Yourself, on 14 December 2012 - 03:42 AM, said:
Every single living organism is an intermediate. As for the article:
In fact, most living organisms are NOT intermediates; they are dead ends. A staggering number of organisms die without leaving any offspring.
But every single creature that DOES have offspring is an intermediate, of course.
Borkefer, on 14 December 2012 - 11:25 AM, said:
Because its not a delusion to us. We believe in God because we have faith and apparently that isnt enough for people to let us do what we want. It isnt just an idea to us, its a faith and something that we believe we should put our faith in. You can not believe in a God if you want Im not stopping you and I dont know anyone who is. It makes me want to throw up that we can't be allowed to practice our beliefs without being called idiots by people who don't be believe in any deity. That right there is probably one of the main reasons there is so much tension in this area.
Well, you're right that it's not a delusion to you, but by itself that means absolutely nothing; that's what it means for something to be a delusion, that the deluded person thinks it's real. And as for being called idiots, well, I agree that such things ought generally not to be said, as it's rude and unhelpful. But we SHOULD be able to speak up about things on which we disagree, and we ought to be able to tell each other that we respectfully think the other is wrong. And on the matter of evolution, I happen to think you're very very badly wrong indeed, though I don't think you're necessarily an idiot for it (because it's kind of the default position for humans to be mistaken about things).
With regard to the original post: Actually, evolution is a remarkably subtle and easily misunderstood theory. I myself didn't quite get it until I was an undergraduate at university, mainly because I never really sat down to think about the mechanism. When I finally DID devote the time to think about it, it hit me like a lightning bolt, like seeing the proof and suddenly understanding exactly WHY Pythagoras' Theorem is correct instead of simply accepting it on trust. Darwin's theory of Natural Selection was absolutely brilliant in its elegance and simplicity, but if you just think it's about which species begat which and not HOW, you can entirely miss the point. Lots of people have proposed species changing over time, but it was Darwin (and Wallace) who figured out how and why.
I don't blame people for not understanding it, because it's not obvious until you do understand it. I actually DO kind of blame people for believing it without understanding it.
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