It seems to me that the goal posts keep getting moved when it comes to the definition of evolution. It seems very flexible to fit whatever you need it to.
Not when it comes to talking about The Theory of Evolution, that has never changed only creationists try to twist it to mean different things.
Also, "The theory is correct whether or not God created the earth, so we can proceed on the working assumption that God created all things." This is Deism, which is the belief that there is a God who made the world but does not influence human lives. And the ToE isn't. It does not allow for this possiblilty.
It is fine if you want to believe a God put it all into motion and said "get on with it" but the Deist view does not mean Evolution never happened, not at all.
It means that God put all the Universal laws into place and then never got anymore involved, which rules out the Theistic Genesis account we read in the Bible, where God gets involved at every turn almost, taking Adam's rib to create Eve for example, and also the Tower of Babbel.
This is a quote from a book called '99% Ape - How Evolution adds up" Page 20: "The reason why natural selection was such a revolutionary idea was because it explained how living beings that contain complicated structures, which look as though they must be designed by an intelligent and skilled designer, can in fact arise without any supernatural intervention. This new concept turned on its head the argument that Darwin had read and accepted as a student. Now, the many wonderful biological mechanisms that Reverend William Paley described in Natural Theology were no longer evidence of the divine, supernatural design, but of an entirely natural process operating without any guidance from above."
This is just explaining that the only tenable hypothesis at the time was that a God or Gods were the driving force behind the Diversity of life, and why every creature seemed so adapted to their environment. Then came Darwin's Hypothesis, which after many years of testing became a Theory, and now the best supported Theory in the whole of Science.
Also on page 194: "...special creation cannot be accepted as an alternative sceintific theory on an equal footing to modern evolutionary theory, and so it has no legitimate place in any science classroom."
All this from a theory which says nothing about God? :sarcastic
it cannot be accepted because it has nothing to support it, not one crumb, that is why. Otheriwse you scould speculate almost anything, not the just the possibility of a Divine Creator, Dawkin's Pink Unicorn for example.
We can only go by what we can deceifer from the evidence, if God left some sort of stamp then we could start on the God Theory, but alas it has not appeared.
In addition, if the ToE has nothing to say about a creator God, why do so many of its text books have paragraphs or chapters dedicated to disproving the existance of God? That goes for the book I took those quotes from too.:sarcastic
When does it try to disprove God?
All it does is say how the life on Earth become so diverse, and why it works better than the God made everything in one day or six days Hypothesis, which at the time was the accepted Theory.
That is what Science and Scientists do, challenge Theories and come up with better Theories that better reflect reality.
Science has been doing it for hundreds of years now, and not just on how life became diverse. It's happened with Gravity, Germ Theory, the laws of motion. Your just getting hung up on Evolution because you were told otherwise by your Holy book, and cannot accept that it is wrong because that for you, is not an option.
