What convinced you of Evolution?

The difference between evolution and religion is that we have lots of evidence for evolution. But, we have no evidence for religion. Try doing a little research before you start making assertions. But, if you have somehow come up with evidence supporting a religion then please share it with us.I think evolution is true because there is actually evidence supporting it unlike creationism which lacks any evidence whatsoever. Also I am an atheist so the whole god thing doesn't do it for me. When I start getting real evidence to support "creationism" and god I would be happy to change.

In the unlikely event that this gets back on topic, I'll ignore your ignorant assersion that evolution is a religion and answer the question asked: My parents are both PhDs in Biology, my dad was a Christian, my mum is now an ordained priest in the CoE. My upbringing was correspondingly rich in science. I remember my dad showing us how to calculate the circumfrence of the earth when we lived in Nigeria, and I remember being woken up at three in the morning to look at Haley's comet through a telescope my dad had borrowed. I also loved wildlife programs, so it's no surprise that I accepted evolutionary theory from as soon as I was old enough to know anything about it.You'll note also that I was a christian all this time. There is no conflict between rational christianity and evolution.When I started coming into contact with the crazy fundementalist wing of Christianity I was fortunate enough to have my dad there to point how ignorant, stupid and downright lying all their creationist arguments were. He used to get tracts from the Creation Science Movement and I'd amuse myself by reading them over my Shreddies in the morning. Even with high school level science I could easily spot the gaping flaws in their reasoning.Coming into contact with the lunacy, self-delusion and fantacism of the fundementalists also caused me to examine my own faith, and I'm pleased to say I was able to leave behind the trappings of christianity and become an atheist.Since then I've read several creationist books, not one has had a single shred of scientific evidence in them. I've also read numerous books on evolution, and many more on general biology. And I can say for certain you're suggestion that there is no evidence for evolution is singularly false.From a personal asthetic point of view, I cannot see how such a powerful, elegant, obvious and successful theory could be wrong.

What convinced me personally? Flatfish -- things like plaice. Their mouths are on sideways.There’s a few other things too. See:
This website is frozen.
and
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent
for details.Please explain any of these with your sad little religion. My religion is vastly superior to yours. It has evidence behind it, y’see. I insist you read that skim of the evidence. Absolutely insist, before you dare comment again. After all, if the amount of it is so insignificant, it won't take you long will it? And you'd then be able to post an informed opinion, rather than the steaming pile of doggy-doos you've so far contributed.TTFN, DT

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Let me just start off by saying that evolution has about the same amount of evidence as any other religion does (maybe even less)...

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Other threads desal with this issue.

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So, what convinced you of evolution over any other religion?

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Objection to 'any other religion' not-withstanding, the answer
is simply 'evidence to date'.

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Were you just brought up with the theory of evolution?

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No. My dad still has trouble with the whole concept now, and there
is very limited 'scientific' background within my family.

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Does it just make sense to you?

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It does make sense, and more importantly, is suported by
evidence from different branches of the sciences.

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Were you forced into it because you refused to believe in a deity?

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No.Further objection to the 'refused to', 'do not' would have
been more accurate.

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Or are you just one of those, "Scientists thought of it...It must be true" kind of people?

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I've not met one of those, but I have met a lot of 'my minister
believes this ... it must be true.' kind of people.

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Please post your response, because I am honestly quite curious.

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Done ... nothing wrong with honest curiosity.

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Now, I, by no means am trying to come off as mean or disrespectful here,

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Hoaw about 'arrogant', 'condescending'(sp?) and 'self righteous' though?

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I am just honestly curious in what would convince someone that a theory with an extremely insignificant amount of evidence could be true

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I am interested in this too. I have never understood what
makes christians beleive what they beleive. There is zero
evidence for anything stated in the Bible, the existence of
Jesus, or the existence of any god, let alone the judeo-christain
god.On the other hand, I know few scientists or those with a
scientific interest, to be swayed by anything other than
significant supportive evidence.Check out the discussions between us heathen-scientist types
if you don't believe me.

Actually, what was crucial to me giving up on Creationism - which I grew up believing - was when I first figured out that I was actually being *lied to* by my church on the issue. That annoyed the heck out of me. That wasn't what convinced me of evolution, but it did help me get over the fear of evolution instilled in me.

I'd be "honestly curious" as to how you arrive at this conclusion. (Nice opening, btw). Beyond the "evolution is a religion" assertion, this certainly doesn't bode well for your motivation in starting this topic. However, be that as it may: I arrived at my acceptance and understanding of the modern theory of evolution as the best current explanation for the diversity of life on Earth through a long process of accretion and personal observation. My parents were both well-educated, but "science null". I doubt that either one has ever taken a biology course in their lives for example, nor have they ever evinced any particular interest in the subject. It was not a subject of dinner table conversation in our household. However, they DID encourage me to spend a lot of time outside. ("Encourage" may be the wrong word - "forced", as in "Go outside and play you lazy git", is probably closer to the mark.) I was extremely fortunate that "outside" in this context referred to a 10 ha temperate forest, complete with a beautiful stream which led, if you followed it long enough, past a very tiny, local "nature" museum. I spent most of my childhood - winter and summer - exploring those woods, that stream, and ultimately spending time at that little museum.In the Spring and Summer I would turn over rocks in the stream and marvel over the weird critters living there. I climbed trees and peered into squirrel and bird nests. In the Winter I followed animal tracks in the snow to their burrows. I found fossils in the shale cliffs bordering the stream bed. Sometimes I just sat in a clearing and watched - just watched and listened for hours. (If you get the impression that I was a pretty solitary kid, you're mostly right.) At some point I started to get a feeling that all of this was somehow connected, although I don't think I ever articulated it that way. It was more through absorbtion than logic - and was a long slow process.As a freshman in high school I had the incredible good fortune to be taught by a biology teacher that, in spite of my rather indifferent grades in his class, recognized some kind of spark (for the life of me I can't figure out what he saw). However, he not only encouraged my interest in the subject, but literally shanghaied me (and several others of similar bent) into working on various ecology-related projects of his (everything from fish breeding for restocking a small lake to homemade maple syrup manufacture ). During all of which he patiently explained and demonstrated the principles behind what we were doing - lake and stream ecology, water chemistry, the biology and lifecycle of maple trees, and a myriad of other subjects. All of my random and vague observations from all those years playing in the woods started to jell - to the point where as a senior I was able to compete for and win a secondary school science fellowship grant to study pond ecology. At the same time he encouraged me to read up on the subject - to discover the underpinnings and details of the things he talked about and showed us. I owe Cosmo DiBiasio - a high school science teacher - a debt I'll never be able to repay.It wasn't until I got to college that I had any significant academic exposure to evolutionary theory. By that time, however, there was no question in my mind that nature was, well, natural. Evo biology, ecology, environmental science, biochemistry (yuch), genetics, even a course in geology (I never did get that bit down well - rocks aren't alive, so there wasn't much interest I guess), etc in college opened up for me the vast literature and world of evidence for the theory. I've never looked back. Every single book or paper I've ever read simply adds more to the conviction that evolution is a damn good explanation - not because some authority told me, but because it matches with, ties together, and explains all those summer observations - childhood thoughts and fancies.Since then, my career has taken me from chilly, wet cloud forests to tropical reefs. Nothing I have ever seen anywhere - from the hundreds of lifeforms swarming in the cup of a rainforest bromeliad to the lifecycle of a strangler fig to successional transitions on volcanic lava to new cichlid species isolated in volcanic crater lakes to creating an thriving artificial reef ecosystem - has given me any reason to question the one idea that explains both the how and the why of life's diversity. Too funny. Oddly enough, magical beasts and the supernatural never even crossed my mind in relation to the natural world - at any time in my life. I'm surprised I missed all the evidence for it. I'm sure that your detailed description of how magic accounts for the observed character displacement of Anolis lizards on St. Maarten (A. pogus and A. gingivinus), or the extreme endemicity of the Hawaiian biota. Perhaps you can use magic to provide a detailed explanation of why Plumeria alba (the sacuanjoche tree) seems to thrive on the 100-year-old lava flow but not in the dry forest (growing on a ~600-year-old flow) of the Masaya Volcano complex only 300 meters away. I'm delighted you'll set me straight on that since evolutionary theory obviously can't explain it. Perhaps you could even - dare I ask - use your supernatural explanation to describe how the mutualism between the bulls horn acacia (Acacia cornigera) and the stinging ant Pseudomyrmex ferruginea might have arisen in Central America. Make sure you take into consideration cornigera's lack of the normal acacia alkaloid defenses when explaining it. Naw, not disrespectful or mean. Just a jerk. Since it turns out that there is quite a bit - huge and almost incomprehensible amounts, in fact - of data from multiple sources and even multiple sciences that support the theory, you seem to have a different idea of what constitutes "insignificant" than I do.

I liked your post, but was wondering if the experiment you outlined has been documented somewhere (esp online)? Without that it is just an outline for an experiment and a hypothesis of what outcomes one would find.Since most people I talk to are unlikely to have the time, patience, or lab to conduct such an experiment, I'd love to have a source I can point them to to show it has been run... and if they continued to doubt, they could then run the test.In other words, I'd like to steal your argument for later use.------------------
holmes

I think I've already related my story on this board somewhere, but I don't mind retelling it.I used to be a creationist. The first doubts about creationism occurred when I took biology as a high school sophomore. I learned about the Linnean classification, and I had to admit that it was a pretty strange thing to see in a world individually created "kinds". I tried to start a thread on this very topic; feel free to add to it. I'm disappointed it didn't really go anywhere.But what finally destroyed my belief in creationism was the Malthusian argument and modern genetics. Incidentally, I was a junior in high school taking the AP biology course. It is an incredibly strong argument. Most individuals produce far more offspring than is necessary to replace themselves. Since most populations are stable, this means a lot of individuals die before they can reproduce. Within any species there is a lot of variation between individuals. It is simply logical that those that survive to reproduce will be more likely those whose characterists enable them to better survive in their environment than those who do not. Plus, genetics gives us a theory of inheretence, as well as a source of new variability (mutations), and so it is simply obvious that evolution must be occurring even now. I could not, and cannot now, see any way to prevent it. After realizing this, I took a new look at the evidence for past evolution and... well, I simply was no longer able to deny the very strong evidence for evolution.

I am convinced of the PROCESS of evolution, due to:1) The fact that changes occur through the act of reproduction. This is well known and utilized in animal breeding.2) There is no evidence that life within the fossil record did not use reproduction as a means to generate offspring, in fact there is evidence for their having used reproduction.3) There is no evidence that reproduction has been disrupted/replaced in the past by some other process, and so it is logical that small changes (as seen in breeding) could have resulted in much larger changes over a larger period of time and so explain the changes in forms we see in the fossil record. In short, it provides a model for what we see in the fossil record using the processes we see today.4) There is current evidence of speciation in plants and bacteria through reproduction, so it is not unrealistic to assume evolution will continue to happen.5) The assumption of evolution, and some of its mechanisms, have proven invaluable as tools to understand, track, and deal with changes in the biological world such as disease, hereditary infirmities, and new species that begin to threaten ecosystems.6) Other scientific disciplines, working independently of biology, provide supporting evidence for the evolutionary model.The MECHANISMS of evolution are not completely understood and I will not go into the arguments for/against each one here. I will only point out that unlike religion, tenets of the theory of evolution are allowed to change, and expected to as more data comes in from the world around us. In other words, as a general practice, evidence rules the theory, the theory does not rule the evidence.As a theory, evolution deals only with explanations for observed biological changes. It makes no statements outside of this realm. God or Gods may exist, or not.Because of how evolution treats evidence and its limitations of scope, I am hesitant to believe it is a religion.But since you believe it is, or that Xianity as a religion is on par with scientific theory, I am interested in knowing what evidence there is that:1) Xianity is a scientific discipline (spec. regarding observations of biological change)2) as a discipline it explains current changes observed during reproduction3) the model it has developed to explain the fossil record and any discontinuities between current organisms and ancient organisms (esp. with regard to reproduction)4) the evidence it has accumulated to support any discontinuities5) proposed mechanisms for change that are not related to properties within the reproductive organisms themselves6) evidence for such "supernatural" or "external" mechanismsand finally,7) what invaluable tools Xianity (as an ongoing scientific discipline) has provided us for understanding, tracking, and treating biological events such as disease, hereditary (?) infirmities, and invasive new species which threaten ecosystems.Also, if you have some other types of evidence that are important in choosing a scientific theory/religion regarding biological change, I am open to suggestion.Hope to hear back from you soon.------------------
holmes

Evidence is in the eye of the beholder.
We all as humans evaluate "data" based on our bias and assumptions, ex. is the glass half full or half empty?Let me illustrate with a short story.
2 students are trying to figure out how long water has been dripping into a bucket. Currently the water is dripping at 1 ml/s. and the bucket containes 1L of water.
Student 1 grabs his calculator and begins to figure out the elapsed time based on current measurements and comes to a conclusion of
1000 seconds.
Student 2 however had a friend that entered the classroom 2 full minitues before everyone else and said that he observed the teacher fill up the bucket and then set the drip rate to 1 ml/s. Therefore this student "knows" that the water has been dripping for 2 minutes or 160 seconds.So which student is right? They both observed the same "data" under the same circumstances but got different results, how is this possible? both students assumed information and based their results on it. Student 1 assumed that the water level had started at 0 and continued at a constant rate, While student 2 assumed that his friend was truthful about what he saw.Scientists as all humans evaluate things in the same manner...

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Let me illustrate with a short story.

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Your example is a comparison to non-isochron dating. The vast majority of dating done today is isochron dating. You need a new analogy.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Nitpick: The vast majority of dating done today is what Dalrymple calls "age-diagnostic" dating, which means all methods that have powerful error detaction and/or correction mechanisms built in. Isochron dating is one of a few such methods. Some numbers at http://EvC Forum: Radioisotope dating links and information -->EvC Forum: Radioisotope dating links and informationThe plurality of dating done today is with the U-Th-Pb system, and most of that is concordia-discordia dating (which is not an isochron method but is age-diagnostic).I really wish there was a good introduction ot concordia-discordia dating on the Web. Maybe someday I'll try to write one.

I remind all that this is not a "Dates and Dating" topic.AM

Thanks, Jon Your nitpicks are always welcome.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

I prefer the following analogy:Student A turns in his term paper, which his professor notices is remarkably similar to a term paper turned in by Student B the prior year. In fact, it appears identical to Student B's term paper except for a few opportunistic changes: Student A's name at the top, the current course's recommended texts in the bibliography, and so on. Most curious are the presence of certain typographical errors in Student A's paper which just so happen to be exactly the same errors as occur in Student B's paper.If Student A claims that his paper is a completely independent creation, who would buy that?Creationists want us to believe that what we know about the DNA molecule and reproduction should tell us nothing about the relationships between separate species. They want us to believe that similarities among genomes of many dissimilar species, even identical mutations in the exact same spot in the genome, is just as forceful evidence of independent creation as of common descent.But who's buying that?------------------
The dark nursery of evolution is very dark indeed.
Brad McFall