Okay, but to be honest I'm not really inclined to teach a course in evolutionary biology here. I can give you places to go online where you can learn the subject for free if you're interested. But I will give brief answers to your questions (and please keep in mind these are very brief, simplistic answers; to go into the full detail would take months)
Ye i understand, it is a complicated topic with many different lines of inquiry and evidence.
I haven't actually looked at it for about 10 years. I was an atheist at that stage which is why my arguments aren't religious
I notice that your in deep discussion with others as well. Its hard to juggle so many conversions
Do you believe microevolution stops at some point? Like say if a species has been "microevolving" for 10 million years, would it know to stop before it got to a point where it "macroevolved"?
Thats a good point, I don't know.
So basically you're asking me to explain the entire evolutionary history of multicellular organisms....that's all
LoL, I wasn't... I was trying to simplify something that isn't simple... A challenge in science is trying to explain complex things in very simple and easy to understand language. One of my teachers said you should try to explain something like your speaking to a 10 year old like a teacher.
I find it hard to do
But if you're looking for a 100% complete narrative of evolutionary history from the first cells all the way through animals like we have today, that's not going to happen.
Ye that's what i had concluded all those years ago. I could be wrong but I don't think there has been any major developments that has changed anything in the last 10 years
So to expect one order to evolve into another right before our eyes is kinda silly.
Well i actually did say that it would probably require several mutations, not just one.
Of course there's a lot more to this, but I really don't have the time or ambition to go over it all.
I understand
Well, you can believe it.
I could just believe it but then it would be more like a religion based on faith
Hoaxes and frauds exist in just about every human institution, including Christianity. Certainly we don't evaluate the validity of an entire concept based solely on the existence of a few hoaxes over the course of hundreds of years.
Ye i know. Im not basing my conclusion solely on that. It just makes me, and others skeptical which is the way i approach science anyway.
Skepticism is healthy in science, hypothesis need to be questioned and tested often, not to try and verify it (which is mainly what i see) but to try and falsify it (which is a much harder test)
Dawkins is both a scientist and an atheist activist. He's most famous for his atheism though, and IMO he sometimes inappropriate mixes the two.
IMO he always mixes the two when ive heard him speak. As soon as religion is injected into a scientific discussion it becomes inappropriate
Are you aware of prominent Christian evolutionary scientists like
Dr. Francis Collins? Have you ever heard of
Biologos, an organization that works to show how science and religion can be compatible?
Or the Clergy Letter Project?
No, im unaware. I know there are theistic evolutionists. From a religious pov i didn't take them seriously. But I gave them a chance and listened to their arguments. While they do have gaps to fill and things that can't be explained they actually have some valid arguments.
I remember at one stage i thought these opposing views are most likely not 100% right but have some aspect of truth to them
With religion its the claim that a creator exists, with ToE its the claim that evolution does exist in some form. I still think that
I'll address you question about morals after I touch on astrophysics and cosmology in my next post
