Is the theory of evolution consistent or inconsistent with the idea that man appeared on this planet in basically his present form about 6000 years ago? This was one of the points you wanted to address in your OP, whether you realize it or not.

Whenever someone is making an argument and leads with "technically" I'm immediately inclined to believe that the person is desperately stretching the argument in order try to not be wrong.

"Technically" it is probably the case that every living organism on earth share a common ancestor. (And it weren't no monkey!)

I think it has a general direction towards more complexity.

Plants went Algae -> Mosses -> Ferns -> Gymnosperms -> Angiosperms

This is the only good post in the thread. And also, the funniest.

There are ways that people have measured "complexity" - they usually have to do with the number of different tissue types or number of different cell types that an organism possesses.

As for the rest of the argument, grunching heavily but I think people don't understand what evolution is because they a) don't know the definition and b) it is difficult to see in action to the layperson.

As has been stated (then nickpicked heavily, thanks to Aaron), evolution is simply a change in allele frequencies. If Generation 1 has a 50/50 ratio of two alleles and Generation 2 has a 52/48 ratio, congrats, your population has evolved. Of course, this is not something the average person will probably have a chance to see or recognize because most people don't go around measuring the allele frequencies in a population of some species. Microevolutionary processes are very tiny in their effect - a new mutation here and there, natural selection causing small changes in allele frequencies in each generation, etc. It is only continued additive microevolution that produces the large-scale evolutionary processes that cause the production of new features or cause speciation events. These take quite a bit of time - and we only live for 80 years or whatever.

We can't observe a process such as chimps and humans evolving from a common ancestor, but scientists have been able to observe species evolving significantly (peppered moth), even to the point of speciation (apple maggot fly).

And of course, religion is probably the main thing for a lot of people.

Again, with respect to OP's original intentions, is evolution consistent with the idea that humans appeared in basically their present from about 6000 years ago?

If yes, then you simply must accept that you're using a different meaning than what is conveyed in the question.

If no, then your definition of evolution is somehow deficient.

Either way, OP's "That's it! That's evolution!" falls short of his goals.

c'non Zeno when the argument being given against evolution being obviously true is that an obviously true but none the less contingent scientific fact isn't contined within the definition then its long past time to move.

Note from previous posters: "Falls short of OP's [his] goals" (apparently, given whatever they were/are) but this has nothing to do with the facts and definition of evolution from scientists that know what they are disscussing, for example: The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, by Stephen J. Gould


http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Evol...1593011&sr=1-3

Or, just for another example, a reputable peer-reviewed journal: Journal of Paleontology:

http://journalofpaleontology.org/


So perhaps we are in agreement. But whatever, this charade has probably gone on too long, just as I let another charade go on too long in another thread. Nothing will be moved. This thread has met the unmoved mover. Thread Closed.

Posters can go continue their weaseling in other forums and threads.

-Zeno