intelligent design, right and wrong

And a society which doesn't get it "right" will eventually fail. There are selection processes going on there too. And like individuals and species they all eventually fail.

It's "Goldilocks" not "Cinderella" isn't it?Damm, I'm in a crowd of PhD's and all I can contribute is a comment on fairly tales. But then, one whole side of this discussion is based on fairly tales.

The precise answer is "don't know". If you want some hints of what we do know about the possibility then I suggest you start a new topic on that( though i'm sure there is one already).I'm of the opinion that we will, within the next 50 years, know all about serveral ways life could have developed and never know just how it did. (Ok, never is too strong, we're going to have to visit several life bearing star systems before we might nail it down )

Ah, Rrhain, but what the proponents are really doing this for and what the idea is stating have to be separated.They claim that it isn't religious, the ideas are couched in those terms. The individuals are obviously up to something else but that doesn't, I think, matter when we discuss the speculations being put forward.

So maybe you should be attempting to learn something rather than win agruments.It is a great opportunity. The folks are very good to lend their expertise.

Well, this is the right approach and a rare one. It seems most of the creationists I see want to make outlandish statments about what the various sciences are saying and then "disprove" those. You at least understand that you have to know a lot about the ideas that you wish to argue with.However, it isn't easy. There have been 10,000's of people working for many decades. Many of these are very smart people. They have had other smart people trying to shot their ideas full of holes the whole time. It is extremely difficult to get to know enough to be able to come up with any really telling original arguments.It isn't even easy to learn enough to understand the arguments. If you want to learn and work at it there is a great deal to learn. I sure have a whole bunch to learn and love it.Some with a creationist (YEC especially) bent have really tried to learn and realized that the simple-minded views put forward by the YEC camp are wrong scientifically and bad for belief as well. Do you want to learn that much? Or would you be better not trying?[This message has been edited by NosyNed, 05-25-2003]

{qswithout a shadow of a doubt that[/qs] There is very little that can be known without a shadow of a doubt. Pretty much nothing. Therefore one has to make a judegment on when to go with something in spite of some remaining issues. Ha! Prove it.

For the upty-bejillionth time we did not evolve from the apes. We are their cousins.Try to think about it a bit. Why don't you see if you can come up with an explanation of your own? Don't make statments like this and ask questions which have already been answered over and over.Also we are a lot like our cousins in many, many ways. Your example of dog breeds isn't usually taken as an example of evolution since, as far as I know, no one has demonstrated speciation there. (however, I have a hunch it has occured).How much evolution do you take as having occured? Many creationist web sites accept much more evolutionary differences than there are between us and our primate cousins (without amusingly enough being able to accept that relationship).Do you suggest that only dog breeds have "evolved" or do you accept other things? If nothing else head over to the flood topics and handle the problem of the ark's capacity.

"Ring species"
Yea, that might describe the situation. And on the extremes that gull ring species are they described as separate species or not?

Here's another scenario. I don't have references so take it for what it's worth without.A genetic difference bewteen us and the chimp is that we have fewer chromosomes. When these are examined it is obvious that there was a fusion of their's to produce ours.When I first heard this I wondered how it could possibly result in something which could breed with the original population.However, I was forgetting that the genes can be read out whereever the chromosome boundaries are. In addtion, humans have odd thing happen to their chromosomes now. These produce various defects but not all fatal. And these individuals can apparaently breed with the typical humans.The idea is that some fused chromosome individual occured in a population after we separated (or at the time) from main primate branch. The indiduals could still breed with the main population though. Over time some of these fused individuals either within the population or geographically isolated acquired enough mutations to no longer be able to breed back and had speciated.Interesting. No?

If a geographic rings species has different species on the ends then dogs might be a size "ring" species. We need a dog breeder (hmmm I know one i might ask) to see if the experiment has been done.I shudder to think about it.

But can't gene flow occur in the chain of gull ring species? That was why I wanted to know if they are called separate species at the extreme ends.I don't see why the same reasoning can't be applied to dogs. Also I would count "in the wild" as just left to themselves without artificial insemination. Makes sense?