can change which adds to the mountain of other evidence supporting evolution. What underpins the idea of common descent is the ToE in its entirety with all its collection of supporting facts.How old is the earth?Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

There is. It is evolution.(1) is macroevolution, looking at the process of evolution over many many generations, looking back over billions of years of accumulated evolution, while ignoring the generation to generation of specific species in between.(2) is microevolution and macroevolution, looking at the process of evolution from generation to generation. Testing each generation for changes, for adaptations (selected mutations). Observing when new traits emerge causing a functional difference from the original population. Anagenesis, continuing evolution making the offspring species observably different from the parent. Artificial cladogenesis, via forced division of offspring populations into different lineages, that then evolve independent of one another. All within one human lifetime.The connection is that evolution is occurring generation after generation after generation. Nothing more, nothing less.Enjoy

Sure, but it doesn't have to be.Look, the topic is defining evolution. And the "definition" that I'm responding to is that evolution is synonymous with common decent.That's not true. Right, being synonymous with common decent is not a valid definition of evolution. As I've said, common decent is a conclusion derived from applying the ToE to the data that we have available. Back in the day, it started as a hypothesis - but it still wasn't synonymous with evolution.See Message 558.Here, review all my messages in this thread. No, not "one day". And there was not just one first living thing.Being "alive" is not a binary condition... They could have had a semi-living ancestor Yeah, and it gets a little bit circular - but in regards to defining evolution and defining life, one way is to define life as that which is capable of evolving.

Not just that God rested, but that God rested from his efforts.And the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath is the complete statement. That has nothing at all to do with whether God needed rest. It instead says that man needs the Sabbath.