Thank you Russ, for providing more evidence for your thesis.

The "*new*" idea I am promoting is also called "descent with modification" ... which if you will recall is the terminology that Darwin used to describe his theory of changes to life. The only thing "*new*" is that we have added to our knowledge of how descent with modification occurs. Curiously this IS how science progresses.

What is shown in museums, even the Smithsonian, is the natural history of life on earth. This natural history is the evidence of past life. It is the evidence that says that

• 4.55 billion years ago the earth formed from star dust born of novaic death of - even then - old stars ...
• 3.5 billion years ago there was unicellular life on earth, simple cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), in the oldest rocks that preserve fossils of sediments that we have currently found ...
• 2 billion years ago this simple unicellular life is accompanied for the first time by more complex life, eukaryotes, but which still only records life in the seas, and none on land ...
• at about 1 billion years ago we find the first tentative evidence of multicellular life ...
• and in the Devonian period for the first time we see fossil evidence of life crawling onto land, such as Tiktaalik rosea at 375 million years ago ...
• etc

It is not the theory or evolution that says this is what happened, rather this is the natural history of what actually happened.

Whether the theory of evolution is true or false, this natural history still exists, it is real, it is the hard evidence of objective reality that any theory - religious, scientific or fantasy - must explain. So far the only theory that comes close to this is the theory of evolution. The only competition in the minds of some people is the theory that all the evidence is lies and that something else made it happen, something for which there is an absolute dearth of evidence, and it magically made it happen JUST AS IF evolution occurred.

Ignoring the evidence of objective reality is what cognitive dissonance is all about Russ. If you try hard enough you can convince yourself the world is flat: all you need to do is ignore all the inconvenient evidence that shows that this is a false concept. Today anyone that claimed the earth was flat would be called delusional: being delusional and cognitive dissonance are linked:
A false belief strongly held in spite of invalidating evidence is the mark of cognitive dissonance as well.

Once again you equate evolution with something else. When you change from the term evolution as defined in life science to describe the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation (descent with modification), to the term evolution as defined in astronomy to describe the way stars etc form, then you are really using two different terms, and you are equivocating between the definitions. This is a logical fallacy. You are also avoiding the issue of what evolution really is.

Evolution in biology is the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation (descent with modification), it is that simple. Also simple is the concept that evolution not in biology is not in biology -- it is a different concept. Conflating them is called equivocation, a logical fallacy

The theory of evolution is that this, and the inevitable division of populations into non-gene-mixing daughter populations, is enough to explain the natural history of life on earth -- the history that goes back to simpler and simpler life forms, and the history that happened, somewhere along the line, some 3 million years ago, developed into a branch of apes we call hominids. Confusing what has happened with what must happen is called a post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy.

Evolution is not the same as the natural history of life, as that would still exist if evolution were false, and it is this evidence that the creationist avoids like the plague. It is reality, and it won't go away.

Avoidance behavior is also typical of cognitive dissonance.

Enjoy.
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Note: my time is limited, so I only choose threads of particular interest to me and I cannot guarantee a reply to all responses (particularly if they do not discuss the issue/s), and I expect other people to do the same. Thank you for your consideration.[/color]