I have done some research in apologetics and the Intelligent Design movement has a great response to Evolution. There is a book (can't remember the name) written by a cell biologist who set out to see if it was possible that evolution could be true, and found that at the cellular level if any one piece of the replication process was disrupted that it would stop the entire process. The idea that a creature could "evolve" would mean that at the cellular level processes would change midstream, which is impossible.

It seems to me that it takes more faith to believe that a human evolved from an ape-like creature than to believe that a loving God created humans in His image, and created the world around us for our enjoyment and His. www.witnesschristianreality.com

Thanks, Kristin. I'm not a Christian, but some kind of godly design is at work here.

Very good commentary. I haven't seen any evidence myself but haven't really searched for evidence in support of evolution. I guess a good start would be Darwin's Origin of Species which I have not read but I guess started it all. Another place would be in skeletal measurements of say the pinky finger and how it got smaller because it's useless etc. Evolution seems to be a belief in the evidence of being able to adapt. "We will adapt" as the Borg would say, and adapting "changing" to become better is a measurable instinctual drive--how's that for evidence? :)

I can answer your questions for you about evolution and I welcome them.
I think a good question to ask yourself is where do scientific theories come from? When you walk into your bedroom and flick the light switch and nothing happens, what do you do next? Chances are you will turn the switch off and on a few times. Even though you are not conscious of doing so, you have formed a hypothesis (an educated guess) that the switch isn't making proper contact, and you are performing an experiment(trying the switch again) to test the hypothesis. When the light still fails to glos, you reject the "bad-contact" hypotesis and replace it with the "bad-bulb" hypothesis. You test this by installing a new bulb. If the new bulb lights, you have confirmed the bad-bulb hypothesis, but if there is still no light, you check the fuse box or circuit breaker. We use these logical, commonsense steps many times each day without thinking about the process. Scientists use these same steps consciously; how they proceed is dauntingly termed the scientific method, but the method is not difficult to understand.
The vast body of knowledge generally known as science proceeds via the scientific method. Activity that does not function this way is a poor bet to uncover truth, a poor way, for example, to design a bridge we would care to trust, and cannot be called science. One does not need to be a professional scientist to come up with useful insight into the workings of the real word, but the validity of the insight can be demonstrated only by the patient, logical, objective workings of science. The public, conforonted every day by the mysteries and symbols of higher mathematics, chemistry, genetics, and electronics, often seems to suspect that scientists are voodoo doctors, shrouding their secrets adn rituals in obscure language so as to exclude oridnary citizens from their private camp. No doubt some scientists, the more insecure among them, do that, and a few - like people in any walk of life - cheat and lie, too. But in fact there is no domain of human knowledge or endeavor that is more open to scrutiny than science; it is in the very nature of science that it be honest, fair and aboveboard, ready at all times to admit its erros and review its theories, and when scientists are caught faking their laboratory results, in support of a doubtful hypothesis, they know they have bought their careers a one-way ticket to oblivion. Without these checks on its practicies, science would be doomed to failure: serious researchers would be few and beleagured, and we would have no polio vaccine, no space flight, no television, no computers, not even plastic garbage bags.

I will post more on the scientific method tomorrow.

Thanks, but I don't need an education in the scientific method. I am already quite a fan of it. I am more familiar with its methods and history, the philosophy of science, the debates surrounding Popper and Kuhn arguments, than most people I know.

Reread what I have written and you won't see any argument with the scientific method.

I am simply questioning the "fact" of evolution, and the way evolutionists argue that it is "proven."

I do not see it as a question of evolution vs. intelligent design. At this point I see much of what is claimed about evolution to be based more on authority and faith than on anything proven.

So please tell me...One thing you KNOW to be true about evolution. Let us take THAT one truth and explore its foundation.

I have a friend who told me that Bill Clinton had done great things for blacks. I asked him for one specific example of one great thing Clinton had done for blacks and he could not give it to me.

So much of what passes for fact is actually accumulated authorities who "claim" something is proven and who are never asked to prove it.

Please...give me one critical thing you KNOW as a scientist is true about evolution.

What I mean to address by mentioning the scientific method is an outline of how the scientific community works. You've characterized the scientific community this way, "but in the agregate they still have not gone any farther than belief...or faith...just like the Christian fundamentalists." Of course, I don't mean to judge you too harshly, but it would appear that this is a strong indication that you do not understand how the scientific community works. It would also appear that you do not know how to research, as the entire field of Biology as it currently stands revolves around the concepts of evolutionary theory. This has been documented in over a hundred years of thousands, if not more, of journal articles dealing with either the process or outcomes of evolution. Since you seem to be a "show me" kind of individual, I direct you to PubMed Central: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/ Here you can find all the evidence you could ever find time to read to give you everything you need to know about evolution as fact and truth.
In either case, I will demonstrate several critical points about evolution tomorrow when I will post about microevolution. The following days I will take the time to explain Geologic Time and The Fossil Record. There, I will demonstrate the hard evidence that evolution has occured.

Well, maybe you should start by checking www.talkorigins.org, or reading a book on evolution, such as Gould's "the structure of evolutionary theory."
That evolution is a fact is supported by evidence from comparative anatomy, geology and the fossil record, but most importantly, by genetics, and molecular biology.
It's good that you want to find out if evolution is scientific. If you check these two sources, you'll see that it is.

I don't think either of you have quite grokked what I am getting at, and that may be my fault in how I am formulating the question, so I will construct another post to more explicitly and clearly get across my point and my question.

I'd be happy to read a post on the subject again.
I agree that the problem is the false dichotomy that is either evolution or God. The problem for creationists holding this position is that their concept of God, a very limited and close-minded one, is not compatible with reality, because based on evidence, science has concluded that evolution is a fact. On the other hand, there are many scientists that believe in God, and have no problem with it being compatible with science. Incidentally, while I'm an atheist, this false dichotomy is the main topic of my blog:
http://eppurevolution.blogspot.com

Perhaps we might start back a step, or two, or three.

One step back: Let's leave the question of corollaries until we establish (or not) the more fundamental propositions. Although there may be ancillary considerations driving individuals to certain positions ... we can have nothing to say about such until we tend to your more fundamental question.

A further step back: Can we reach an understanding of what you will admit as a fact? This is no minor quibble. Although you are the final arbiter in the question, you have asked others to "tell you one thing provably true". To what levels of certainty do you assign different levels and types of proof?

One type of proof is direct observation, along with provably reliable and independent witness. Another, perhaps more available to us, is characterization followed by a realized result in natural process or intervention.

Continued...

Continuing ...

Even that might be a difficult standard, so perhaps another is required. What certainty would you assign a proof derived from characterization followed by a process of further demonstration plus the absence of the contra?

Of course now we've arrived at the third step backward: How certain must these these demonstrations be? Certain in our time? With the precision of our best instruments and most severe intellectual rigor? Without conflict to any (or most, or many) other "facts" (and to what standards must those conflicting facts be held)? And in the case of demonstrating the absence of the contra, to what extent, how wide the survey, must we press that (ultimately impossible) task?

Continued ...

Continuing ...

Ultimately, facts require frames. In the pursuit of facts no inquiring person can dismiss the possibility of magic, nor allow admission of ambiguity. Hands are not assumed to make the noise we believe we hear; apples are not assumed to fall to Earth as we believe we see; viruses are not assumed to respond in a way that improves their future offspring's viability as we believe we observe.

We find these things, in their respective frames, more, or less, a fact to such an extreme extent that the alternatives are highly improbable. That (varying) standard of improbability may not be sufficient for your question. Fine. What would be sufficient?

And so it is these two steps that we have retrace: What types of proof? and, What levels of certainty? will you consider sufficient?

If this dialog is to have a relevancy beyond navel gazing, there's a third question that's relevant: how would you compare your standards for these qualities of the nature of facts to the standards of others?

"Those opening sentences rather floor me. Because it seems to me that evolutionary biologists are jumping the gun: ALL available evidence? REALLY? Or are biologists operating teleologically, knowing that designless evolution simply HAS to be true (primarily because the alternative, conscious design, is impossible because there is not giant white-bearded man in the heavens with a huge penis called GOD or JEHOVAH or whatever you want to call him), so therefore all the AVAILABLE evidence MUST support evolution and besides we are scientifically sophisticated biologists who aren't so naiive as to believe in a GOD, and therefore we have NO REASON to be "aguing about these conclusions.""

no, there's a second conclusion that you are missing. the second conclusion is that a predecessor has done the work. it's newton standing on the shoulders of darwin and mendel.

you are sort of right in railing against this conversation as it occurs now, because it skips steps. it is hard to find a single source that explains how the evidence supports the conclusion. but not if you read the origins of the species. if you go to darwin you can see someone starting to stitch the steps together and it will seem less "teleological".

"And yet I see evolutionists say that evolution is a FACT and they quote a bunch of authorities, and select some facts, but in the agregate they still have not gone any farther than belief...or faith...just like the Christian fundamentalists."

here i will have to disagree. every single fact i can think of to support evolution comes from: dating procedures that help us place fossils in order, the fossils themselves, the living forms around us showing a current state that we can structure our findings around and our studies of genetics that teach us how traits are passed. i'm not sure what exactly you mean by "fact" because you haven't shared any examples, (here are some of mine http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fhc/sedjourn1.htm) but the fossils i have actually seen are the remnants of a real animal that we can place in time before us. this is lightyears from a really old description of what stuff looked like. one is a document and the other is an object that cannot be fabricated with our modern technologies. the document is always going to be less weighty as evidence. witness testimony isn't as good as a murder weapon with your dna on it either, no matter what law and order says.

what is wrong with that? anything? because i do have a problem with equating evidence with testimony. i tried to articulate it, but i'm curious if you really disagree? this is a frankly scary argument to me. did saddam have wmds or not? truth will out.

finally from the comments:

"I agree that the problem is the false dichotomy that is either evolution or God."

this is not a false dichotomy in science. there is no evidence for god, therefore science does not introduce him into scenarios yet. what is false is to assert god should dwell in all things regardless of evidence. that is faith, not science. god, is what keeps us from looking for answers by offering us an out. it would be a shame if we hobbled ourselves going forward by presuming he is in all things pushing our electrons around.

I'm still reviewing the talkorigins.org FAQ, which I must say I pretty much agree with. The writer is generally faithful to being a true scientist. My difficulty comes when people like Carl Sagan cross the line and make statements (as he did on his otherwise wonderful series COSMOS) that life came out of the primordial ooze "purely by accident." That's what I mean by scientists making faith-based statements. Also, by teleological I am referring to those who, like Sagan, have allowed their leap of faith that there is no greater intelligence involved in the origin and evolution of life to influence their interpretation of the science of evolution and to then make statements like "there is no evidence for god; therefore, science does not need to introduce him into any scenarios yet." By its nature, science cannot deal with god as it is defined in many non-Christian ways. I have another post where I talk about the macro-scientific method and the micro-scientific method. There are some things that by their nature can only be proved to oneself and do not submit to scientific proof. Too many so-called scientists have failed to come to grips with this distinction. As a result, they sloppily allow their own faith-based remarks to slip in. The idea that because there is no scientific proof of god it is okay to present in a scientific context that god need not be part of the explanation is a betrayal of the true scientist. More later.