Darwinian evolution is not really believed anymore. Darwin's belief was that evolution resulted as an adaptation to an environmental stress. He did very good work with what he had available and was an extremely dedicated scientist: begging his friends for money to make the trip, making the trip while being terrible with sea voyages, etc. But this doesn't hold with what we know now. Adaptations are short term reactions, they don't result in long term transformations.flyingfish said:
Steven J. Gould produced a far more powerful and convincing theory that, in a nutshell, states that mutations happen all the time, spontaneously. If that mutation improves the creature's ability to survive to breed then the mutation will be passed on. It's not so random as it seems, there are only so many degrees of freedom that can be manipulated at a time, and if they don't work then the mutation dies off with the creature.
Sickle cell anemia was mentioned in the now infamous thread. It's a perfect example of a mutation with some benefits to a particular group. If you live in northern Africa and are subject to malaria, then this mutation improves your ability to survive. If not, then one without sickle cell would be better equipped to survive.
This type of evolution still exists and still happens. The problem is that we've outstripped natural selection. If a mutation occurs that weakens the species we don't let it die out, we use our medical knowledge to help the person survive. From the standpoint of compassion to our fellow man this is a wonderful thing, from the standpoint of evolution it's a weakening of the species by allowing genetic maladies like sickle cell or cystic fibrosis to be passed on.
You cannot debate creationism from a scientific standpoint because there isn't a scientific basis for it. The 'theory' of creationism exists because it is deeply entrenched in our culture and belief system. It was not arrived at scientifically, but some 'scientific' evidence may be added after the fact to make it more palatable to christians who want to debate it. In a purely scientific world it would have been discarded years ago as a theory that worked well "at the time", but was no longer relevant.
The biggest difference between religeon and science is that religeon demands a belief in that which cannot be proven while science demands rigorous proof of any claim. Scientific theories are developped based on observables and are modified as our ability to 'observe' improves. Sometimes a theory may be scrapped completely in favour of a new one that better explains the observations and improves the predictability in a more satisfactory manner. A theory is a lot like building a house. You have your foundation - central concept - and you add on changes as the data improves. But sometimes it's better to clear out the clutter and start with a new foundation.
The main western religeons - Christianity, Judaism, Islam - are not mutually exclusive. They are, in fact, identical once you strip away the political and social aspects. This shouldn't come as a surprise since they're all based on Judaism. I cannot comment on Eastern religeons, not having studied them much or had much contact with them, but I suspect they're much the same. The basis is to fill in gaps in knowledge. I think that it would be wonderful if religeons were flexible to work in conjunction with science, fill in the gaps in the supernatural and back off or change their theories in conjunction with improving science. But that's not going to happen anytime soon.
