What i can't understand about evolution....

The deceiving is going on but its on the creationists' side. The number of misrepresentations, factual omissions, distortions, and outright lies you find on creationist websites is staggering.In order to support their position they have to mangle science and overturn the scientific method, and teach their followers--and school children--that scientists are deluded or deliberately covering up the evidence supporting their position.There's your deception.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Here's a good one -- ring species.

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Ring species provide unusual and valuable situations in which we can observe two species and the intermediate forms connecting them. In a ring species:

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• A ring of populations encircles an area of unsuitable habitat.
• At one location in the ring of populations, two distinct forms coexist without interbreeding, and hence are different species.
• Around the rest of the ring, the traits of one of these species change gradually, through intermediate populations, into the traits of the second species.

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A ring species, therefore, is a ring of populations in which there is only one place where two distinct species meet. Ernst Mayr called ring species "the perfect demonstration of speciation" because they show a range of intermediate forms between two species. They allow us to use variation in space to infer how changes occurred over time. This approach is especially powerful when we can reconstruct the biogeographical history of a ring species, as has been done in two cases. Source

This also does serious damage to the creationists' claim that there are no transitionals. Ring species preserve the transitionals, still living, for all to see. (All but creationists, who generally ignore or deny this evidence of speciation.)

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Here is an article for you to read that shows you are 100% wrong.Recipes for life: How genes evolveSome sample paragraphs:

As the genomes of more and more species are sequenced, geneticists are piecing together an extraordinarily detailed "Making of..." documentary. Nowadays, we can not only trace how the bodies of animals have evolved, we can even identify the genetic mutations behind these changes.

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[snip]

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Some theoretical biologists think gene copies can also be preserved by other, more subtle, mechanisms, but the real challenge to the classical model comes from actual studies of new genes in various organisms. Earlier this year, in the most comprehensive study of its kind yet, a team led by Wen Wang of Kunming Institute of Zoology in Yunnan, China, looked at several closely related species of fruit fly. By comparing their genomes, Wang was able to identify new genes that have evolved in the 13 million years or so since these species split from a common ancestor.

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One of Wang's surprise discoveries was that around 10 per cent of the new genes had arisen through a process called retroposition. This occurs when messenger RNA copies of genes - the blueprints sent to a cell's protein-making factories (see diagram) - are turned back into DNA that is then inserted somewhere else in the genome. Many viruses and genetic parasites copy themselves through retroposition, and the enzymes they produce sometimes accidentally retropose the RNA of their host cells.

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[snip]

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Among other things, these sample paragraphs show that new information can indeed arise in the genome, contrary to what creationists claim, and this study shows how that can happen.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

No.The scientific evidence does not show that.Only those who believe their respective shamans rather than the findings of science and the evidence before their very eyes could make such a claim.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Science is an integrated whole. Why would you want to try to pull one tiny segment out and expect to see the whole?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

It is worse than that. The date for the flood is generally accepted about 4,350 years ago by biblical scholars.Some creationists (e.g., Lubenow and Woodmarappe) see Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, and Homo neanderthalensis as racial variants of modern man-all descended from Adam and Eve, and most likely arising after the separation of people groups after Babel. Babel is generally cited as several hundred years after the flood.The change from modern man to Homo ergaster would require a rate of evolution on the order of several hundred times as rapid as scientists posit for the change from Homo ergaster to modern man! This is in spite of the fact that most creationists deny evolution occurs on this scale at all; now they have not only proposed such a change themselves, but see it several hundreds of times faster and in reverse!

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Please describe the mechanism that allows micro-evolution up to a certain point and then puts up the stop sign saying, "No more!"In other words...How do it know?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Thanks for the response, but it entirely missed the question.You admit to micro-evolution but deny macro-evolution.What is the mechanism that prevents a bunch of micros from adding up to a macro?How mechanism tells it when to stop, and what mechanism then causes it to stop lest those micros add up to a macro?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

That would be false. Mutation is well documented, and there's no point in trying to deny it. You might as well try to deny that the sun comes up in the east. That would be false. Mutation is a true trial and error process. Bad mutations kill the host. Neutral or favorable mutations are passed on.You are the result of billions of neutral and favorable mutations, and probably very few harmful mutations.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Are you willing to consider evidence, and not just regurgitate creationist talking points?From the framing of your question it would seem like your mind is already made up. If so, it would be a waste of time presenting evidence.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Occams razor cuts both ways.You come here full of "gotcha" questions. Let me ask a couple of questions of my own so we can get some idea of where you are coming from.

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• What is the age of the earth?
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• Would any scientific evidence convince you that your belief in creationism is incorrect?

Once I get an answer to these questions, I will know how to proceed.Thanks.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

That is one of the oldest, and most shopworn canards in the creationists' cupboard. And one of the most ludicrous.Bringing up that argument is akin to condemning scientists of the same era for not knowing much about computers.When Darwin published in 1859 there had been one major find in human evolution, and that was the Neanderthal skeleton from Germany--discovered in 1856! But as you would expect, it wasn't well understood at the time.Of course Darwin couched his book in very cautions terms! What else could a scientist do?But creationists see that passage on the internet and think its a smoking gun in their battle to destroy the theory of evolution. Not knowing much about the actual science of human evolution, they take that quote and run with it.But paleontologists, geologists, and a host of other -ologists haven't been exactly sitting on their thumbs for the past 150 years, even though creationists probably wish they had. There are now a lot of fossils in the museum drawers and in the technical literature. They include a lot of transitionals. Scientists have even discovered some living species called ring species that show speciation with all of the intervening transitionals still alive and easily examined!If you wanted you could actually find this information on the internet for yourself. Why would we look for partially formed organs or bones? That's not what the theory of evolution predicts! Each generation differs only slightly from the previous, as you differ slightly from your parents. But those little differences add up, and they add up much quicker when there is significant selection pressure.By the way, the best way to look at selection pressure is not "survival of the fittest." That term was coined well after Darwin published in 1859. A better way to look at this would be "elimination of the least fit."Skin color too light, and not well adapted to bright sunlight? UV rays will cause an increased level of skin cancers. In the far north, is the skin color too dark for the reduced levels of sunlight? Vitamin D deficiencies will cause a lot of problems. Both will lead to changes in the genome of the population over time as the least fit are eliminated and the more fit are the ones that reproduce.Now extend these small changes over time -- over a large span of time. That is evolution, not the creationists' imaginary crocodiles giving birth to a chicken so some such.You really should seek out some scientific literature. You are posting the oldest and most oft-refuted creationist nonsense, and those of us who have engaged in these debates for a while have seen the same discredited arguments dozens of times.It is a credit to this website that folks have been as polite as they have.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

They reject the theory of evolution, in many cases, because their local shaman has been preaching against it as far back as they can remember.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

For some of the answers here I think you need to study the creationists' websites and literature.But first you must understand that creationists, as a group, distrust science and tend not to learn much about it. In extreme cases some creationists even feel that science is evil, and that to study it would be to join in that evil. And finally, many creationists feel that in any conflict between the Bible and science, the Bible must prevail.The natural consequence of these factors is that opposing science, particularly those parts of science that are perceived (based on the teachings of creationist's websites and literature) as contrary to scripture and revelation, is seen as praiseworthy!This opposition is frequently based on strawmen gleaned from those websites and the literature. And here is where a compound problem enters the picture: the target audience is largely fellow creationists, not scientists; and the method of argument is apologetics, not arguments based on the scientific method.The result of this is that scientific arguments make little to no impression on confirmed creationists; they have their beliefs and science is simply wrong. This is why you can explain something using the best logic and scientific evidence and have a creationist post the same thing again the following day. Many simply do not credit scientific evidence as superseding religious belief.They may not know how science is wrong (for example, on radiometric dating or what they call macro-evolution) but they believe that it is wrong somehow and hence no evidence presented by scientists means anything. That is where the serial "what if" stories come in. These "what ifs" are presented as evidence for something they know is true--and if one "what if" doesn't explain things, surely the next one will. That is where we get the wildly fluctuating decay rates, variable speed of light, and greatly lower gravity during the dinosaur's era. Creationists know there is some reason scientists are wrong, but it is not very important to them which one it is. If its not one reason, its another. Scientists are wrong and that's that!On your second question: why there is not such a problem with common ancestry? I would look to the creationist websites and literature. If they don't make a big deal of it, you probably won't see much opposition to that concept. Some ideas are easier to sell than others: descent from apes is one of the easiest to oppose, while any idea that is expressed clearly in the Bible is easy to promote to their target audience.I hope this makes sense. This is a distillation of a number of years of experience dealing with creationists on other websites. YYMV

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

The issue of hyper (or super) evolution is fascinating.For the most part creationists deny that evolution on that scale occurs at all. Then to get from the "kinds" on the ark to the species of today they have to propose evolution acting a hundred or more times faster than scientists have ever claimed. (Whoops!)One of the silliest versions of this is from Woodmorappe and Lubenow, who feel that "Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, and Homo neanderthalensis can best be understood as racial variants of modern man--all descended from Adam and Eve, and most likely arising after the separation of people groups after Babel."The problem with this is it requires evolution to occur several hundred times faster than scientists predict--and in reverse! (Whoops!)This is why I mentioned in a previous post that creationists are offering us apologetics, not science. This type of claim certainly confirms that.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.