I'm going to ask if you both can leave it at that for now, because you have asked quite a lot of questions. If you carry on them some of them will probably get lost in the shuffle. And some require some detailed explanations.

Ikester, I'm beginning to wonder about these people you are debating with. They seem to be lacking some fundamental scientific knowledge. It would be interesting to read what you're talking about, would you like to link? Don't worry, talking here is time-consuming enough and I'm not going to take the discussion anywhere else myself.

I'll answer some of these questions with what I know, and leave others requiring more detail for later, or for someone else with more knowledge at their fingertips than me. I'm sure they will chime in about the specifics regarding the definition of evolution and speciation, for example.

2.) Life is always evolving because mutations happen, and in the natural world natural selection works on them. A more interesting question might be, are humans still evolving, given the fact that natural selection is not as big a factor in modern existence?

3.) I can only envisage evolution "stopping" if a species such as ourselves is able to stop mutations from occurring and being passed on to offspring, and also completely stop natural selection from being a factor. Were you aware that if we compare the skeletons of early modern humans and today's humans, you can see a trend toward the skeletons being more gracile and less robust? It would be interesting to speculate about what could be driving this.

4.) See above.

5.) See above. I'm not sure what you're asking here exactly. If an organism is supremely successful in its environment, it is unlikely that the organism will change very much unless its environment changes too. When the environment changes, then the organism has to adapt or it will become extinct. I believe that genetic drift can also occur to a degree, though others here will be able to tell you more about that than me.

I've never heard the term "de-evolve."

6.) We've just been talking about the "were you there" objection. Firstly, I said that we can learn about the past from clues -- by studying and comparing them. Secondly, I said that evolution has actually been observed, and I reminded you of Russ2's post about bacteria evolving from beneficial mutations.

Your other questions appear to be on the topic of "irreducible complexity." That's a bigger subject, which I'll put aside for now, though I'll come back to it later if no one else discusses it. RAZD knows quite a lot about this.

One other point here, which is of interest to me:



It gets stranger than that. It actually appears to be possible that the heart can contain aspects of human consciousness. There are reports of people having transplants and having very strange subsequent experiences which are later linked to the heart donor in some way.

We don't understand a lot about consciousness, and personally I think there's some good evidence that the mind is more than, and extends beyond, the brain. If we don't fully understand something, though, does that mean we have to say that God did it? Or might that mean that there's something interesting to study so that we can understand it better? There's evidence that animals have certain telepathic abilities just like humans do. One of the leading researchers in this field, himself a scientist, is an evolutionist, and he is quick to point out that these abilities could have evolved just like other traits, because they are advantageous for survival. If you're still wondering about what I debate scientists about, you can probably see now. The only way I get anywhere is by presenting evidence though. We've had some great conversations. The impossibility of anything evolving never enters into it though, because there is so much evidence for evolution being what actually happens.



Presumably we would have to be able to predict random mutations, which we can't, and we'd also have to be able to predict what selection pressures will be in the environment, which we can do to an extent. We can also study species in the fossil record, compare them to known climatic changes, and see how life responded to changes in the past. We can also observe how it is responding now to changes such as deforestation and global warming.