Hello

Wow, I'd hate to have come across one of those early single-celled organisms that were the first to live on this planet. They'd surely have swallowed me whole!

Just so you know, the placebo effect (also see the Hawthorn effect) can be explained by the reduction in anxiety and increased sense of control we feel when either doing something we beleive to be positive or having something we believe to be psoitive done to us.It is established that long term anxiety and depression causes physiological issues (such as compromising immune response) and lifting of these symptoms can cause positive outcomes for patients based solely on their perception of symptoms.Being in a control group in a drug trial makes people beleive someone is doing something to help them and this activates the Hawthorn effct. No mistery. No problem for ToE.As consequnce I see no reason to see this as a problem for ToE.In fact, you will have to establish that any on that list are problems for evolution as I can't see one that poses a problem.To take another example: The Hum (noise from modern machines that some people can hear and some can't). How is this a problem for ToE?You might as well ask why those screamer devices that kids can hear but adults can't is a problem for ToE.

To be fair to PP, he didn't say these were ptoblems for ToE. He said:

Yep, all we have these days is the diminutive blue whale...Oh, wait...

Your're right, curses!

Sorry, miss read your post to read the list as challenges for ToE.They're still not unexplained, though.ABE: don't worry about the 'pile on' that's happening here. It's par for the course for a new member.Stand your ground, don't blink and you will do just fine, here.Edited by Larni, : No reason given.

Friendly advice, Larni. But you might forewarn him to get his facts straight before trying again.

Hi Practical Prodigy and welcome to EvC Forum. Okay. Okay now I'm confused. You say that evolution cannot create new genera. You also imply that you would not invoke divine creation to explain the existence of genera.So... where did the genera come from? No. If you do not believe that evolution can cause change above species level, you do not accept the Theory of Evolution, as it is currently understood. That doesn't make you any kind of evolutionist, theistic or otherwise. It makes you an evolution denier of some stripe.Mutate and Survive

---

"A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it." - Jacques Monod

Recent studies are also showing that the Placebo effect my actually just be an artifact of how medical research is conducted.Page not found - Better Health - Better HealthBut on the whole the Placebo effect is very well understood. As is everything else on his list.

---

Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

Please start a thread with this. It will be lots of fun to tear it apart. I think Dr. Adequate will relish this as much as I will.If you are going to propose this as a topic though, you will need to be prepared.
First of all you will need to provide evidence that all of these phenomena exist. Then you will have to provide evidence that the phenomena cannot be adequately explained.Do you have what it takes to do this? If so propose a new thread. If you don't maybe you should issue some sort of retraction.As for the Chatsworth crash, I do not see what is so spectacular about this. The guys cell phone randomly called numbers after the crash. I think that it is very explainable that this is something a damaged cellphone could do. Now to make it some sort of big wooo thing it would have had to call someone not on the cell phone directory and call someone after the expected life of the battery. Or is your supernatural world limited by cell phone and battery technology.I am quite amazed that you purport this to be a serious list and include things that have a solid scientific explanation.
St. Elmo's fire, Deja Vu and Tunguska.Then you include things that have quite well thought out hypothesis. Naga fireballs, Mammatus Clouds, UFO's, Spontanueous Human combustion.And then you include a lot of new age woo and bunk that has no evidence whatsoever. You provide your so-called "evidence" and I will gladly refute it.Who knows maybe you can convince me.

---

Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

Yep. Being in a control group is enough to ignite the placebo effect.

Nonsense. I could provide more if you would like.

---

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

Not exactly.The only cranial size that exceeds our own is Neanderthal, and that is 1) not by much, and 2) for only a portion of the crania examined.None of the other early primates had cranial sizes approaching our own.

---

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

Oh look, it's a Gish Gallop!

Hi, Prodigy. Based on what you've written so far, you sound like you fit into the Old Earth Creationist camp.Virtually all creationists/IDists today accept microevolution. Many creationists of all stripes accept speciation (generally more common among OECs than YECs). All of both subgroups draw the line at "kinds," and only disagree about what constitutes a "kind": your belief of cutting it off at the genus is pretty standard.Your belief in an allegorical Genesis is typical of Day-Age Creationism or Gap Creationism.You also may fit with the "front-loading" club: the people who believe that God started life with all the genetic information it needed to diversify and adapt, and life has since been "devolving" by losing genetic information through mutation and adaptation.

---

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.