Where is the evidence for evolution?

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Percy:
Mutation is the source of new information, and natural selection is the pruning mechanism that decides which mutations pass on to the next generation.

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Sonnikke:
Gee, if I didn't know any better, I would say that it sounds an awful lot like INTELLIGENCE that which you are describing.
Words like "source", "pruning mechanism" and "decides"....doesn't sound like a random un-guided naturalistic accidental phenomenon to me...

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Sonnikke needs to get some clues. A LOT of clues.Charles Darwin's great conceptual breakthrough was to recognize that attempts to survive and reproduce are just like what a selective breeder does. And survival and reproduction are NOT completely random. In fact, they often have a strong nonrandom component.Thus, a bacterium in an antibiotic-laced environment will have an easier time surviving if it is resistant to that antibiotic. Thus, the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains. Or does that bacterium have a Fairy Godmother who carefully engineers its antibiotic resistance?Looking further, we notice:Grass has phytoliths, silica particles that grind down the teeth of grass-eaters.Deer have big molars to grind up grass, and fermentation-vat stomachs to digest it.Deer can run fast to escape wolves, and their eyes and ears point sort-of sideways, because wolves can come from any direction.Wolves can run fast to catch deer, and their eyes and ears point forward, because that is the body-relative direction that they travel to approach deer.Wolves scratch themselves to rid themselves of fleas.Fleas have mouthparts that can penetrate wolf skin, enabling them to drink wolf blood.It would seem that grass, deer, wolves, and fleas have separate Fairy Godmothers, who like to sic their creations on each other.The grass one thinks "Be hard to eat!"
The deer one thinks "Eat grass and escape wolves!"
The wolf one thinks "Catch deer and get rid of fleas!"
The flea one thinks "Drink blood!"However, predator-prey and parasite-host relationships easily fit into the Darwinian paradigm, a paradigm of "genetic selfishness". Self-sacrificing Shmoo-like organisms simply do not exist in nature, and Darwinism provides a straightforward explanation for that.

Sonnikke seems to define "information" as some measure of functionality. But gain of this type of "information" has often been observed, in the form of bacteria acquring new metabolic capabilities, like being able to eat nylon oligomers.Except of course if these nylon-eating bugs' had an ancestor who had a fairy godmother who thought about itPoor thing! All this nylon and you can't eat it? I must give you the ability to eat it.Also, I am a computer programmer, which makes me an intelligent designer. Even though I am far from omnipotent, far from omniscient, and I will concede far from completely benevolent, I do have some ability to distinguish good from bad design.[This message has been edited by lpetrich, 02-05-2003]

As to whether or not mathematics is a science, that is a matter of definition. Mathematics is, however, not an empirical science, which is what many of you people seem to mean by "science".sonnikke:
....your whole ToE idea is based on life being in existence, one would think HOW life got there in the first place should also be explained by ToE. Why has the Miller-Urey (failed) experiment been propagated for so many years in biology textbooks under evolution, if it has NOTHING to do with it.The famous Urey-Miller experiments were the first of many prebiotic-chemistry experiments; a search with PubMed reveals a big literature on such experiments. Organic compounds are easy to produce from simple starting materials, like water, ammonia, carbon dioxide, methane, hydrogen, etc., provided that the starting materials are sufficiently reducing (tending to donate rather than accept electrons; opposed to oxidizing).In fact, I have personally known someone who had done simulations of the atmosphere of Saturn's satellite Titan -- the experiments would produce a reddish-brown goo. And Titan has reddish-brown clouds!Although no new organisms have emerged from such experiments, I don't consider that a big disaster. The experiments have gone part of the way.blanko:
... I was simply trying to point out that evolution scientist are so biased and closed minded to the idea of intelligent design, that evolution should now be considered more of a treasure hunt than a search for truth. Evolutionists hold dear to any evidence they might be able to somehow fit into their bias and discard any alternative evidence as a failure."Let whoever has committed no sin throw the first stone." Guess who said that.(blanko's quotebook selections snipped)compmage:
Life could have been zapped into existence, arrived through a dimentional rift, or came about via abiogenisis. Science doesn't care, as long as that life doesn't replicate perfectly evolution proceeds naturally.
blanko:
Science or science fiction? and you object to mathematics as being called science?Blanko, how are such "science-fictional" notions any more absurd than your personal beliefs?(a lot of stuff on the improbability of a protein forming with only one handedness from a racemic (both-handedness) mixture...)How molecular-level handedness got started is, I will concede, a mystery. My pet theory is that different handednesses tend to interfere with each other, causing a selection for being only one handedness -- something like a coin balanced on its side that tips over in either its heads or its tails direction.

Sonnikke:
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that evo's would say that math isn't a science,I think that it's all a question of what qualifies as "science". I think that mathematics qualifies, though it is not an empirical science.I mean, you defend worse ideas than that.
eg.MacroevolutionWherever Sonnikke thinks that "microevolution" ends and "macroevolution" begins.Abiogenesis (some of you)True, it may seem like a big jump to the first living thing, but there has been some interesting progress in that field, like attempts to reconstruct the evolution of life before the most recent common ancestor of all existing life.Beneficial mutationsThey happen all the time. I wonder why Sonnikke is so sure that they cannot happen.That we are an odd African apeI wonder how Sonnikke explains our anatomical, genetic, and behavioral resemblances to chimps.Yes, behavioral resemblances.Though chimps do not have full-scale language comparable to human language, they can nevertheless manufacture tools, have different traditions of which tools to make, do some mental modeling of their environment, and recognize themselves in mirrors -- features present in few other species.