Help in teaching 11-12 Year olds (RE (Religious Education) in the UK)

An inability to understand how conclusions are drawn for evidence, doesn't make the reality that the origin question is irrelevant to the truth of evolution a matter of opinion.Once again with feeling: none of the evidence for evolution depends on how the origin of life occurred

Would you agree that if there was no evidence for the origins of life, then a theory that describes how populations of living things change over time could still be accurate? That it could still be true that all living things are related? By showing how life slowly evolved on this planet. You could show patterns of relatedness confirmed by morphological and genetic examinations. You could show changes in the types of life that exist throughout the fossil record. Should I call up my local cancer research lab and tell them their task is also impossible on the same grounds (perhaps moreso since a heck of a lot more time and money has gone into cancer research)?

The origin of life and its subsequent evolution are two entirely different matters. As Mr Jack said: none of the evidence for evolution depends on how the origin of life occurred.

No, this is an analogy that actualy works: We're talking about your baby's development, whather s/he's learned to walk yet, what foods s/he eats, etc. I don't have to know who the father is, nor do I care overly much. I know a father exists, as scientists know an origin happened, but these scientists don't really care what that origin is because the specific origin has no bearing on the development after the origin.What you're arguing is that before I can discuss your baby and his/her development, I must first know who the father is. Why should I care? It's not pertinent to the conversation.

prolific, yes, but the diversity occured long before the Cambrian. The ancestor of protostomes (such as Arthropods, Tardigrates, Barachiozoa, Mollusca etc.) and deuterostomes (such as Chordates & Ecinoderms) separated back in the Pre-Cambrian. (The Ancestor's Tale, Richard Dawkins, pg378.) The Cambrian Lasted 54 million years and these changes occured over the entire period not all at once.

considering the toe has changed somewhat over the years, and scientists have been hotly debating the theory, then it is possible that that a theory could be wrong. are all living things related?how is a fish and a cow related? a dog and a cat??thier DNA is not identicle, so how are they related?
Also, man and the ape may look similar, but it is impossible for man and ape to hybridize which kind of indicates that they are not related, yes? what genetic evidence is found in fossils? Can they draw dna from them? Have they done so? what has cancer got to do with the subject??? Dont shy away from the fact that non living matter does not come to life. Its what scientists themselves have shown time and time again. This fact presents a major problem for how evolution got started...without non living matter springing to life, there could be no evolutionand we are just expected to believe that non living matter sprang to life even though good science has shown that its impossible????

Your DNA is not identical to your parents, so how are you related to them? Congratulations, you have just argued your way to illegitimacy.Or, you might like to rethink that question.

its not about which God/gods was the creator in this case...its about 'creation' as opposed to an unguided natural phenomenonthe creator has proof in the form of eyewitnesses (whether you believe them or not is not the point)evolution has no eyewitness and no proof as to how it got started.

Your DNA is not identical to that of your parents, does that mean you aren't related? I'm not talking about the fact that you only inherited ~1/2 of your genetic complement from each parent but about the fact that you are likely to have ~100 or more novel genetic mutations that neither of your parents had.We can use genetic to determine degrees of relatedness in humans, what makes you think the exact same approach becomes impossible when we look at other animals?

Of course it is. You claim that it's Yaweh or the highway. That's a false dichotomy. You have excluded the mean, excluded all other options out of hand. And the point that is being made ad nauseum is that either of those origins are compatible with evolution.God created simple life... and it evolved.Life arose through unguided chemical processes... and it evolved.You seem determined to misunderstand this. In what way can you completely rule out a deity creating the first simple replicators? I cannot. Can you? It very much is the point. Millennia-old religious tracts do not count as eye-witnesses and their testimony is irrelevant to the origins of life (unless you are credulous enough to believe everything you read). No eyewitnesses? That sounds entirely consistent with the theory that when life arose it was extremely simple. No eyewitness would be possible.

I know ther are many prominent Christian religious groups who accept that God used evolution to create life. Some teach that he preprogrammed the universe to develop on its own...this is theistic evolution. Jesus Christ did not believe in theistic evolution and we know this becuase he used the genesis account to reaffirm the sanctity of marriage specifically mentioning the creation of Adam and Eve. His disciple Luke also believed the Genesis account for in his Gospel he traces Jesus’ genealogy all the way back to Adam.If anyone knew about how life got started it was Jesus for he was the one who worked along side the Creator at the founding of the universe. I trust that he knew what he was talking about. no, thats just me not being able to separate 'evolution' from 'origins' again. To put it another way....if the 'origin' of life was by non living matter coming to life, then those creatures that first appeared were not direct creations by God.Im aware that animals can become varied over time...they diversify in their features. I dont believe they develop into new species though (depending on what you define as a species)For example, i was watching a nature program just tonight and they were looking at how the females are the ones who propel'evolutionary change' (as he called it) because they choose mates with the best traits.Fair enough i can go along with that. But then he showed an example of a particular african fish where the male comes in a huge variety of colours. (not sure of the name of the fish)Then he goes and spoils it all by calling every different coloured male a 'new species' ... "a brilliant example of evolution at work"seriously, what is a species these days??? And why would he call the different colored males a new species???

identicle wasnt the right word, you are right.the DNA can tell you what type an animal you are examining...whether its human whether its horse or cow or pelican is what I meant.why can the DNA do that if there is not a similar pattern to be found in the various species?

the very earliest lifeforms were far from simple, so there goes your first pointchemicals do not come to life, there goes your second.DNA prevents species jumping the very real barrier that keeps them replicating in the manner of their parents.... so none of what you've said has any founding.

I have to say that WK is far better placed to explain this than I. Basically though, you and I do have similar DNA to all other living creatures. It is often mentioned that we share 90% of our DNA with chimps, but we also share a large portion of our DNA with strawberries. All living things share DNA, to a greater or lesser extent.We accept that shared DNA can be used to determine relatedness in humans, so, as WK asked, why should this suddenly stop working between species? Don't you think it's a bit of a co-incidence that genetic relatedness corresponds to morphological similarity?

Sounds like it might be Cichlids they are a pretty popular model organism for studying speciation. In which case the various different coloured males may well have been distinct species since there can be dozens of cichlid species in just one lake.The reason they are different species is because the different populations from which the different coloured males come tend not to interbreed with the other populations, even if they live in the same area. This is pre-mating reproductive isolation and can be considered either sufficient to categorise different species or at least good evidence for incipient speciation. in most cases there are many other differences between the different cichlid populations apart from colour, the cichlids show a wide range of different morphologies (see this link).