Creation vs. Evolution

[UnoMOTO]

Not necessarily. One of the key assertions of Big Bang theory is that the Universe did have a beginning, as opposed to the Steady State theory which suggests that the Universe 'has always been and always will be'... the physical evidence points to a beginning (i.e. The Big Bang) rather than otherwise. This being the case, it is valid to assert that time too also had a beginning, hence asking what happened before time existed is not a valid question. If time didn't exist, nothing could happen before, during or after - since these are all terms we use to describe moments separated by time itself! The Big Bang was more than just the beginning of the expansion of space, it was also the beginning of time itself.

This has a strangely familiar sound to it. You are so close to the idea of something being created from nothing that you can almost taste it.

We have direct evidence for this too in the form of modern astronomical observations. There is an event horizon beyond which we cannot see, approx. 14 billion light years away (in all directions)... the reason we cannot see anything beyond it is not because there is nothing to see and not because our telescopes are not powerful enough, but because there was a beginning to time itself and objects beyond this event horizon are invisible to us because the universe is not old enough for the light to have reached us from these objects!

Event Horizon.....NO NO NO, that's just the glass on the marble. 👍

 

[Touring Mars]

Sorry Pako, I did edit the post quite a bit after posting it...

You're right though, we do 'appear' to be at the centre of the universe (because of what we can and can't see - i.e. the event horizon) but we know that we are not at the centre because of what we can see i.e. the universe is uniform in all directions (and at all distances) and there is no discernible centre at all...

@ UnoMOTO: Clearly, whichever side of the evolution debate you are on, there is an inescapable fact of the natural (or supernatural) world that we have no choice but to agree on and that is that something clearly did come from nothing - even time itself - but how and why will probably remain a mystery. One thing is for sure though... your guess is as good (or as bad) as mine.

When you say 'something being created from nothing', however, you imply (by using the word 'created') a guiding hand, a designing intellect... for me, there is nothing about the Big Bang (or Evolution for that matter) that justifies this belief. On the contrary, evidence that time does have a beginning is (in my eyes anyway) good evidence against the existence of a creator - since if time didn't always exist, then literally nothing could have come before the point of its beginning. What's more important to me, though, is that there is no evidence of a designing hand since the beginning of time either, whether it's the origin of mankind or the evolution of galaxies we're talking about.

 

[Pako]

Sorry Pako, I did edit the post quite a bit after posting it...

You're right though, we do 'appear' to be at the centre of the universe (because of what we can and can't see - i.e. the event horizon) but we know that we are not at the centre because of what we can see i.e. the universe is uniform in all directions (and at all distances) and there is no discernible centre at all...

Whew... I thought I might be loosing it.

Perhaps it's the limitations of our technology that limits our understanding of what is and isn't.

 

[Danoff]

Maybe because nobody knows what existed the moment before the KABOOM. Some kind of time existed before the bang, right? Unless some higher power said "poof"....matter now exists.

Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean a higher power is required. This is the fallacy that man inevitably falls back on. I don't get it = God.

Take a moment to think outside the box for a minute. Or just accept that you don't understand it, and be ok with not having the answers. It shouldn't help you sleep better just because you put God as the default answer in for something you don't understand.

 

[Pako]

Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean a higher power is required. This is the fallacy that man inevitably falls back on. I don't get it = God.

Take a moment to think outside the box for a minute. Or just accept that you don't understand it, and be ok with not having the answers. It shouldn't help you sleep better just because you put God as the default answer in for something you don't understand.

Your misunderstanding of a creator doesn't invalidate the possibility.

 

[Danoff]

Your misunderstanding of a creator doesn't invalidate the possibility.

Nothing does.

 

[ERacer]

I believe in evolution. I have seen enough evidence to convince me this theory of evolution; the survival of the fittest, is in fact occurring right now, and by definition, has occurred and will continue to occur. Evolution is nature's way of ensuring its survival. The law of the jungle - a brilliantly simple and brutally effective blueprint for survival. There is no divine intervention to ensure the survival of a species. I have seen no evidence to that effect. I have read the Bible. Like a seed planted in fertile ground, I believe all creatures originated from one microscopic organism which once squirmed its way around our planet's primordial soup as the conditions became right for such a phenomenon to occur. Evolution makes sense to me, but I may be narrow minded.

I am spiritual, but not religious. I believe in a "life-force" out there. I have seen the shadow of my deceased father travel through our kitchen and stop to look at us. My two dogs started wagging their tails at him. And then he was gone, again. I have faith that survival must be a life-force within all creatures which extends even beyond our world and into the worlds outside the farthest reaches of the universe. Our universe is, most likely, host to millions of planets inhabited by life-forms which are slowly going through the evolutionary process. Though, perhaps very differently than ours. But it would stand to reason that they too share with us some of the basic building blocks of life. Much like we share with all creatures on Earth. We're from the same bag of seeds.

So, where did the original seed come from? Primordial soup evolving into oceans and lakes, atmospheric changes creating breathable air, and bolts of lightening are all very dramatic - but how does life come from the perfect mix of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen? CHON - common to all living beings - as we know them.

Perhaps mankind turns to religion because we know, truthfully, we are not the masters of the universe. And we are not immortal. Unlike the animals which inhabit our planet, we are blessed with a keen sense of self-awareness as evidenced by our culture; our historic record. We know people came before us, and will continue to come after our time has passed. So what happens to us when we die? People who have been clinically dead and brought back to life all seem to have experienced some type of journey. A bridge to some other existence. I can't imagine that all there is to our entire existence is about 85 yrs on this planet - if you're lucky. No, that can't be it! In terms of evolutionary time, that has to equate to some fraction of a millisecond. Can't be it at all! Perhaps religion, then, is a means for us to express our self-awareness. Give me hope, give me something else to believe in, a higher being, a better purpose for my existence, make me feel good about myself and, just in case I screw up, please forgive me my sins.

 

[UnoMOTO]

When you say 'something being created from nothing', however, you imply (by using the word 'created') a guiding hand, a designing intellect... for me, there is nothing about the Big Bang (or Evolution for that matter) that justifies this belief. On the contrary, evidence that time does have a beginning is (in my eyes anyway) good evidence against the existence of a creator - since if time didn't always exist, then literally nothing could have come before the point of its beginning. What's more important to me, though, is that there is no evidence of a designing hand since the beginning of time either, whether it's the origin of mankind or the evolution of galaxies we're talking about.

Your proven universe is the only thing you can base time off of. I don't believe a supernatural existence has a time dependency.

Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean a higher power is required. This is the fallacy that man inevitably falls back on. I don't get it = God.

Says the guy from the other side of the fence.

Take a moment to think outside the box for a minute. Or just accept that you don't understand it, and be ok with not having the answers. It shouldn't help you sleep better just because you put God as the default answer in for something you don't understand.

I think outside the box all the time. I just don't have to believe everything you think. I am very ok with not knowing the origin of the universe because that thankfully doesn't determine my future after I die.

 

[Danoff]

I think outside the box all the time. I just don't have to believe everything you think. I am very ok with not knowing the origin of the universe because that thankfully doesn't determine my future after I die.

Show me where I even implied that you need to think everything I think. All I'm asking is that you have SOME real reason to believe in a supreme being other than your own ignorance (and mine).

 

[UnoMOTO]

Show me where I even implied that you need to think everything I think.

Did you forget who you were? Your Dan Dan the debating man! You love to imply your will on helpless victims.

All I'm asking is that you have SOME real reason to believe in a supreme being other than your own ignorance (and mine).

I do...you just don't believe in the same things I do.

 

[Danoff]

I do...you just don't believe in the same things I do.

Ok, you're religious. But that's now how we got started here. You started by pointing to ignorance as proof of God. At least now you can point to a book that points to itself.

 

[UnoMOTO]

You started by pointing to ignorance as proof of God.

No...I was just commenting on how TM points to an absolute beginning and the similarities to what I believe in.

 

[Danoff]

i believe that a higher power caused this.

Why?

Maybe because nobody knows what existed the moment before the KABOOM.

Q.E.D.

 

[UnoMOTO]

Can you say out of context? That was in a quote guessing what HIS thought might be. I even clarified it in that very post.

Please save the uneducated religious person soap box for another day...eh.

So anyway, to the point...Do you have an opinion of time before the bang or not? Did matter spontaneously exist in your opinion?

 

[Danoff]

So anyway, to the point...Do you have an opinion of time before the bang or not? Did matter spontaneously exist in your opinion?

How the hell should I know? I have no idea what happened before the big bang. I'm cool with that.

The thing is, you don't know either.

 

[UnoMOTO]

How the hell should I know? I have no idea what happened before the big bang. I'm cool with that.

The thing is, you don't know either.

Alrighty then...I was trying to play "outside the box" with you and you're not going to follow along.

 

[Pako]

Ok, you're religious. But that's now how we got started here. You started by pointing to ignorance as proof of God. At least now you can point to a book that points to itself.

That points to itself? What do you mean? The book just appeared and said, "I write in here that I am, so therefore I must be."

 

[Keef]

Alrighty then...I was trying to play "outside the box" with you and you're not going to follow along.

How are you supposed to play outside of the box with that question? Nobody knows what was before the Big Bang, or whatever happened. Are you going to argue about stuff that has no proof?...

 

[UnoMOTO]

Take a moment to think outside the box for a minute.

How are you supposed to play outside of the box with that question? Nobody knows what was before the Big Bang, or whatever happened. Are you going to argue about stuff that has no proof?...

He asked me to think outside my box and for a minute I did. TM had no problem with coming up with an opinion of the origin and I wanted to see what Dan had to say about it. I'm not asking anybody to prove anything to me or you for that matter. I was just having a conversation about an idea.

Most of us already know where we sit on the subject and are highly unlikely to change our position so wouldn't is be a nice change of pace to talk about an idea. (no matter if you could prove it or not)

 

[Year.Zero]

At over 250 pages, this may have been posted before, but. . .

Little argument I've seen a couple times now:

(Premise 1) God is not limited
(Premise 2) The christian god is defined
(Premise 3) A definition is a limitation
__________________________________

(Conclusion 1) A god can not be defined

Therefore,

(Conclusion 2) The christian god can not exist


Now before anyone plays Devil's Advocate, let's allow the non-non-believers to respond (and I know there's a flaw in this argument).

 

[niky]

That points to itself? What do you mean? The book just appeared and said, "I write in here that I am, so therefore I must be."

No... the people who wrote in the book say: "I write this, thus it is true." Whatever is written is true, no matter what other people say, what the observed evidence is, and even if other portions of the book actually disagree with the author of that particular subsection. (and that's an entire subject unto itself).

In essence: the Bible is an ancient form of Wikipedia, except that once past a certain period, the final rewrite (or vandalism) is certified as the final version. Multiple authors and editors writing about a zillion things. Say you can trust one or two authors and editors... but can you trust them all?

In science, things go: "Given observation of such and such, we can therefore conclude that this is true in the given case, but may not be true given other circumstances."

Science does not sell itself as solid truth. It sells itself as a theory on the possible ways that something occured, and gives its arguments for why such theory is acceptable for that situation. And Science can and will change its mind when evidence to the contrary is compelling enough.

Now, on the Creationist side of the debate, we have people saying: "See? It's a theory! It can be wrong!"

This is like saying, upon viewing a ball fall to the ground that it's possible that it won't always fall down when you drop it, since the theory of gravity is only a theory. (well, it's a law, but the theory of general relativity provides a more accurate model of gravity than the law of gravity itself does).

------

I'm kind of unmoved by the idea that the non-existence of time before the Big Bang moots the existence of supernatural beings. Just because "our" time began with the Big Bang, doesn't mean that there cannot exist a "space-time" outside of our own.

But since we cannot observe or enter any space-time besides our own in any physical way provided by the laws of our Universe (not yet), we don't know if there is anything beyond the Universe, or if there is, indeed, a God, waiting behind the veil of darkness.

But the idea of God being unknown and unknowable (as many religions assert he is) means that any explanation or understanding of God postulated by humanity (that includes the Bible, the Torah, the Vedas and the tenets of Buddhism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, etcetera) is bound to be flawed and incomplete.

In other words, it's not science versus religion.

It's my understanding of God and the Universe versus your understanding of God and the Universe. And I don't believe that my God created the Universe with a crayon and some clay. My God does it through the elegance of Mathematics.

 

[Touring Mars]

I don't believe a supernatural existence has a time dependency.

Given the evidence that the universe and time itself had a beginning, any 'supernatural' entity which existed ahead of time itself would have to be 'time independent' - but I'd like to hear exactly what that actually means. It seems like an unnecessary complication to invent a whole new branch of 'time independent' reasoning and physics, just to support the otherwise unfounded existence of a supernatural entity capable of 'intelligent design'... take time out of the equation and suddenly words like design and intelligence lose their meaning, since both are implicitly time-related - therefore to postulate a 'time-independent intelligent designer' is something of an oxymoron.

No...I was just commenting on how TM points to an absolute beginning and the similarities to what I believe in.

There definitely is an unmistakable similarity - one key difference is that an evidence-based assessment suggests strongly that literally nothing came before (or could have come before) the Big Bang, whereas a faith-based assessment usually involves invoking something supernatural to have pre-existed space and time. Although I strongly support any school of thought that supports the evidence as far as it is known, I don't support the idea that we need to tag on our own unsupportable ideas over and above that evidence... in other words, a scientific stand point involves sticking to the facts only whereas a theistic Big Bang theory involves sticking to the facts then making stuff up...

Much like we share with all creatures on Earth. We're from the same bag of seeds.

You'd be amazed at how few people agree with you, although I obviously do. I had an 'interesting' discussion with a guy in a bar in the US a couple of weeks ago, and this plain, simple (and experimentally verifiable fact) ultimately led him to (wait for it) call me a Nazi! His summary of my views was basically this (with my reaction/agreement encoded as smilies...):

• I believe that all humans are physically related by common descent (No disagreement here, the Bible teaches this too...) 👍
• I believe that all life on Earth is physically related by common descent :tup: (This is the ultimate evolutionist viewpoint)
• Since I believe that all living things descended from common ancestry, I must think that humans are no different to rats (Hang on, where did that come from?)
• I am calling him a rat (Oh dear...)
• I am a Nazi (TAXI!)

However ridiculous it might sound, this is an argument that has arisen time and time again, and I still don't understand it for many reasons... the sticking point for me is why anti-evolutionists seem to think it is justified (or even remotely fair) to equate point 2 with point 3. What is it about being physically related to all living things that is so abhorrent? The fact that we are related is beyond doubt - so to deny it reveals an insecurity beyond measure in my opinion. Ironically, this guy didn't even really believe in point 1 - my assertion that human life began from a common ancestry in Africa was tantamount to calling him black, something he didn't take kindly to at all. And he still had the nerve to call me a Nazi...!

 

[FoolKiller]

How are you supposed to play outside of the box with that question? Nobody knows what was before the Big Bang, or whatever happened. Are you going to argue about stuff that has no proof?...

Isn't the point of this thread basically arguing about stuff that has little or no proof. We are talking pre-existence here. How can even a scientific argument of pre-existence have proof since any proof would not have existed?

The whole concept of pre-existence, whether religion or science, requires outside the box thinking. Hell, the idea that man can fly required outside the box thinking at first. All of science requires outside the box thinking to progress because you must look at things that haven't been looked at.

At over 250 pages, this may have been posted before, but. . .

Little argument I've seen a couple times now:

(Premise 1) God is not limited
(Premise 2) The christian god is defined
(Premise 3) A definition is a limitation

Let me stop you now. The Christian God is not defined by anything more than people who want to think they know more about God than they do. It is by the human trait to anthropomorphize things. It is common among humans to do this in order to attempt to define God. It is common among humans to do this with everything. We do it to pets, cars, plants, houses, everything. The only difference is that when we discuss God we try to explain everything in the universe from a cold to a natural disaster and try to apply human reasoning to why God would do such a thing, when God may not have had anything to do with it.

Your flaw is that you are trying to disprove God based on a human flaw. If I say that my cat thinks I am funny you aren't proving that I don't have a cat by pointing out that cats don't display humor. You are merely pointing out that I incorrectly anthropomorphize my cat. In the same way you aren't disproving God, but you are just showing that many Christians don't truly understand God.

Given the evidence that the universe and time itself had a beginning, any 'supernatural' entity which existed ahead of time itself would have to be 'time independent' - but I'd like to hear exactly what that actually means. It seems like an unnecessary complication to invent a whole new branch of 'time independent' reasoning and physics, just to support the otherwise unfounded existence of a supernatural entity capable of 'intelligent design'... take time out of the equation and suddenly words like design and intelligence lose their meaning, since both are implicitly time-related - therefore to postulate a 'time-independent intelligent designer' is something of an oxymoron.

Just to bring some clarification to this whole pre-time discussion I have to ask a question. I may or may not even jump in on this part of the debate, but I feel we need to define time.

What is time? Is it an actual physical law or merely a human form of measurement? Your description of how we cannot see beyond 14 billion light years has no bearing on time, rather on distance. Just because we can't see it does not mean that it doesn't exist, you said so yourself, so it does not mean that these things are pre-time.

It seems to me that no matter how you define time it is a purely relativistic form of measuring distance and speed. Before early men began to use the seasons, sun, and moon to define years, months, and days did we have a concept of time? Length, width, and height are all three things that exist and only our form of measurement is created by men, but time is purely a concept that has no discernible definition.

If that were the case then the discussion of pre-time would be pointless as there is no such thing. It would purely be pre-existence, or pre-matter as the creation/formation of the universe is truly a debate about how matter came from nothing.


And I will leave someone else who is better at physics to attempt an argument based on the Law of Conservation of Matter/Mass.

 

[UnoMOTO]

Given the evidence that the universe and time itself had a beginning, any 'supernatural' entity which existed ahead of time itself would have to be 'time independent' - but I'd like to hear exactly what that actually means.

My thoughts expressed by an internet somebody.

Theists say that God is eternally existent. How this is understood depends on which definition of eternity is used. On the one hand, God may exist in eternity, a timeless existence where categories of past, present, and future just do not apply. On the other hand, God will exist for or through eternity, or at all times, having already existed for an infinite amount of time and being expected to continue to exist for an infinite amount of time. One other definition states that God exists outside the human concept of time, but also inside of time. The reasoning for this definition is that if God did not exist both outside of time and inside of time, God would not be able to interact with humans.

I had an 'interesting' discussion with a guy in a bar in the US a couple of weeks ago, and this plain, simple (and experimentally verifiable fact) ultimately led him to (wait for it) call me a Nazi!

Great...Just one more idiot that makes it hard on the rest of us to sound unreasonable.

I'd love to have a beer with ya and I'm sure I could not mistake you for the worst killer of all time.

 

[Touring Mars]

Just to bring some clarification to this whole pre-time discussion I have to ask a question. I may or may not even jump in on this part of the debate, but I feel we need to define time.

What is time? Is it an actual physical law or merely a human form of measurement?

It is a good question, but time is certainly not simply a human form of measurement. You can say exactly the same for distance aswell. We certainly use our own scales and reference points to measure time and/or distance, but the existence of the human race has no influence whatsoever over the existence or nature of these dimensions.

Our perception of time is unique to us, perhaps – but that is largely irrelevant. Time itself is infinite, wherever it acts or exists… but that’s not to say that it has always existed. When I say infinite, I mean that it is asymptotic i.e. you could never reach the ‘beginning of time’ in a time travel machine, because there would always be that little bit further, since you can always have finer and finer increments of time. Many things happen on a timescale that we, as humans, simply cannot ever hope to witness – electron transfer events on a pico-second timescale, or a femto-second laser flash - or on the opposite extreme, the life-cycle of a star or the evolution of human beings.

Your description of how we cannot see beyond 14 billion light years has no bearing on time, rather on distance.

On the contrary, it has everything to do with time - a light year is a unit of time used as a measurement of distance – by definition it’s the distance light travels in one year i.e. the distance light travels in a specific length of time. Therefore, when we see distant objects, we are also seeing them as they were at a different point of time than they are at now. The further we look, the older the objects we can see - until a strange thing happens and we can no longer see anything at all. Before the advent of powerful telescopes, we might be mistaken for thinking we were seeing the 'edge' of the universe, but we now know that this is an event horizon, and not a real horizon.

Just because we can't see it does not mean that it doesn't exist, you said so yourself, so it does not mean that these things are pre-time.

True, it certainly doesn’t mean that these things are pre-time… but the existence of the event horizon does show that the age of the universe is the limiting factor to how far we can see – even in theory, and despite monumental improvements in technology. The fact that there is a limit to how far we can see is a result of the fact that we are limited by the finite age of the universe and by the finite speed of light.


@ UnoMOTO - I realize that this guy I met was a buffoon, but I thought it was illustrative of how careful you have to be before challenging someone's most fervently held beliefs - especially in a bar! I was annoyed by the guy, since he was clearly a racist (and seemingly his racism didn't stop at human races but to animal species too!), and yet somehow he felt justified in pointing out just how warped my mindset was. Saying that, he was the one who got slung out of the bar 20 minutes later for not paying his tab! (I kid you not!)

I guess when it comes to discussing the nature of a supernatural being, you could postulate anything you wanted and probably be as close to the truth as anyone else (and ironically, as far away from it as everyone else too...)

As for that beer, maybe the next SFGTP meeting at Smallhorses' place??!

 

[Danoff]

Alrighty then...I was trying to play "outside the box" with you and you're not going to follow along.

What I mean when I say "think outside the box" is that you have to be accepting of the possibility of an explanation for something you don't think is explainable.

When early man looked up at the sky and saw clouds rolling by, he had no idea what he was looking at. He probably thought that it wasn't possible to come up with an earthly explanation for it. It had an explanation, but he was so far away from having the necessary understanding of the workings of his environment, that even trying to guess what it was was pointless. Any guess he ventured would be wildly far from the truth, because he needed to understand about 5 million more fundamental things before he could piece together the puzzle.

Of course, early man did guess. He guessed that above is where people go when they die. Clouds looked like a nice fluffy place to live in comfort and bliss - out of the mud. He figured that must be the next stage in life. Even as recent as a few hundred years ago we see this kind of thinking. Angels sitting on clouds playing harps with god wreathed in sunlight floating along. It's the reason we think of angels as having wings. It's obviously still directly inspired by those early moments when man looked up at the daylit sky and had no idea what he was seeing. It made no sense to say that just because he could not understand what he was seeing, that he should assume that the afterlife is enjoyed among the clouds. But it was as good (and comforting) an explanation as man was capable of.

Fast forward to today. We're still looking up at the sky, and still not understanding what we're seeing. This time we're looking at the night sky and seeing deep into the abyss. Our understanding of our world and universe has grown a great deal, but we're still not far enough along to even make reasonable guesses at why there is a universe instead of empty nothingness. The questions we're asking in this thread are equivalent to that caveman wondering what clouds are. And the guesses that we venture here are as wild and far from the mark as our caveman would have ventured then.

So when I ask for outside the box thinking, I mean outside the confines of needed to understand everything. You're boxed in by the notion that matter does not come from nowhere, that time is linear, that what you see when you look into the night sky is in fact something, and that there is no possible way that you're in fact looking at nothing.

Basically, dare to live without the answers. Eventually they'll come, but humanity's understanding still has a long way to go before we can answer these questions.

 

[Pako]

@niky,

Historians don't deny that Christ lived on earth. Jesus' disciples wrote of personal accounts of the events of Christ without contradiction. I'm not quite sure what else Christ could have done to prove his divine origins. He healed the sick, raised the dead, raised himself from the dead, predicted future events that happened as He said it would, and ascended into heaven, and all this in public places with crowds of people. Science can't explain all these miracles but science doesn't have to explain it.

 

[Danoff]

@niky,

Historians don't deny that Christ lived on earth. Jesus' disciples wrote of personal accounts of the events of Christ without contradiction. I'm not quite sure what else Christ could have done to prove his divine origins. He healed the sick, raised the dead, raised himself from the dead, predicted future events that happened as He said it would, and ascended into heaven, and all this in public places with crowds of people. Science can't explain all these miracles but science doesn't have to explain it.

I love how it goes from historians admitting that Christ was a man, to miracles proving he was more.

Let's see:
- Evidence exists to support the existence of a dude named Jesus Christ.
- A book says he performed miracles.
- Anyone who can perform miracles is clearly the son of god.

Yea, I'm not sure where the weak link is.

 

[TheCracker]

I love how it goes from historians admitting that Christ was a man, to miracles proving he was more.

Let's see:
- Evidence exists to support the existence of a dude named Jesus Christ.
- A book says he performed miracles.
- Anyone who can perform miracles is clearly the son of god.

Yea, I'm not sure where the weak link is.

David Blaine is the son of God?

 

[UnoMOTO]

What I mean when I say "think outside the box" is that you have to be accepting of the possibility of an explanation for something you don't think is explainable.

It's strange to hear you say that. You have proven in the past that you don't even accept anything other then the fact that you are. If that's not calling the kettle black I just don't know what is.

Any guess he ventured would be wildly far from the truth, because he needed to understand about 5 million more fundamental things before he could piece together the puzzle.

Right...so from your point of view stop pretending like you know for sure how evolution works. There could be 5 Billion things fundamental things left to be figured out about our universe. With following your logic you are the idiot looking into space thinking you know how our planet landed in its current location. Your arrogance to knowing more then the man that lived before you leaves you standing in your own poo without smelling it.

Disclaimer...I don't mean you personally, I understand that YOU (Danoff) are open to everything and believe nothing.