Evolution? How?

Ros, the Isua evidence is indirect but still compelling. Life has a preference for C12 as the isotope of choice (Sightly easier bond with a larger ionic radius per wt ) the Carbon from the isua is predominantly C12. Despite what Wikipedia sez, THERE ARE NO "bacter" fossils in this stuff, its purely a chemical isotopic inference.
My point was that life seemed to occur within about 50 million years after water appeared on the planet (Its sort of a basal Archean "Explosion" ) All it shows is a lot of **** can happen in 50 million years or else life rode in on a train.

I like the comment that you shared with Real Life. The difference between being intrigued by a possibility and basing ones life on it are two very different levels of submission.

Thanks FM.

I'm not sure how many times we must cover this, but here goes.

If I see you graduate from college or I attend your wedding, is that scientific?

Well, strictly speaking, since it's a one time event in the past, it is not scientifically provable insofar as it is not repeatable, testable or falsifiable.

Does that mean it's not true that you did these things or that they are not verifiable?

No.

Historical evidences, the testimony of witnesses and circumstantial evidence can all be referred to in an attempt to verify these events.

Since neither the creation of man nor the evolution of man has been observed and both are postulated to have been events of the distant past, are they scientifically provable?

Again no, because they are not repeatable or testable events. They are history.

Does this mean there is no evidence to investigate such events? No, however both evolutionists and creationists draw largely on circumstantial evidence.

Your statement that



seems to be rooted in your desire to continue to ignore the fact that both positions rely on inferences and interpretation of evidence.

Both positions have the same evidence. The physical world, the cosmos, living organisms, etc. "belong" to neither the evolutionist nor the creationist.



Each position interprets that evidence differently. But both of our positions have the same hurdles to overcome. That is what you have a hard time admitting.

Your wedding: Witnessed by family and friends. It's recorded in the state records. Your wife or husband calls you a spouse or "dear" or "honey." Many pictures - usually. If you had the wedding in a church, it will be recorded by the church as a wedding. You want more proof?

Graduation of college: It will be duly recorded in the university records. There are usually family and friends as witnesses. Pictures may be taken to record the event - some by still cameras and others by camcorders.

It's not even close to "science," but you're chasing your own tail by these irrelevant questions.

What you need to do is look up the definition for "marriage" and "graduation" that are considered human phenomenons.

"Science - the observaton, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of natural phenomenon."

To state that the earth is flat is wrong.

To state that the earth is a sphere is wrong.

To state that both statements are equally wrong is more wrong than either.

DNA Offers New Insight Concerning Cat Evolution


By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: January 6, 2006
Researchers have gained a major insight into the evolution of cats by showing how they migrated to new continents and developed new species as sea levels rose and fell.



Rui Vieira/Associated Press
Researchers have gained a major insight into the evolution of cats by showing how they migrated to new continents and developed new species as sea levels rose and fell.
About nine million years ago - two million years after the cat family first appeared in Asia - these successful predators invaded North America by crossing the Beringian land bridge connecting Siberia and Alaska, a team of geneticists writes in the journal Science today.

Later, several American cat lineages returned to Asia. With each migration, evolutionary forces morphed the pantherlike patriarch of all cats into a rainbow of species, from ocelots and lynxes to leopards, lions and the lineage that led to the most successful cat of all, even though it has mostly forsaken its predatory heritage: the cat that has induced people to pay for its board and lodging in return for frugal displays of affection.

This new history of the family, known as Felidae, is based on DNA analyses of the 37 living species performed by Warren E. Johnson and Stephen J. O'Brien of the National Cancer Institute and colleagues elsewhere.

Before DNA, taxonomists had considerable difficulty in classifying the cat family. The fossil record was sparse and many of the skulls lacked distinctiveness. One scheme divided the family into Big Cats and Little Cats. Then, in 1997, Dr. Johnson and Dr. O'Brien said they thought most living cats fell into one of eight lineages, based on the genetic element known as mitochondrial DNA.

Having made further DNA analyses, the researchers have drawn a full family tree that assigns every cat species to one of the lineages. They have also integrated their tree, which is based solely on changes in DNA, with the fossil record. The fossils, which are securely dated, allow dates to be assigned to each fork in the genetic family tree.

Knowing when each species came into existence, the Johnson-O'Brien team has been able to reconstruct a series of at least 10 intercontinental migrations by which cats colonized the world. The cheetah, for instance, now found in Africa, belongs to a lineage that originated in North America and some three million years ago migrated back across the Bering land bridge to Asia and then Africa.

Dr. O'Brien said the cats were very successful predators, second only to humans, and quickly explored new territories as opportunity arose. Sea levels were low from 11 million to 6 million years ago, enabling the first modern cats, in paleontologists' perspective (saber-tooth tigers are ancient cats), to spread from Asia west into Africa, creating the caracal lineage, and east into North America, generating the ocelot, lynx and puma lineages.

The leopard lineage appeared around 6.5 million years ago in Asia. The youngest of the eight lineages, which led eventually to the domestic cat, emerged some 6.2 million years ago in Asia and Africa, either from ancestors that had never left Asia or more probably from North American cats that had trekked back across the Bering land bridge.

Sea levels then rose, confining each cat species to its own continent, but sank again some three million years ago, allowing a second round of cat migrations. It was at this time that the ancestors of the cheetah and the Eurasian lynxes colonized the Old World from the New.

Chris Wozencraft, an authority on the classification of carnivorous mammals, said the new cat family tree generally agreed with one that he had just published in Mammal Species of the World, a standard reference. Dr. Wozencraft, a taxonomist at Bethel College in Indiana, based his classification on fossil and zoological information, as well as on DNA data already published by Dr. O'Brien's laboratory.

Cat fossils are very hard to tell apart, because they differ mostly just in size, and the DNA data emerging over the last decade has helped bring the field from confusion to consensus, Dr. Wozencraft said.

Despite their evolutionary success, most of the large cats are in peril because their broad hunting ranges have brought them into collision with people. "With the exception of the house cat and a few other small cat species, nearly every one of the 37 species is considered endangered or threatened," Dr. Johnson and Dr. O'Brien write in the current Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics.

Fewer than 15,000 tigers, cheetahs and snow leopards remain in the wild, they estimate, and pumas and jaguar populations have been reduced to about 50,000 each.

Does it really take six hundred and fifty five pages to know who God is?

I don't know. How books have been written to translate the bible?

hide yourself

The bible is judgement and clemency...

Mostly judgement and fear.

We've been through the fear thing before. You just don't get it do you? We ARE NOT afraid of God. The fear of God is a reverent awe. Respect.

Perhaps you keep reading fear into it because of something in you?

"Fear - anxiety caused by real or possible danger, pain, etc; fright; also awe; reverence; also apprehension; concern, a cause for fear, to be afraid (of)..."

However, in the vernacular of the Engllish language, when most people hear the word "fear," it's not about "awe or reverence," although that's what the religious would have us believe. I have never in my life used the word "fear" to mean "awe."

"We ARE NOT afraid of God."

I think I know what you mean MA but you cant blame CI for getting the message from the bible that God can get pretty annoyed with people. Should no one live in fear of God?

The god of the old testament is capricious, childish, vengeful, racist, sexist, murderously violent . . . anyone in their right mind ought to fear that nasty old sociopath . . .

Not any more than I would fear the Wicked Witch of the West, the wicked queen from "Snow White" or the "Purple People Eater! (Well.......................maybe the Purple People Eater! )

You may not be afraid of him, but growing up in the church I was always taught that if you don't do what you're told you'll go to hell.

That's most definitely a fear-based tactic, whether you claim it as such or not.

How is the God of the old testament racist and sexist?

Fear and guilt are extremely efficient methods of controlling people. The church must have taken some courses on these tactics!