It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
This is a detailed and meticulous description of evolution and the history of biological life. Of its type, this is one of the most comprehensive and readable accounts available. Unfortunately Dawkins is operating entirely within the wrong paradigm!
Creation may be contradicted by facts, but facts don't necessarily add up to truth. Evolution itself is flawed on several counts, for example it cannot explain:
1) Why heavy fish, like whales, don't just sink to the bottom of the ocean
2) Why most trees are so much taller than necessary
3) How non-biological animals, like crocodiles and ostriches, came into existence
4) Why sharks haven't grown legs, moved onto land and taken over the world
5) The existence of invisible species that remain undiscovered
So go ahead and read Dawkins' lucid prose in 'The Ancestor's Tale' - but remember there are some occasions when facts are wrong.
Originally posted by awake_and_aware
It's a lewd guess. I'd prefer to remain open-minded due to my current agnosticism.
There is some confusion about evolution as a fact and evolution as a theory. Often you can find critics claiming that evolution is “just a theory” rather than a fact, as if this demonstrated that it shouldn’t be given serious consideration. Such arguments are based upon a misunderstanding of both the nature of science and the nature of evolution.
In reality, evolution is both a fact and a theory.
To understand how it can be both, it is necessary to understand that evolution can be used in more than one way in biology. A common way to use the term evolution is simply to describe the change in the gene pool of a population over time; that this occurs is an indisputable fact.