Evolution

This is actually one of my favorite anecdotes regarding evolution:

"An example of evolution resulting from natural selection was discovered among "peppered" moths living near English industrial cities. These insects have varieties that vary in wing and body coloration from light to dark. During the 19th century, sooty smoke from coal burning furnaces killed the lichen on trees and darkened the bark. When moths landed on these trees and other blackened surfaces, the dark colored ones were harder to spot by birds who ate them and, subsequently, they more often lived long enough to reproduce. Over generations, the environment continued to favor darker moths. As a result, they progressively became more common. By 1895, 98% of the moths in the vicinity of English cities like Manchester were mostly black. Since the 1950's, air pollution controls have significantly reduced the amount of heavy particulate air pollutants reaching the trees, buildings, and other objects in the environment. As a result, lichen has grown back, making trees lighter in color. In addition, once blackened buildings were cleaned making them lighter in color. Now, natural selection favors lighter moth varieties so they have become the most common. This trend has been well documented by field studies undertaken between 1959 and 1995 by Sir Cyril Clarke from the University of Liverpool. The same pattern of moth wing color evolutionary change in response to increased and later decreased air pollution has been carefully documented by other researchers for the countryside around Detroit, Michigan. While it is abundantly clear that there has been an evolution in peppered moth coloration due to the advantage of camouflage over the last two centuries, it is important to keep in mind that this story of natural selection in action is incomplete. There may have been additional natural selection factors involved. "

It is in print in an article here (and this is not spamming, just linking to info): [url=http://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/evolve_2.htm]Early Theories of Evolution: Darwin and Natural Selection[/url]

It is interesting to note that humans have evolved even recently because of our tendency to allow weak genetics to persist in our species. We actually foster the evolution of trait deficiencies as a rule. (We're also the only non-water-dwelling species that defecates in our water as a rule, but that's a tangent.)

Baldness (lack of fur for warmth and presentation); poor eyesight (not good for former hunter/forager creatures); numbed sense of smell and hearing (easier prey targets); and then our teeth and bones have become less dense because we no longer put the stresses on them that our ancestors did. Most of our recent changes (as I've stated before) are mutations relative to our artificial world and habits. We have even forgotten how to walk properly because we no longer need to hunt, nor do we worry about roots, rocks, and potential dangers when walking along a nice, flat sidewalk or tiled floor.

Evolution is technically a theory, but a theory (Meister beat me to this) is actually pretty solid in the face of intensive scrutiny and testing, and is, for all intents and purposes, tacit fact by deduction. There are other things, such as atoms, that are technically theoretical but accepted as fact. Here is another article regarding as much, as well:
[url=http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html]Evolution is a Fact and a Theory[/url]

Evolution exists. As someone who has lived in the wild about as wild as one can be, I submit that appreciating the application in the adaptations that nature creates is an amazing and beautiful thing.

But there is also energy. Energy exists. It is what makes thing happen. We function by virtue of electrical influence. Lightning is raw energy, as well. The energy inside of all of us exists in all elements, as that very atom vibrates in all things.

We can even feel the energy emanate from others. We are stimulated to sympathy when a loved one is sad. Laughter of a baby makes many of us smile. And rude actions from another incite anger. We protect others from abuse inherently. This is the essence of raw energy that is formed as spirit. It is that thing that prompts our energy to move. Spirit is like the ethereal blasting cap for the chi or ki. We all share it with all things.

The universe is the embodiment of energy. The productive force of that energy is called unconditional love. Cycles have developed over billions of years in a progression of chaos and order always working as conflicts resolving to productivity and growth. The default of nature is unconditional love. Some call this "the will of God." The gift we have from nature--nature: the only reality upon which we can all agree--of free will and to appreciate the beauty of it all may be considered a construct of God. And it is because we are all part of this construct together, all made of exactly the same universal dust, that we have an opportunity to find a unity by this truth.

In other words, no matter what happens, we are accountable for striving for healthy and productive spirit for the whole, because we cannot be separate. Again, what may be called the will of God, and what should be based upon the truth of Creation, which science proves.

In other words again, why not accept evolution as proof of God's amazing versatility, creativity, and allowing us the gift of forever changing and adapting with our free will to become the best that we can be?

Just to stretch it a bit further (more appropriate to expound on the other thread, I know), but science is actually a great sounding board for not so much disproving the existence of God (that's impossible in any form), but for helping us to understand the real messages passed down, filtered, and interpreted for hundreds of years so that we don't make the mistake of bending interpretations of truth to fit our subjective desires.

What if Jesus didn't magically multiply a few fish and loaves of bread into a plethora to feed the masses? What if, instead, he gave every single person in the masses a tiny, equal portion, and made them understand how to appreciate sharing, getting something--but not more or less than anyone else--and how to appreciate what they were given by God? What if the water didn't turn into actual wine, but instead he taught the people how to savor and appreciate God's water--Earth's blood--as if it were the sweetest most flavorful wine of sustenance in the world?

I submit that Science and Creationism can work together. (Better than Politics and Science or Religion and Politics any day!)