Do you believe in evolution?

No,a lot of people including myself and a lot of scientists don't believe in evolution. Darwin's theory of evolution hasn't been proven,in fact most evidence proves otherwise.I don't see how anyone could believe in evolution.There isn't enough evidence to support it.

>Science itself refutes Darwinism.
•According to the theory of evolution, at some time in the distant past there was no life in the universe -- just elements and chemical compounds. Somehow, these chemicals combined and came to life.

•However, scientists don't really know how life came to be. Even Stanley Miller, whose experiments are cited in most biology text books, says that the origin of life is still unknown. The idea that dead material can come to life all by itself is not consistent with scientific observation.

•The leading mathematicians in the century met with some evolutionary biologists and confronted them with the fact that, according to mathematical statistics, the probabilities for a cell or a protein molecule coming into existence were nil. They even constructed a model on a large computer and tried to figure out the possibilities of such a cell ever happening. The result was zero possibility! - Wistar Institute

•Professor Edwin Conklin observed, "The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the Unabridged Dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop."

•Under normal circumstances, creatures give birth to the same kind of creatures. It is established scientific fact that like begets like. On rare instances, the DNA in an embryo is damaged, resulting in a mutant child that differs in some respect from its parent. Although a few mutations have been scientifically observed that are beneficial, most mutations produce inferior offspring. For the theory of evolution to be true, there must be a fantastic number of creative mutations that produce new kinds of offspring which are better suited for survival, and therefore are favored by natural selection.

•Darwinists claim that the reptile-to-mammal evolution is well documented. But for reptiles to evolve into mammals at least some of these transformations must have happened:
• Scales had to have mutated into hair.
• Breasts had to have evolved from nothing.
• Externally laid eggs had to evolve into soft-shelled eggs that were nourished by an umbilical cord and placenta in a womb.

•It has never been observed in any laboratory that mutations can cause one species to turn into another. Despite this, evolutionists believe that given enough time, some animals will eventually evolve into other creatures.

•Evolutionists claim that although we have not actually observed these things happening, that does not mean that they are impossible. They say it simply means they are extremely improbable. Evolutionists think the world has been around long enough for all these highly improbable things to happen.

•Sir Fred Hoyle, of Cambridge University stated that statistically the chances of one cell evolving was the same as a tornado passing through a junkyard and giving you a fully functional Boeing 747.
http://www.straight-talk.net/evolution/arguments.shtml

•Scientific evidence casts serious doubts on the theory of evolution, for example:

•The Fossil Record (Updated 3 July, 2005)
http://www.straight-talk.net/evolution/fossil.htm

•Living "Fossils"
http://www.straight-talk.net/evolution/living.htm

•The Cambrian Explosion
http://www.straight-talk.net/evolution/explosion.htm

•New T.Rex Discoveries (Updated 10 June, 2005)
http://www.straight-talk.net/evolution/t-rex.htm

•"Missing Links"
http://www.straight-talk.net/evolution/misslinks.htm

>MISSING LINKS:
All of the "missing links" on this page are examples of poor anthropology being used in an attempt to convince the public that God does not exist. Unfortunately, this rush to judgment is a consistent and erroneous theme of the evolutionary science community. The only thing missing from their studies was thorough research.

•NEANDERTHAL MAN: When this prehistoric man was first discovered, only part of an arm was recovered. Yet, the scientific community fabricated an entire ancient society around an arm bone. Scientists have since found quite a few Neanderthals and after careful study have concluded that these ancestors were regular humans with bone disease, probably rickets.

•PILTDOWN MAN: For more than 50 years we were led to believe that this ancient creature was another supposed ancestor of modern man. Two scientists eventually took a closer look and found out that Piltdown man was a fraud. This invented creature was a composite of the jawbone of an orangutan and the skull of a small child. The original "discoverers " had stained these bone fragments to gain recognition and promote the falsehood of evolution.

•NEBRASKA MAN: One ancient tooth was discovered in Nebraska. Eager evolutionists built a whole
imaginary society and lifestyle around this single tooth! When they found the rest of the skull some two years later, it was clear that the tooth belonged to a pig. For many years, evolutionists described Nebraska Man as a missing link.

•JAVA MAN: This prehistoric man was found on the island of Java and was reported to be the missing link between man and ape. After serious study it was found that the two pieces of Java Man were from two different skulls from two different areas of the island. Both were from the same species, probably an Orangutan, but they were not the parts of a man. Recent human skulls have now been discovered in the same layer of rock.

•PEKING MAN: This manlike creature was found in China during the early part of this century. No other scientists have directly observed this site and it has not actually been seen in more than 50 years. All of the examples of Peking Man were reported to have the back of their skulls smashed in, exactly matching the result when people of that region hunt for monkey brains. Also, modern human remains were found at the same site.

•LUCY: Lucy is the latest find that has been almost universally accepted as mankind's ancestor.
Lucy is an Australopithecus, that is actually more like a monkey than man. When the bones were studied by spectrograph, they were found to match a chimpanzee, rather than a man. Lucy too, is a mosaic, with bones assembled from different locations.

•LAETOLI FOOTPRINTS: These footprints were found in the same strata as the Lucy bones. Evolutionary scientists have said that Lucy-like animals made these, but a podiatrist concluded they are modern human footprints. It appears that Lucy is not an ancestor of modern man, but simply a monkey.

•KENYA SKULL: Recently it was reported that scientists had discovered a fossil of a skull in Kenya that evolutionists claim has more human-like features than "Lucy." This means that evolutionary scientists must once again revise their theory of man's origin. Ken Ham, Executive Director of Answers in Genesis says that the newly discovered fossil - which he says is nothing more than the skull of a chimpanzee - only pokes more holes in the argument for evolution.

•ARCHAEOPTERXY: Originally thought of as a transitional fossil between the reptiles and birds, it is now considered by most evolutionists to be a true bird. Also true birds have been found lower in the fossil record, making them older than Archaeopteryx.

Chinese paleontologist Xu Xing contends that Archaeopteryx is a combination of two fossils: one of the body and head of a birdlike creature and the other of the tail of a dinosaur. Xing says he has found another fossil, in a private collection in China, that contains the mirror image of the supposed tail of the Archaeoraptor. National Geographic published a note in its March 2000 issue saying that CT scans of the fossil appear to confirm Xing's observations and "revealed anomalies in the fossil's reconstruction."

To sum it up, here is what Dr. Austin Clark, a leading biologist of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington has to day about the subject: "No matter how far back we go in the fossil record of previous animal life on earth, we find no trace of any animal forms which are intermediate between the major groups of phyla. Scientists have sometimes come up with a few things that they have elected as candidates as transitions, but on a later closer examination these have been seen to be misinterpretations. There are no such things as missing links. ... Missing links are misinterpretations."

>The Fossil Record
Darwin believed that the fossil record would reveal thousands or millions of life forms which would demonstrate a gradual change from one kind to another (called transitional forms).

But the fossil record has been against the Darwinian theory from the very beginning. It's true that different kinds of organisms lived on the earth at different times. But what is not seen in the fossil record is the steady progressive change of one kind of thing into something completely different. Instead, if something new shows up in the rocks, it shows up all at once and fully formed, and then it stays the same.

If evolution means the steady progressive change of one kind of thing into something completely different, then the fossil record contradicts evolution.

Given the absence of transitional forms in the fossil record, evolutionists quietly acknowledge this is still a "research issue".

There is virtually nothing in the fossil record that can be used as evidence of a transitional life form When apparent examples of useful mutations are examined thoroughly, it becomes clear that no transitional creatures exist anywhere in the fossil record.

John Bonner, a biologist at Princeton, writes that traditional textbook discussions of ancestral descent are "a festering mass of unsupported assertions." In recent years, paleontologists have retreated from simple connect-the-dot scenarios linking earlier and later species. Instead of ladders, they now talk of bushes. What we see in the fossils, according to this view, are only the twigs, the final end-products of evolution, while the key transitional forms which would give a clue about the origin of major animal groups remain completely hidden.

The blank spots on evolutionary "tree" charts occur at just the points where, according to Darwin's theory, the crucial changes had to take place. The direct ancestors of all the major orders: primates, carnivores, and so forth are completely missing. There is no fossil evidence for a "grandparent" of the monkey, for example. "Modern gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees spring out of nowhere," writes paleontologist Donald Johansen. "They are here today; they have no yesterday." The same is true of giraffes, elephants, wolves, and all species; they all simply burst upon the scene de novo [anew], as it were.

So many questions arise in the study of fossils (paleontology) that even many evolutionary paleontologists put little stock in the fossil record. Basing one's belief in evolution on the shaky ground of paleontology can scarcely be considered scientific.

"We are about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time." - Dr. David M. Raup, Curator of Geology, Museum of Natural History, Chicago

The fossil record is often so sparse that . . . there are numerous cases where groups survived for tens of millions of years without leaving a single fossil.

The lack of the hypothesized intermediates between one species and another is a significant criticism of Darwinism. If land animals truly came from sea creatures, there should be ample evidence of this, such as fossils of fish with their fins turning into legs. Darwin wrote in his Origin of Species that "innumerable transitional forms must have existed." The predicted large numbers of fossil intermediate forms have never been found.

It's not a matter of belief, but of scientific inquiry and rational thought.

Science is not about finding a single piece of evidence to conclusively prove a theory. It's about constructing theories to fit the existing evidence and gathering new evidence that supports or refutes existing theories. Evolution is supported by a preponderance of evidence. While no one point conclusively proves it, when all the evidence is considered in the context of existing scientific knowledge evolution is a well substantiated theory. Intelligent design is not. What follows are brief explanations of some of the evidence that supports the theory of evolution.

1. Vestigial structures

One example of a vestigial structure in humans is the appendix. It has no function. Removing it is harmful only in so far as any surgery is associated with certain risks (so I wouldn't have it removed just for fun, but it's because of the surgery not the absence of the appendix). An appendix is found in several mammals. In humans it is small and has no known function. In rabbits and many other herbivores it is large and is used in the digestion of cellulose.

Another example of a vestigial structure is the hipbones of snakes. Snakes evolved from quadrupeds, and some species still retain not on pelvises, but tiny protrusions of bone in a location that corresponds to the location of the legs in other quadrupeds.

2. Microevolution can be observed in both a controlled laboratory setting and in nature.

Creationists will tell you that microevolution does not prove macroevolution. This is true. However, it does provide evidence that macroevolution may be possible. Taken in the context of the other evidence for evolution, microevolution provides a mechanism by which macroevolution could occur. On its own, it doesn't prove that macroevolution occurs, but it does suggest that it is possible.

3. The fossil record.

Although the fossil record does not provide a “complete” record as fossils form only under certain conditions, it does show a gradual change in the morphology of species as well as numerous extinct species. There are a number of methods used to date fossils, and the time period from which a fossil comes can be determined with reasonable accuracy.

4. Imperfect structures (the blind spot of the mammalian eye, for example).

I want to mention the bind-spot of the mammalian eye specifically because creationists often hold up the human eye up as an example of something that is too perfect to occur by "chance" (i.e. as the result of the natural selection of beneficial changes among random mutations).

There are also numerous examples where the morphology of a species is constrained by similar patterns in its ancestors (quadrupeds, vertebrates, etc.).

5. Developmental biology reflects evolutionary lineage.

Creationists like to bring up a man named Haeckel in response to this argument. Haeckel suggested that development reflects evolutionary origin. It was later discovered that several of the sketches he used as evidence over-exaggerated certain features, and some were of different embryos all together. However, many of his sketches do accurately reflect the morphology of the embryo. Haeckel's methods were sometimes wrong and his ethics were poor, but it just so happens that his theory turned out to be fairly accurate.

Any developmental biologist can tell you that embryos of related species show similar morphology in the early stages of development. The point at which their development begins to diverge shows a strong correlation with the relative point at which the evolution of the two species diverged. Human embryos look similar to chimpanzee embryos for a lot longer than they look similar to cat embryos, but all three develop similar structures in the early stages of development. The early embryos of humans, chimps, and cats are similar to each other but quite different from, say, a sea urchin embryo. This is based on photographs of actual embryos taken by respectable scientists, NOT on Haeckel's drawings.

I find it rather funny that creationists try to argue that because one scientist was a fraud we should disregard all of developmental biology.

6. Genetic analysis shows similarities among species reflecting evolutionary origins.

The main point here is that recent work has shown that the extent of genetic divergence among species is consistent with the expected separation based on the fossil record and morphological evidence. This supports the conclusions drawn from the other evidence.

Genetic analysis often reveals remnants of a gene that is functional in one species but not another (i.e. a mutation occurred that made the gene non-functional, but most of the sequence is still intact). Why would God have created non-functional sequences that are extremely similar to functional genes found in related species?

Also, non-coding regions of DNA show degrees of similarity that are consistent with the expected degree of evolutionary divergence. I understand how you could argue that God was essentially working form a common genetic template for all species, but why change the non-coding regions? These differences result from mutations that do not affect the phenotype of the species in any way but accumulate over time. Non-coding regions show sequences that are conserved with changes, and the number of changes is consistent with the number of mutations that would be expected to have occurred since the approximate time of existence of most recent common ancestor.

7. Homologous structures.

Homologous structures are structures that typically have similar morphological features and, often, similar functions, and are the result of evolutionary change of a single structure present in the most recent common ancestor of the two species. A homoplastic structure is one that may have a similar function and superficial appearance to another structure but is the result of convergent evolution (i.e. it was not present in the most recent common ancestry).

The most obvious examples of homoplastic structures are things like a human's hand and a gorilla's hand. A more subtle example is the human hand and the bat wing. Although the two structures clearly serve different functions, their bone structures are nearly identical. This is because the bat wing is a modified mammalian forelimb. In other word, the most recent common ancestor of the human and the bat was a mammal that had a forelimb with a bone structure similar to that of the modern human hand and other mammalian forelimbs. In humans this forelimb became the hand. In bats it became the wing.

An interesting example of homoplastic structures is the bird wing and the bat wing. Although the two structures clearly serve similar functions (i.e. flying), they are anatomically quite different. They have quite different bone structures and operate according to different mechanical mechanisms. In fact, the bat wing is structurally more similar to human hand than the bird wing. Incidentally, the bird and bat wings are homoplastic as wings but homologous as forelimbs.

That is just one example. The animal kingdom is littered with examples of structures that serve different functions but have extremely similar morphological traits, and structures that serve similar functions but show clear evidence of distinct evolutionary origin.

8. Many cellular and biochemical processes are conserved in a variety of species.

The point here is that virtually all cells utilize similar mechanisms of DNA replication and protein synthesis, share certain respiration pathways, and other biochemical processes. Related species show more similarities. For example, all plants are capable of photosynthesis, and utilize a virtually identical biochemical pathway to accomplish this. If you study cell biology you will find numerous examples of pathways that are common to different types of cells. I'm not going to go into this more here as it requires considerable background in cell biology. However, these biochemical similarities support they theory that all cells share a common ancestor.

9. Vestigial biochemical pathways (for example, pancreatic cells are light-sensitive even though they are located deep inside the body).

These are similar to vestigial structures at the cellular level. The specific example I mentioned is the light-sensitive behavior of pancreatic cells. Basically, the pancreas is located inside the body and will never be exposed to light. However, pancreatic cells grown in vitro (i.e. in a Petri dish, test tube, etc.) demonstrate light-sensitive activation of biochemical pathways similar to that seen in the cells that form the retina. There is no reason for this behavior unless this pathway is a remnant (i.e. a vestigial pathway) of a pathway present in an ancestral cell that did have come in contact with light.

There are many other examples of vestigial biochemical pathways. Like vestigial structures, their existence is easily explained by evolution but makes no sense in the context of creationism or "intelligent design."

For more information, see the following links:
http://www.txtwriter.com/backgrounders/Evolution/EVpage16.html
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/lines/index.shtml
http://fermat.nap.edu/html/creationism/evidence.html
Or just do a google search for something like “evidence of evolution,” or check your local library.