What convinced you of Evolution?

I haven't read this thread yet, but I wanted to answer the question posed in the title: "What convinced you of evolution."I also want to avoid the question: "So, what convinced you of evolution over any other religion?" as stated in the OP. Before I believed in evolution I was an avid, radical, committed Christian. My wife wore a head covering, even though we had no friends or church associates who did the same, and God was the focus of our lives. After I become convinced of evolution, my religion stayed exactly the same.Okay, that out of the way, what convinced me of evolution was several things. In order of priority:1. The behavior of creationists
2. The behavior of God
3. The behavior of evolutionistsCreationists lied, misrepresented, misquoted, slandered, falsely accused, and in every other way displayed the behavior of people who were wrong and caught in their error.God, as far as I can tell, has always transformed people in small steps. The apostles did not become apostles in a day, but it took time. There were no leaders in the church except the apostles for probably around eight years until "the seven" were appointed, and all the other leaders (prophets, elders, etc.) showed up bit by bit. Each had first to be transformed (evolve) until they were capable apostles, prophets, elders, etc. The method of spiritual evolution is trials, tribulations, and suffering. The tough survive and grow; those who are not tough, perish spiritually. Since God seemed to work by evolution and selection in spiritual matters, it seemed likely he would work that way in natural matters.Evolutionists addressed questions honestly and looked at all the evidence; quite the opposite of creationists. In every way they acted like honest people trying to find out the truth.Of course, the evidence evolutionists provided helped a lot. For example, creationists had plenty of stories and accusations about Donald Johansen's discovery of "Lucy" and especially of the A. afarensis knee he found. Evolutionists, on the other hand, gave me links to news stories explaining the whole story, as well as links to creationist claims and evolutionist answers. Creationists never provide you links to anything except their own claims.

Why thank you. I've been, and still am, very busy, so I don't know that I'll be around much even now. A lot of the busy-ness is fun, but it consumes time, anyway.

>>I believe that the bible is literal, and that TOE, Young earth Creo, and Theistic evo, are all correct in part.<<What the heck does this mean? If the Bible is literal, then the earth was created in seven days and there was a worldwide flood that killed almost all life except two or seven of each animal (species? genus?). If theistic evolution is correct, then that didn't happen. Those things are mutually exclusive.It's nice to "just believe," if you don't look at what believing means. When literal Biblicists are forced to look at what they're really saying when they say the Bible is literal, then they're forced to postulate ridiculous things, like all cats (tigers, lions, European wildcats, ocelots, etc.) on earth evolving in 4000 years from the two cats that Noah had room for on the ark. They are also forced to postulate an incredible migration from Australia to the middle east for animals like the kangaroo, wallabee, and duck-billed platypus, and then a migration back to Australia, in which they left no progeny behind on any of the continents they crossed to get there (which they did by either swimming, I guess, which I didn't know kangaroos were that good at, or by taking an ocean-liner, probably one from Atlantis before it sunk).In my opinion, you can only believe what you describe if you don't think or work very hard. Those beliefs are only possible on a most superficial level.

You statement about Tom and Bob is the perfect example of every creationist's problem. There are almost no exceptions.An evolutionist (as you can see from the replies you got) would always look at your example and say, there's a lot more information available, let's include it, and what information we don't have, let's look for.A creationist does what you did. He makes assumptions based on the little evidence you described, and then assumes that's what everyone else is doing, too.Did the flood lay those fossils down in the Sudan? Did the flood happen? How did those bones get there? Do we have any information? Do we have other skeletons to compare the bones and skull with so we can tell whether they go together? Do the three pieces match up into a complete skull?Evolutionists ask those questions and use evidence to answer those questions. The chain of evidence and questions goes on for 150 years, all the way back to Darwin (and, in fact, to long before Darwin), and the answers paint an exciting, awesome picture of a world and a universe that are incomprehensibly ancient and always changing. It's absolutely breathtaking.Creationists, of course, ignore those questions and the whole 150 years (and more) of answers to those questions, stare at the bones in the sand, and say, "Based on what I see under my nose this second, a lot of conclusions could be drawn, and mine is as good as yours, nyah na nyah nyah na na."That's why I'm not a YEC, anymore, and that's why nobody likes YEC's.