Hi Jeanie,

Gosh, you've raised quite a number of issues in your post. I'll pick out a few to address.



I think the evidence for evolution having occurred is substantial. We don't know everything about how, and I expect we'll continue to learn as we study, but we seem to understand several of the mechanisms pretty well. I don't see a problem with believing that evolution is God's way of creating humans and all other living things.



Humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor; they are two different lineages. To address the other implicit misconception here, a parent species does not necessarily die off when a daughter species evolves. This site explains pretty clearly and concisely.



The offense here is not the theory of evolution, but the fact that someone let these children believe that the theory implies that blacks are ape-like. Humans evolved from an apelike ancestor. We are all members of one species, homo sapiens, and the vast majority of scientists do not see enough variation in races to count any of them even as sub-species. This should have been explained to the children so that they did not walk out of school with the misconception that evolution equals racism. Why on earth would it?



Thank you for your honesty. I think this is true for a lot of people -- when beliefs are strongly held, we feel uncomfortable when new information comes to light that challenges them. The natural reaction is to ignore it or dismiss it. If you're brave, you might decide to alter your world view to incorporate it. I was there a few years ago when I learned about holistic medicine and realised that my doctor didn't know everything and in fact all he could do for me was prescribe toxic medications that made me worse. 99.9% of people seem to trust their doctors implicitly and it's hard to go against the grain like that. I wish I could go back to that comfortable little bubble where I could just tell the doctor what was wrong and a medication could put it right -- but my ignorance has forever been dispelled and I simply can't do that.

As far as the apparent randomness of evolution, who knows? You could believe that there's a divine design underlying the randomness, and that God subtly guides the direction evolution takes. I personally believe that there's growing evidence that the environment has more of an effect on organisms than we might think, and that there's very much a symbiotic relationship between a species and its habitat. I tend to lean toward something called the Gaia hypothesis, which sees the whole earth as one organism, though I think that idea itself is a bit simplistic. I certainly think that everything is interconnected. So again, while I think the evidence is clear that evolution happens, I think there are still things to learn about the complex ways in which it actually operates. Genes, while important, don't seem to have the paramount importance that was attributed to them a few decades ago. (Some call this biology's central dogma -- that we are controlled mainly by our genes.)

If we look at the fossil record, we can see a progression of life from single-celled organisms. More transitional fossils and more new species of fossils are found all the time. We also have dating methods which help us to understand how these pieces of the puzzle fit together. (BTW, creationist websites, books, etc, claim all kinds of things, and they also know they have to try to rubbish dating methods if they want people to believe that evolution did not happen. They rely on people who will take what they say at face value and not probe into it too deeply. But if you do study the actual details of what they say, you always find errors. Carbon dating is one of their favourites to try to shoot down, even though it isn't used to date anything more than about 40,000 years old anyway.)



Not the complete pelvis, but a substantial part of it. In fact, the skeleton is 40% intact, and as humans are bilaterally symmetrical, a great deal of information can be learned from her, including her probable methods of locomotion. What's more, there are other existing fossils of australopithecus afarensis and other australopithecines with which she can be compared. You can learn a bit more about her, and see the skeleton, here. You might also be interested in the diagram that CTD is unwilling to address, which compares the pelvis, femur and foot of australopithecus africanus to those of a chimp and a human. You can see which ones they most closely resemble for yourself.

To conclude here, I also believe that science is only one piece of the puzzle in the search for truth. it's a big piece, though, and I think some people are too willing to dismiss what it tells us when it conflicts with beliefs they have. Whatever I believe myself, it's rooted in some kind of evidence that I've found, even if it isn't necessarily the majority view. There are a few scientists out there, for example, whose ideas I am very intrigued by, even though the establishment tends to think they are crackpots. I won't tell you, though, that I simply believe they are right -- I can explain to you what they are studying and how, what they have learned, and how this doesn't have to conflict with everything we already know; rather, it adds to it, like Einstein added to Newton's laws of physics.

I think this is probably plenty to chew on for now <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> I could never be bored by it.