The Theory of Evolution is a lie. We did not come from monkeys.

I can't imagine how you can believe we came from monkeys. doesn't it just make more sense to just say we adapted? Just because we changed our environment doesn't mean we automativally can mutate ourselves and just "evolve." When people get mutetions, they suffer from various illnesses. Can you name me ONE mutation that is positive? Just one. That's all I'm asking for. You can't, simply because there is none. We are made in the image of God, our heavenly father, so when genes in our body changes it goes from good to something bad.

How can you explain how things so complex such as the eye can just have "evolved"? you can't. The fact is, evolution takes faith. How you can believe in something that is so absurd with no evidence is beyond me. Do you realize the probability of us getting here by "chance" is so miniscule that it takes more faith for you to believe in evolution than it takes to believe in unicornes.

Every time I talk to athiests, they can't back their claimes up. All they do is resort to ad-hominem attacks, because that's all they've got. When it all boils down, they have no evidence.

So I challenge you, show me the FACTS, show me the Evidence, to justify this belief, because when it all boils down to, you really have none, don't you.

Ok, I'm going to get to the evidence as quick as I can, but first I would like to quickly clear up some misconceptions about evolution that my opponent has put forth.

1)Evolution does not say we came from monkeys, it says we share a common ancestor with them
2)Mutations are usually neutral because most of our DNA is junk, and mutations are not induced by the change in environment, they are random.
3)Evolution does not say we came here by "chance," although the genetic mutations seem random, the natural selection is definitely not. We are anything but the product of chance.
4) Evolution is not contrary to God, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Now that that's out of the way, let's get to the evidence.

Endogenous Retrovirus (or ERVs):

A Retrovirus stores its genetic information in RNA. (Not DNA). When a Retrovirus infects a cell, it converts its RNA genome into DNA, through a process known as reverse transcription. The DNA then inserts randomly into one of the host's chromosomes. If the virus infects one of your germs cells that make your gametes (your egg or sperm cells). And then if you have sex and reproduce after your germ cells that make your sex cells get infected, the viral DNA will be passed on to the next generation, and all subsequent generations. They will have the SAME ERV sequence at the same EXACT location in the entire genome (~3 billion base pairs)

We know the ERV sequences come from retroviruses for two reasons
1)ERV sequences look exactly like the genome of retroviruses.
2)We can actually see ERVs form after a retrovirus infects a cell.

It is also important to note that ERVs are mutated and rendered non-functional, and serves as a marker only.

It is common knowledge that the human genome is quite similar to the chimpanzee genome. However upon further and closer examination we see certain "interesting" things. On the short arm of chromosome 10 we find a relic of a viral infection, the ERV sequence. On the exact same location in the chimp's DNA there is also an ERV. The chances of 1 pair of viruses inserting at the exact same location in humans and chimpanzees (without common descent) is about 1 in 3,000,000,000.

Also, over on the short arm of Chromosome 1, there is a remnant of another viral infection. And exactly in the same location we find an ERV in the Chimpanzee DNA. The odds of two pairs of viruses inserting at perfectly matches locations without common descent is 1 in 4,500,000,000,000,000,000

Also, if we take a look on the long arm of chromosome 19, we find a third ERV. Guess what? There is a matching ERV in the exact same location in the chimp genome. The odds of us sharing THREE pairs of retroviruses without common descent are 1 in 4,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Also, if we take a look on the short arm of chromosome 6, And another ERV at the exact same location in the chimp DNA. The odds of FOUR pairs of viruses inserting at perfectly matches locations without common descent are 1 in 3,375,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Guess what? There's more. One the long arm of the X chromosome we again find an ERV with another exact match in the same exact location in chimp DNA. The odds of FIVE pairs of viruses inserting at perfectly matched locations without evolution being true is 1 in 2,025,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000000,000,000,000,000,000.

The chance that evolution is false just based on these 5 is equivalent to you and your friend randomly picking the same single molecule of water from all the world's oceans.

And yet there is more still! There are SIXTEEN instances of human endogenous retroviruses having exact matches with chimp ERVs. The odds of SIXTEEN pairs of viruses inserting at perfectly matches locations, with evolution being false are LESS than 1 in 2,057,400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

AND THOSE ARE JUST THE K CLASS RETROVIRUSES! Our genome contains roughly 98,000 ERVs. And most appear in the same location in chimps, gorillas, orangutans, and macaques. The odds that we did not share a common ancestor with the other primates are so small that the chances are just not fathomable.

My opponent asks for just one beneficial mutation, here are some mutations my opponent would consider beneficial:

1)There's a family in Germany who were already unusually strong. But in one case, one of their children was born with a double copy of an anti-myostatin mutation carried by both parents. The result is a Herculean kiddo who was examined at only a few days old for his unusually well-developed muscles. By four years old, he had twice the muscle mass of normal children, and half the fat. Pharmaceutical synthesis of this mutation is being examined for potential use against muscular dystrophy or sarcopenia.

2)And then there's a family in Connecticut who've been identified as having hyper dense, virtually unbreakable bones. A team of doctors at Yale traced the mutation to a gene that was the subject of an earlier study. In that study researchers showed that low bone density could be caused by a mutation that disrupts the function of a gene called LRP5. This clued them that a different mutation increased LRP5 function, leading to an opposite phenotype, that is, high bone density. According to their investigators, members of this family have bones so strong they rival those of a character in the Bruce Willis movie, 'Unbreakable'.

3) Kinfolk in the village of Limone Sul Garda in northern Italy have a mutation which gives them better tolerance of HDL serum cholesterol. Consequently this family has no history of heart attacks despite their high-risk dietary habits. This mutation was traced to a single common ancestor living in the 1700's, but has now spread to dozens of descendants. Genetic samples from this family are now being tested for potential treatment of patients of heart disease.

4) Another example of that is the CCR5-delta 32 mutation. About 10% of whites of European origin now carry it. But the incidence is only 2% in central Asia, and is completely absent among East Asians, Africans, and tribal Americans. It appears to have suddenly become relatively common among white Europeans about 700 years ago, evidently as a result of the Black Plague, indicating another example of natural selection allowing one gene dominance in a changing environment. It is harmless or neutral in every respect other than its one clearly beneficial feature. According to Science-Frontiers.com, if one inherits this gene from both parents, they will be especially resistant, if not immune to AIDS.

How do I know the human race evolved? Simple! The human race is evolving RIGHT NOW!

My opponent asks me how I know the human eye evolved. The answer is simple: I know the human eye evolved because the HUMAN EYE US EVOLVING RIGHT NOW!
We've identified an emerging population of tetra chromatic women who can see a bit of the normally invisible ultraviolet spectrum. Normally humans are tri chromatic with 3 cones, but women who are carriers for variant cone pigments might be born as full tetrachromats, having four different simultaneously functioning kinds of cones to pick up different colors.

We can also show which animals share common ancestors within different species due to their shared atavisms. An Atavism is the tendency to revert to ancestral type. An atavism is an evolutionary throwback, such as traits reappearing which had disappeared generations ago.

This explains how birds still have genes for making teeth, humans still have genes for making tails, and whales still have the genes for making legs. This also explains how some women can be borne (rare case) with extra nipples. The extra nipples follow down the milk line. (Think of a pig or dog and how their nipples are set up.)

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First Bitz, you say you believe in God. You say things like this "Evolution is not contrary to God, don't let anyone tell you otherwise." It also says in your profile that you're jewish.

The Old testament, that you believe in teaches us that man made death. Evolution teaches that death made man. they are NOT compatible.

"ERVs" WOW what novel you wrote! and all for nothing. Of course we share the same genes with chimps, we both came from the same God! Same God, same genes!

If you believe that the universe is older than 6,000 years, how do you explain this: The earth's rotation is slowing down. Not a lot, but just about 1 second every year to 1.5 years. Which is why every 1 to 1.5 years we have a leap second. The clocks are pushed forward 1 second. If you go back about 6,000 years ago when God created the earth, everything would be fine. The days would be slightly shorter, but I don't think Adam had a watch anyway. If you go back 70+ million of years ago, when they say dinosaurs where around, it would be spinning so fast nothing could live on it. Your days would be alot shorter. The winds would have been 5,000 miles an hour from the Coriolis effect. Nothing would've been able to survive. And that's only 70 million years ago. They say dinosaurs first lived hundreds of millions of years ago.

Also, the moon is getting farther and farther away from the earth. millions of years ago the moon would be so close to the earth that the tides would be so high every bit of life would be washed away.

Bitz, just come out of the closet allready, you don't believe in God. You're just a dumb athiest, just like all the others. What kind og God do you believe in anyway? the God of the apes?

You have attacked me with 2 types of arguments:

1) Pseudoscience arguments
2) Religious views.

""ERVs" WOW what novel you wrote! and all for nothing. Of course we share the same genes with chimps, we both came from the same God! Same God, same genes!"

Sorry, the same, God, Same genes argument fails miserably. God also created puffer fish, bacteria, dung beetles, salamanders..etc. Do we share all their retroviruses? Do we even come close to sharing as much DNA with them as we do with Chimpanzees? The answer to both questions is...NO. Interestingly enough puffer fish are the only creatures with no junk DNA. while over 97% of our DNA is junk.

"Which is why every 1 to 1.5 years we have a leap second. The clocks are pushed forward 1 second."

Umm...no.

We know the Earth's rotation is slowing. But that is not the main reason why the extra "Leap Second" was added by our official time keepers this year. The reason for adding a leap second is that the planet does not rotate exactly once every 24 hours (86,400 seconds). The rotation actually takes 86,400.002 seconds so that each day this little difference builds up between the atomic clock and the earth's rotation.

When the difference builds up enough (.9 seconds), the time keepers must add another second (leap second) to keep the stars location, relative to the planet's rotation, in exact sync with the super accurate atomic clocks. The reason for the leap second is to to keep the cumulative difference in UT1-UTC less than 0.9 seconds, So a leap second is inserted periodically in the atomic UTC time scale to decrease the difference between the two.

"The earth's rotation is slowing down. Not a lot, but just about 1 second every year to 1.5 years."

The Earth's rotation is slowing but at a much slower rate than 1 leap second every so many years. The length of time it takes the Earth, at the present time, to rotate once is 86,400.002 seconds compared to 86,400 seconds back in 1820. The rotation has slowed roughly only by 2 milliseconds since 1820.

The rate of change of the earth's day is not 1 second every 1.5 years. It's more like 0.002 seconds every century. We use atomic clocks to measure time now, and to do this scientists needed to set these clocks to a standard time. The time chosen was 1900. However, the Earth's rotation is decelerating at a rate of about 0.002 seconds per day per century. It's been about a century since the atomic clocks' standard time, so the Earth is slowing relative to an atomic clock by about 0.002 seconds every day, or about 0.7 seconds every year. Note that THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE EARTH IS SLOWING IT'S ROTATION BY THAT AMMOUNT; it means that a clock set by the rotating Earth loses time at that rate relative to an atomic clock. We add leap seconds to our calendar to get the two clocks aligned.

The leap second adjustment (which is approximately 0.6 seconds per year) should not be confused with the difference between the length of the mean solar day and the SI day. This confuses velocity with travelled distance (in time). The reason for leap seconds is not the difference but the sum of the difference between the SI day and the mean solar day (currently about 0.002 seconds), over a given period of time. The actual rotational period varies due to unpredictable factors such as the motion of mass within Earth and has to be observed rather than computed.

For example, suppose an atomic clock is used to count seconds from the Unix epoch of 00:00:00 on January 1, 1970. UTC and mean solar time (UT1) were almost identical then. After Earth makes one full rotation with respect to the mean Sun, the counter will register 86400.002 seconds (once again, the precise value will vary). Based on the counter, and assuming that a day is 24×60×60=86400 seconds long, the date will be calculated as 00:00:00.002 January 2, 1970. After 500 rotations, it will be 00:00:00 May 16, 1971 in solar time (UT1), but the counter will register 43,200,001 atomic seconds. Since 86400 × 500 is 43,200,000 seconds, the date will be calculated as 00:00:01 on May 16, 1971, as measured by atomic time. If a leap second had been added on December 31, 1970, then the date would be computed as 00:00:00 on May 16, 1971. The actual system involving leap seconds was set up to allow TAI and UT1 to have an offset of 0 seconds on January 1, 1958.

Interestingly enough, The Civil Global Positioning System Service Interface Committee had a mailed vote go out on abolishing leap-seconds.

Also, it should be noted that some creationist arguments (such as the one spiral posted in the comment section) fail to take into account how the ocean tides affect the earth's rotation. Tides affect the earth's rotation in two sharply contrasting ways. One way, caused by tidal friction, produces an extremely slow secular change in rotation. The other way, caused by the continual movements of the tides about the planet, produces very small but very rapid changes in rotation. These rapid changes occur at exactly the same periods as the tides themselves: half-daily, daily, etc

"Also, the moon is getting farther and farther away from the earth. millions of years ago the moon would be so close to the earth that the tides would be so high every bit of life would be washed away"

The mean rate of lunar recession calculated by lunar laser ranging is ~3.82 cm/yr. according to

http://cdsads.u-strasbg.fr/abs?orig_server=http://adsabs.harvard.edu&orig_bitmap=http://adsabs.harvard.edu&2000RvGeo..38...37W
Even if I give you a ridiculously liberal estimate of 5 inches per year, 1 million years ago, the moon would be 5000000 inches closer to earth. That's only 78.9 Miles. The moon is currently ~240,000 miles away! 78 miles is nothing. Big deal. If we go back a billion years the moon was 5 billion inches closer to earth or 78,914 miles closer to earth, for a total distance of 161,086 miles away from earth. And that's using a ridiculously liberal estimate in your favor.

As for your religious views:

"The Old testament, that you believe in teaches us that man made death. Evolution teaches that death made man. they are NOT compatible."

If God made man knowing they would die, then isn't God responsible for death?

"Bitz, just come out of the closet already, you don't believe in God. You're just a dumb athiest, just like all the others. What kind og God do you believe in anyway? the God of the apes?"

While I admit that my "faith" may not be as strong as other religious people, that doesn't make me an atheist. I also fail to see what this has to do with the debate.

What does atheism have to do with evolution? It's funny how creationists proclaim that God is all-powerful yet still say that he could have not created us via evolution. If God didn't create us through evolution, then considering all the extinct species, God's instantaneous creations would have about a >1% success rate.

Much of Genesis should not be taken literally, for example, when Noah was gathering the animals the bible says how he took all the animals male and female, and it says, "each and his mate" But what about the Asexual animals? what about the creatures that were neither male nor female? Why should I take something that contradicts reality so literally?

Your points have been refuted. Now, let's look at some more evidence for evolution.

We know that our relative primates have 48 chromosomes 24 from mom and 24 from dad, so how did we end up with 46 (23 from mom and 23 form dad)? Could a chromosome have been lost? Nope. That would be fatal. The only possibility is that 2 of our chromosomes fused. And just like evolution predicted, Human chromosome #2 is the product of fusion.

Bacteria, can evolve to eat nylon by a mutation which gains them an extra enzyme (this is off the top of my head correct me if I'm wrong)

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More evidence, and conclusion.

The Fossil Record – For a nice list of transitional fossils, I highly recommend reading http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html
If evolution if true, then many predictions can be made in the fossil record, The fossils should appear in a chronological order, showing change consistent with evolution over millions of years. Guess what? They do. Want to prove evolution wrong? Find me a poodle from the permian period. Find me a fossil bunny in the cambrian. The fossil record is dated with more complex organisms on top, with more primitive ones on the bottom, or better yet, more evolved on top, and less evolved on bottom.

Consistency of atavisms- For what atavisms are see my round 1. We only see atavisms consistent with organisms' evolutionary histories just like evolution predicts. For example Birds evolved from reptiles, therefore if evolution is true, we should expect to see atavisms in birds representing the evolutionary throwback from reptiles, and we do. Also we should not see birds with atavisms representing evolutionary throwbacks from mammals. And that's exactly what we find. Want to prove evolution wrong? Find me a bird with nipples.

Conclusion:

To adequately understand evolution, you not only have to understand how to be scientific, but you also have to know something about cellular biology, genetics, and anatomy, geology, particularly palaeontology, as well as environmental systems, tectonics, atomic chemistry, and especially taxonomy, which most people don't know squat about at all. Most people who accept evolution also tend to know a whole lot about cosmology, geography, history, sociology, politics, and of course, religion.

But to believe in creationism, you don't have to know anything about anything, and its better if you don't! Because creationism relies on ignorance. It is not honest research! It is a scam, a con job exploiting the common folk, and preying on their deepest beliefs and fears. Creationist apologetics depend on misrepresented data and misquoted authorities, out-of-date and out-of-context, and uses distorted definitions if it uses definitions at all.

Creationists like to portray a picture of a divide in the scientific community, with some accepting evolution and some rejecting it. According to Newsweek in 1987, by percentage there are 0.15% of U.S. earth or life scientists that accept creationism. I think this is a good statistic to give some kind of an indication of just how far out of the mainstream creationists are. It's a good rebuttal to the lists of Creation Scientists that are trotted out from time to time by creationists to give the impression that there is something other than a minuscule fraction of scientists that share their beliefs. Project Steve from the National Center for Science Education is also a good answer to this because there are more scientists with names that are a variation of Steve that accept evolution than there are creation scientists on any of the lists that I have see, but I would rather be able to say that there are about 9985 biologists or geologists who accept evolution for every 15 biologists or geologists that believe in creationism. Note that even if the count of creation scientists was off by a factor of 10, an overwhelming 99.85% of biologists and geologists would still be in the rejecting creationism category.

I realise that this is not a case of majority rules, but any reasonable person should be able to see that evolution and presumably a multi-billion year age of the earth is accepted by an overwhelming majority of the people who know the most about the topic.

If creationists expect any kind of increased acceptance of their beliefs in the scientific community, they had better start publishing data to support it in the peer reviewed scientific journals where it can be evaluated and discussed by the scientific community.

Or, they could just present their ideas to the (mostly) science illiterate public and give up on trying to convince the scientific community. A little thought on this topic makes it easy to see why creationists have chosen this route (along with the fact that the scientific community DID evaluate the beliefs of creationism about 100 years ago (and farther back) and a great majority (apparently 99.85% of biologists and geologists at the current time) found that creationism was NOT supported by the evidence).

From the creationist's perspective, the method or mechanism of creation which God uses is nothing more than a golem spell where clay statues are animated with an enchantment. Or its an incantation in which complex modern plants and animals are "spoken" into being. That's right, magic words which cause fully developed adult animals to be conjured out of thin air. Or a God simply wishes them to exist; so they do. THAT'S IT! There really is nothing more to it than that; PURE FREAKIN MAGIC! –by definition. Remember that the next time you hear anything from a creation "scientist".

So for those who believe in God, like myself, the question really is how God created, and whether it was by one of many inextricably integrated natural systems he seemingly designed, or whether he simply blinked, wiggled his nose, wished upon a star and said "abra-cadabera!"