I am certainly not much of an intellectual, but to me, these arguments make no sense.

From a religious point of view, who cares, I hope that the Theory of Evolution is proved..I have certainly not read every line of the Bible, but I do not believe there is a line in the bible that says.

a. if in 6 thousand years a theory of evolution is proved, you can completely disregard everything else in here.

or

b. if in 6 thousand years, if you feel compelled to believe in Evolution then you can no longer be a Christian.

I am just not sure why these two things have become so mutually exclusive...I mean from a Religious perspective anyway, certainly I understand why Atheists and the others want this, because apparently their goal is to destroy religion, as I have read many comments on here saying everything bad comes from Religion..and even in this article, Hitchens is surprised that the people he is debating are nice, often intelligent, etc...

Sure, I do not believe in Evolution (at this point), outside of some ridiculously small insignificant findings there is just nothing there to support HUMAN origin..I guess I just think, again in my simple view, that if all this was just a result of some simple random mutations, the Great scientist, such as Hitchens, would be able to recreate that. I mean we have the end results, Humans, Apes, etc...I mean to invent a Computer, or Car, or Airplane, we had to start from scratch..imagine if a scientist just discovered a Plane fully built....that would be nice, right, and it would be easy to deconstruct/rebuild..but that is what we have and yet our Great minds in Evolutionary science can come up with, what a moth or whatever?

I guess until, the theory of evolution has something more concrete then..."Here is an Ape, Here is a human, can you see the similarites...that means Evolution exists"..oh sure it is more complex then that, I guess, but there is SHOCKINGLY little to get your hands around with Evolution outside of the sniff test of "I can certainly see a similarity between humans and apes, especially as compared to say a horse and a human".

However, I would love to have something more, such as watching a snail "randomly" morph into a Dinosaur...now that would be a start....now before I get all these "scientist" come on here and give me millions of links and "evidence" and all that, I will read it all for sure, but remember, I am not against evolution, if some day there is somehting more compelling there, I will welcome it into the fine family of other theories which I support, relativity (currently), gravity, etc...and I will still be a Christian, since I do not see anything in the Bible that says it could not have happend...and in fact the way my mind works I kind of believe God might have used some tools/rules to do his thang. I mean when I bake me some cookies, I don't just turn on the oven and a few minutes later cookies pop out..somebody had to grow the wheat and the cocoa and then harvest them, etc...tons of steps which happen long before the cookie is ever even thought of, and so I have no problem thinking God created a little squirrel and thought, cool, now hmm, I wonder if I did pretty much the same thing I just did with the squirrel but, change it up a little bit what would happen..and eventually he ends up with a human. I mean I think Scientists of all people would get this, since this is the way THEY actually do things.

Now what would contradict my beliefs and what Hitchens should be trying to prove, if his goal is to destroy Religion...is there is no God...sure you might say, well why don't you prove there is a God..well I am not selling "Science", I am just a religious nut, remember, this is not a religion for you, you have proof.

You really, truly, don't understand evolution. A snail morphing into a dinosaur isn't evolution; it's magic. Evolution as we understand it is the result of generations upon generations of mutations being passed and recombined. Believing in evolution doesn't require that you accept anything particularly controversial. All you need is: (1) genetic change (mutations, recombinations through sexual reproduction, etc.); and (2) heritability. Both of these axiomatic principles are well-proven. And the conclusion from these two principles is essentially inevitable: if DNA can change, and if this change is heritable, then changes ought to accumulate in species through successive generations. That's all evolution is. The only other thing you would learn in a basic class on evolution would be more details on genetics and the basic mechanisms for selection (i.e., the manner in which certain mutations increase in frequency in a given population).

There are thousands or hundreds of thousands of examples of evolution in the fossil record, and human evolution is no exception. But you seem to think that the only acceptable proof of evolution would be the reproduction of full human evolution in a lab setting. If anything, an experiment showing quick or spontaneous human transformation from another species would rebut evolution -- not prove it. Given the rate of DNA mutations, generation times, and the likelihood that most such mutations are not beneficial or not selected for other reasons, it would be absolutely baffling if we saw such drastic change in a complex life form within one, several, hundreds, or even thousands of generations.

As a matter of fact, many or most modern scientific discoveries concerning complex matters are not made in a lab. Nature is simply not scaleable. Accordingly, asking for a laboratory demonstration of evolution is kind of like asking for a laboratory demonstration of tectonic plate movements. Only someone who knows literally nothing about tectonic plates would even ask for something so preposterous.

On second thought, replace my example of "plate tectonics" with general relativity, which you allege to support. General relativity is a perfect example of non-scaleability. You can't prove it in a lab, and every evidence in support of the theory of GR has come from observations of larger phenomena occuring outside of a laboratory setting. If anything, evolution has more lab-based evidence on its side (you can easily induce mutations in a lab and observe heritability and selection mechanisms in organisms with small generation times).

Actually, a perfect example of evolution in action is the Flu Virus.

And scientists use bacteria, viruses, and fruit flies in the lab to test inhertiability of certain genes (which, hey! Is evolution......)

Even the most fundamental Christian groups accept microevolution, inheritability of genetic mutation as you're describing it has, yes, been observed in repeatable scientific experiments. The real question is about whether this can be extrapolated to the origin of life.

A second question would be whether the accumulation of genetic mutation is of the character that gives rise to new biological systems (vertebral, vascular, pulmonary, nervous, auditory, optical...) or fundamental special shift. This question depends also on agreeing on an earth age, though. Even the most militant advocate of evolution would not claim much aggregative mutation in under 6,000 years.

What is the flu virus evolving into...a dog, or how about a cute little kitten, that would be cool...oh just another flu virus.

Listen, anyway the point is not for me to debate micro-evolution, or natural selection in flu viruses..because it just doesn't really matter, I will leave that science to people far more intelligent that I.

While, all these things are very interesting and perfectly fantastic...but it still takes a gigantic leap of faith to link this to the orgin of Human life...which as I said earlier, even if this were done, it would still not contratict anything in the Bible..that I know of. Again, though different strains of flu virus just simply does nothing to cause my to reconsider my faith, and I do not imagine it would cause anybody too.

Honestly, other then using Religion to gain traction in the mainstream there is no reason for Evolutionist to care to even debate religious gurus, since evolution is not a replacement for organized religion...well at least the actual science part of it is not..but the evolutionist band together like, well really just like it is a religion. Let's face it evolutionist just have to be right, they must debate you on it, must get invited to Jerry Fallwells house and indoctrinate you, they must save you from your own stupidity, simply impossible to imagine letting people die not knowing.....hmm..interesting. I guess, outside the obvious reason I just mentioned, it is increasingly curious that evolutionist are debating theologist.

Organized religions need to stop the entire "evolution" debate..they are lending thousands of years of credible history and billions of ears to something which in it's current manifestation has no impact on the validity of religion. So organized religions acting like it does, actually makes people think that it does...and it does not.

Although, I would still love to see the hundreds of thousands of records which prove human evolution...again let's remember, to me, showing 1 bone from one species and another similar bone from another species does not really answer many questions to me, given that even the most militant advocate of evolution would agree that that one single step would take millions of years to have actually even been possible. Again I am not ruling out that there could be a link between the bones, and in fact I am quite sure that there is, however it does not in any way shape or form disprove a creator.

Foobar,

Evolution doesn't propose an answer to the origin of life. Also, there is no distinction between microevolution and macroevolution. Those are words made up by anti-evolutionists, but they have no meaning to the theory of evolution. After all, "macroevolution" is nothing more than a series of small steps -- so called "microevolution" -- and so beleiving in one without the other is kind of like beleiving that 1+1 = 2, but 1+1+1 does not equal 3. Speciation, which is what I think you mean by "special shift," arises when two populations become sufficiently distinct that they can't or won't breed. One could theoretically induce a single or small series of mutations in DNA encoding for acrosomes and zona pellucida to create two populations that can't breed. By your account, this would be both "microevolution" (single mutations) and speciation ("macroevolution"?). A thousand generations later, simple statistics would predict that each poplation would accumulate drastically different mutations.

Regarding the age of the Earth, this is a not an open question (at least as to whether Earth is older than 6,000 years). Aside from the numerous dating methods described here <link>, the fact that we are able to view stars more distant than 6,000 light years away is sufficient evidence that the biblical age of the universe is wrong.

themattin,

One bone, eh? If that were all the evidence that evolution had, I suppose you'd be on to something. But it seems you've ignored everything ever written about genetics. As noted above, simply believing in any heritable mutation leads to the conclusion that massive changes can (and should) occur over large numbers of generations. Microevolution is macroevolution, if you must use those words.

As for why we insist on debating, scientists and their supporters wouldn't need to debate these matters if religious folk didn't constantly try to dictate the terms of scientific instruction and research. Moreover, some of us would like to see our country succeed in the sciences. If you can't understand genetics and why basic genetic concepts predict evolution, then you're not going to be of much use in a lab or in the field for some of the most quickly growing and essential biological disciplines. Moreover, if we start simply answering every difficult scientific question with one word ("God!"), we as a society will become complacent in any number of fields. By all accounts, we are already becoming complacent.

I'm not saying that you can't believe in God. That's fine. And as I've said, evolution has nothing to say about the origin of life. It also has nothing to say about the meaning of life. But as to human origin, the DNA of humans is remarkably similar to that of other primates and vertebrates. Assuming a certain frequency of mutations, the DNA variance between us and our closest evolutionary relatives is very much in line with statistics. Thus, we know that these mutations and recombination occurs; we know that they're heritable; and we know that our DNA looks pretty much like a variation of the DNA of our closest evolutionary relatives, as we would expect given a certain rate of mutations. Why is this so controversial? No one is asking you to accept that a virus can mutate into a puppy before your eye (as stated above, this would contradict -- not support -- current evolutionary theory).

Well I guess the reason religion got envolved was because of the schools. I am not sure what the teach now, but when I was taught bio, it was called the "origins of life" and we were taught that we evolved from primates and eventually molecules, and that was a fact.....I am actually have no problem with teaching theories of evolution in the schools and yes I realize that my earlier posts have been has intellictually dishonest (although I was trying to be sarcastic..failed attempt) about evolution as the material was that I was taught in school..and I really do not care about intelligent design or creationism being taught in the schools, I am fine with leaving that in the churchs and in the homes..but I am not fine with science being used as a tool to try to drive religion out of society...ESPECIALLY when it is junk science as the garbage that I was taught in school was.

If evolution were found to be the origin of man, I would have no problem with the church then complementating what I learned in school...but come on evolution is given entirely to prominent a seat at the table right now.....it is interesting, but there are more questions then answers..and as you admit, it requires large amount of "logically assuming"...and I would say as an earlier poster mentioned...I do think that our scientist should relatively easily create an environment which can mimmic thousands of years in short periods of time...car companies do this stuff all the time with testing wear and tear on seats and rust and etc....now obviously they don't care about thousands of years, but our evolutionary scientist do.

I mean it would not take thousands of years to instantantly create an amino acid or a protien or whatever..I know there has been some work on this....I mean seriously how hard could this be.....I am supposed to believe everything happend spontaneously/randomly and instantly and we can't 100's of millions of years later we can not even recreate the first step, and again this is working backwards because you know what you need to end up with...throw some of the pieces together in a lab and hit it with some electricty...that would be a start...then pretty quickly you should be able to see it starting to replicate..etc...

I understand it is convienent for scientist to hide behind the "complexity" and "duration" shield as an excuse..but come on that is pretty weak, i mean given all the time in the world an impossibly complex system is just not going to spontaneously form, you know that.

While, many evolutionist believe, and I was taught in school that this all happened randomly and by chance...well again we know what the first steps were...so let's make them happen....I mean come on millions of years later labs/computers/brilliant scientist AND most importantly it is not random..you know what you need...so I would really would love to see the build blocks spontaneously combusted and then spontaneously starting to form real things...you keep taking micro vs macro..well there you go that is as micro as you get...let's stop talking about micro vs. macro and let's just prove it...once and for all let's end this debate about evolution...I can not imagine anything that would be easier then reproducing a test in which you already know the answers too.

Just a few points, Matt.

Evolution theory, first of all, does not talk about random anything, but rather, species evolving to their changing circumstances over vast periods of time. So the idea is that we came out of blobs in the sea. The blobs were very comfortable there at first. Then something in their environment changed which required them to change over many, many years to accomodate those changes. Or die. And once on land, many, many more changes occurred as the environment required them to change. Or die. And so on and so forth. So, to say that Evolution theory describes a "random" sequence of events that ended up with human beings is actually quite opposite of what it describes. It describes a very consistent chain of events. It is unfortunate that so many people misunderstand Evolution theory.

It is also unfortunate that so many religious people find Evolution theory at odds with a belief in God. Yes, it is at odds with dogma, but God? Evolution seems to in fact do more to substantiate the premise that there is a Creator who knows His creation than Creationism does, which tells us in essence that God simply created the universe in seven days and oila! He washed his hands of it and wished it luck.

I also am very sorry that the concept of Evolution being at odds with Christianity seems to have become so pronounced. Coming from a Catholic upbringing, it is just bizarre to me that science and reason are considered so utterly incompatible with religion and belief in God. I was raised to believe that the process of science and discovery is to further come to know the infinite workings of God. I was raised in Catholic school for 12 years and we were all about science and Evolution. In fact, my high school is considered to have one of the best science programs in the country.

I blame Southern Baptist evangelicals sticking their nose into politics for creating this unfortunate face of Christianity. The evangelicals would have non-Christians believe that Christians sit around obsessing over Creationism vs. Evolution Theory (and gays and so forth). It's just not true. (Hence Hitchens' surprise that not all Christians are sneering monsters praying for his eternal damnation.)

Well at one point I am referring to the big bang....which I don't know I guess I thought it was random..but it really does not matter, in fact if these changes all happen for a reason, that even makes recreating them even easier...in fact that was one of my points of why this is easier for us, because we know if we are ancestors of Apes, we know what changed..so we should be able to redo that pretty easily...we do not have to sit around and wait for something to change we can force those changes..we can "speed up" time.

I also am, perhaps wrongly, referring to the changes as random to mean that nobody really had a plan for Apes to change into humans..it was just random changes....what influenced the changes over time is irrelevant....there was simply no plan that had humans as the end game....hence in the big picture we randomly developed.....however, if it is not random, then perhaps you can tell me what the next steps will be. Interesting, I guess this is just science, so it should be predictable, right?

I think this human concern with humanity is, well, very human of us. Of course we're going to think we're the center of the universe, and don't want to believe that our species is just part of one long continuum rather than a special end in-and-of-itself. That is perhaps the biggest reason why Evolution theory bothers so many people. "You mean, we're no more special than the California condor?" Unfortunately, it is this sense of Man being above all things that has led us to nearly destroy our environment.

Seeing ourselves as tiny bits of stuff in an endless universe is to me what brings us closer to experiencing God in our lives, rather than seeing ourselves as special and separate from the rest of the universe.

To me God's creation was just as grand when humans were monkeys swinging from the trees as it is now, and it will still be just as grand when we've all gone extinct.

I actually disagree with Early Bird. Evolution is somewhat random/probabalistic. We have a sense of generally how mutations, etc. are selected, but each mutation and change is quite random, and even non-advantageous mutations may be passed unto subsequent generations under some circumstances. In any given environment, one could easily imagine a completely different course of events, even though certain trends/probabilities may emerge; these threndsare the basis of natural/sexual selection and genetic. As a general matter, I also take exception to the notion that science is perfectly predictable. At the most fundamental level (quantum mechanics), nature appears to be random, albeit capable of being described as a matter of probability.

Regarding the Big Bang and abiogenesis (the emergence of complex organic chemicals from simpler material -- i.e., the begining of life), these are separate from evolution, which describes a pattern of change in populations of pre-existing organisms.

Regarding your assertion that science should be able to recreate billions of years evolution in a laboratory setting, I once again have to say that you're assertion (or question) makes no sense. Evolution is concerned with the passing of genetic material between generations. A single organism does not evolve; a population does. Therefore, changing a snail or a virus to a puppy wouldn't be evolution; it would be something entirely different. Thus, scientists recreating evolution are necessarily stuck with generation times, which is why most such experiments involve simple life forms with very small generation times. In this setting, scientists are more than capable of reproducing evolution.

Imagine if I asked you to have children, grandchildren, great grand children, great great grand children, ad nauseam (to the millionth generation), in the course of one hour. Would this request make any sense to you? This is quite literally your request to modern evolutionary scientists. Additionally, as the environment has changed drastically over the course of these generations, you're also asking me to recreate millions upon millions of unique Earths (corresponding with different times) to simulate the environment in which these children, grandchildren, etc. acquired and passed on mutations.

Well, I am anything but an expert on Evolution theory, but it does seem to describe the changing of species with an order in mind, for instance, to adapt to different circumstances and all. "Random" to me seems to suggest that there is just a big ball of stuff clacking together in the cosmos and by mere happenstance, without any kind of order whatsoever, the universe as we know it came into existence.

It seems far, far more orderly and intentional than that. Now does "intentional" prove God? Of course not. God can not be proven.

Interestingly enough many atheists such as Fred Hoyle originally rejected the big bang theory because they felt that a beginning implied a cause, thus a creator.