TK,

I cringe everytime you mention Darwinism.

Evolution is a fact substantiated by a fossil record. Now, if you share the belief of many superstitious people that "God" created the fossil record to "test our faith", nothing more needs to be said.

Charles Darwin did not invent evolution. He wrote a book on the subject in the mid 19th Century, The Origin of Species, which pulled together a lot of ideas going around at the time and which was widely influential.

Calling evolutionary theory Darwinism is as inane as calling physics Newtonism.

One phrase from Darwin's book captured the popular imagination: "survival of the fittest"

Darwin never intended, and no serious student of evolution has ever claimed "the fittest" meant the most powerful or the strongest or the most dominant. If that were the case T-Rex and/or Saber Tooth Tigers would still be dominant predators.

Social Darwinism came into vogue in England in the late 19th Century as a perversion of the phrase "survival of the fittest" to justify the horrific conditions of the time for factory workers and to justify the dominant social order and English imperialism. It had nothing to do with any reputable scientific theories about evolution, and nothing whatsoever to do with "fitness" as Darwin used the term. Social Darwinism was, and is, crap, popularization of the lowest order.

So what is "fitness" in evolutionary terms?
Determining fitness only works in hindsight. A "fit" physical characteristic is one which has survived.

In order to predict what characteristic will prove to be fit in the future,i.e, will survive, one would need to be able to predict the future.

In general, and certainly in the modern era, when ecological systems have undergone rapid change, there has been a premium on characteristics which increase flexibility in a species.

Hazarding a guess, I would predict that catfish or their descendants will do better in the future than Steelhead or their descendants.

(The ability mammals have to form habits in lieu of hard wired behaviors increases flexibilty because it allows the mammal to deal with temporarily unchanging aspects of the environment on autopilot, freeing up attention for dealing with aspects which are changing.)

Highly specialized species (Steelhead?) are often short on flexibility and tend to go extinct quicker than less specialized species.

Humans have been here just an eyeblink on the evolutionary time scale. Hard to say whether we will survive in our present form for long. Maybe we will. Maybe we will evolve into something else. Maybe evolutionary descendants of rats will do better over the long run.

TK, as a personal favor, please stop expounding Social Darwinism. It's embarassing.

Why, if he truly believes in it? It's clear that he needs such a theory to give him a sense of worth.

SS,

"Evolution is a fact substantiated by a fossil record"

It's called the "theory" not the fact of evolution. Please cite the scientific communitities that claim it to be provable fact by generally accepted scientific guidelines? I should really stop right here because your level of understanding on the matter is clearly lacking. But in an effort to teach I will continue.

There is no documented fossil records that can be certified complete. For any species. There is assunption and generally accepted "thoretical" complete fossil records.

"Darwin never intended, and no serious student of evolution has ever claimed "the fittest" meant the most powerful or the strongest or the most dominant."

But more often than not this class is the survivor.

SS the term social Darwinism is cureently beiung uesed and has always been used to describe a process. You cannot untie it just because you do not like it. Quit trying to pretend that you have the power to change things and just accept the fact that the club you use is often the club that will be used against you.

tk also thinks that the world is 6000 years old and he is a member of the Discovery Institute and The Flat Earth Society. You can not have an intelligent discussion with anyone who does not have an open mind and truely it seems that tk has closed his mind to everything but the world according to tk.

Stever,

You have never been a liar here before. Misinformed but not a liar. Show me where I have said this? "tk also thinks that the world is 6000 years old"

Showing that evolution is just a theory and like all unproven postualtes and that it has holes is a far cry from writing it off as a posibliltiy. Which is what most non belivers have done with the role of "god" in such events.

read all you wish http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/organizations/
Am I correct about the other two? The first one kind of goes hand in hand with the other two. I was guessing about all three so 2 out of three isn't bad. Belief in an omnipotent being is not science. The existance of one neither can be proven or disproven, it is not science. Postulates by defination require no proof. The American Heritage Dictionary defines "postulates" as;
1)To make claim for, demand. 2)To assume the truth or reality of with no proof. Again not science.

Stever,
I have read TO from front to back several times and most of the linked stuff as well. I have also taken 400 level biology courses in college. "You can not have an intelligent discussion with anyone who does not have an open mind " So how many times have you read the bible and taken bible study courses?. Read it a few times do some precept level courses and we can talk about it since your mind is so open. Your terms as stated above.

The Bible is a collection of books. No science, again it is belief. There is no proof. One must believe in the omnipotent being. That is the basis for religion, belief. There isn't any science involved, just because you know it to be so in your heart doesn't make it so. Don't confuse belief with knowledge. Science is science and creationism is belief not science. Don't confuse the two.

I would say you have as much or more faith in evolution. I doubt evolution will ever be more than just a theory as much as you believe it to be fact. For all you people tout science there is one point you overlook. There is infinate times more unkown than known Re evolution.

Well, it's impossible to say for sure what "the survivor" will be, since we can't say for sure what the future will be.

But in the past the survivor has often been the most flexible.

Q: What do you call a dead blond in the closet
A: The 2001 hide and go seek champion

KT: "Showing that evolution is just a theory and like all unproven postualtes and that it has holes is a far cry from writing it off as a posibliltiy. Which is what most non belivers have done with the role of "god" in such events."

It seems that a non-believer, by definition, is one who has written off the possibility of the existence of God. Doesn't seem like there's a lot of room to be open to the possibility of God. As for believers, again, by definition, and depending on the nature of their belief, it would seem as though they have closed themselve off to the possibility that evolution explains diversity and changes in life forms.

KT makes an infinite number of assumptions about the participants in this forum, since he's sure we all overlook the fact that there's less known about evolution than is unknown. Now there's some keen intellectual perception for us to ponder. Funny, I've never seen anyone here post that everything important about evolution is already known.

SG,

When people post it as and treat it as fact and not theory it's a very logical leap. A real short leap.

Having observed some of the leaps you make here keeps me well appraised of that fact.

Gravity is an observable physical phenonema. We can say gravity is a fact. Gravity was happening long before the Theory of Universal Gravitation was thunk up by some old boy that didn't live close to a Steelhead river and had nothing better to do with his time than to ponder about things like that.

A theory does not invent a phenomena. It attempts to explain it.

The existence of the phenomena of evolution has been well established by the fossil record. Evolution happens.

How does it happen?

Well, Evolutionary Theory, or The Theory of Evolution, is the body of work which attempts to explain how evolution, the phenomena, works.

If currently accepted theories about gravity or evolution were discredited or supplanted by other theories, that would not mean that the phenomenae the theories were attemping to explain did not exist.

SS,

Careful. You're getting way too technical for KT's simple way of understanding the world. You're leaving him no option other than deflecting the issue. Watch.

The leap from ape to man in terms of observable phenomena or artifacts is how big of a leap. Whats the smallest gap in years. Talk about faith. You may want to make the jump and go with the thought that what is true for invertabrates or even crustaceans is treansferable to man. If I had an analogous financial opportuntiy for you you would not invest a dime on such an obviously risky prospectus and certainly not bet your life. But it works if you want to rationalize something.

" invertabrates or even crustaceans "

What's this have to do with your blood line?

Now wait a minute TK! If I remember right, recent reseach says gorillas are about 98% genetically identical to humans. (Anybody have the exact number?)

How close a correspondence you want? 99%? 99.9%?

If a primate was discovered in the swamps of Arkansas which was a "missing link" between ape and man, you would want a "missing link" between the 'missing link" and man.

SS,

That last post of yours lowered the liberal IQ here to about the ape level.