No doubt that Jim is correct.  You can totally believe in God and still believe in evolution.  If I would have been born long ago and none of my ancestors had ever lived in a house, with heat in the winter and air in the summer, I would probably not have a problem with having a beard that you can see my face through.   This is a form of evolution. Through the years, we physically get use to what is around us. 

I believe in the bible wholeheartedly.  I believe that we came from Adam.  While Adam looked a little different than we do today, I still believe that is where human life started.  I am not trying to take jabs at people when I say this, but it really don't matter what you or I think.  If you don't believe the bible is inherent, don't worry about it.  Either don't read it, or just read it as an old book.  If you beleive that it was inspired by God, accept  it.  The problem I have is the people that mistake Christians for those crazies that protest liberals funerals.   Another thing that gets me is when people decide what they want to believe out of The Bible (if it such a great book, who made you the person that gets to decide what text matters and what doesnt?).

Bill, you do err, not knowing your own scriptures:

Evolutionist Jeffrey Schwartz (2006) - "they have not been found because they don't exist" - http://www.umc.pitt.edu:591/m/FMPro?-db=ma&-lay=a&-format=d.html&id=2297&-Find

Evolutionist David Kitts - Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of "seeing" evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most notorious of which is the presence of "gaps" in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species, and paleontology does not provide them. (1974), "Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory," Evolution, September.

Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould - "All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms: transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt" - "The Return of Hopeful Monsters," Natural History, 1977

Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould - "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches: the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of the fossils" - "Evolution's Erratic Pace," Natural History

Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist of the British Museum of Natural History in London - "I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them.... Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils.... I will lay it on the line-there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument" - The Listener, 1982

Creationist Duane Gish - "None of the intermediate fossils that would be expected on the basis of the evolution model has been found between single-celled organisms and invertebrates, between invertebrates and vertebrates, between fish and amphibians, between amphibians and reptiles, between reptiles and birds or mammals, or between "lower" mammals and primates." - (1981), Summary of Scientific Evidence for Creation

Evolutionist George Gaylord Simpson - "This *regular absence of transitional forms is not confined to mammals, but is an almost universal phenomenon, *as has long been noted by paleontologists. It is true of almost all orders of all classes of animals, both vertebrate and invertebrate. Tempo and Mode in Evolution

Mark Ridley of Oxford University's Zoology Department - "In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favor of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation... (1981) Who Doubts Evolution?

Jerry Adler - "The more scientists have searched for the transitional forms between species, the more they have been frustrated.... Evidence from fossils now points overwhelmingly away from the classical Darwinism which most Americans learned in high school: that new species evolve out of existing ones by the gradual accumulation of small changes, each of which helps the organism survive and compete in the environment" - Newsweek 1980

Speaking of fairy tales... these experts could all be wrong and you could be 100% right, so if you can just give us all a list of the transitional fossils that have been found... perhaps the senior paleontologist of the British Museum of Natural History overlooked them all.  Thanks.

So let me see if I understand your point here:  A large group of scientists spent 5 years in research and testing, spent millions of dollars and managed to synthetically reproduce the DNA of a bacteria.  Pretty impressive feat, I must admit. 

I bet if another scientist looked at what this group accomplished, he'd sit back and say, "This happened entirely by random chance!".  No, he would recognize that this breakthrough was designed through much effort and hard work.  So why do we look and the billions and billions of incredibly complex organisms alive today and not recognize the same thing about the design of life?

dg12--

I believe in God and read my Bible and go to church and host Bible studies at my house. Why is it that the science that God may have used to create life is insulting? What if God chose to use evolution (and my views on evolution are probably less than scientific)? Should I be insulted by that? Should I be insulted that God created me by life-giving-live through genetics instead of by a swoosh of His hand?

The existence of life and humanity, however it came to be, is an amazing thing. God made it all... And whatever science can learn about HOW God did it is pretty cool. Why should that be insulting?

<<<<<was designed through much effort and hard work. So why do we look and the billions and billions of incredibly complex organisms alive today and not recognize the same thing about the design of life?

There in lies the problem. I don't recognize "the design of life".      The billions and billions of complex organisms were just the "as we see it today" result of incredibly simple and far from complex organisms evolving through random chance of adaptation and mutation. The adaptation being the "need" and the mutation being the screwed up result of something having a defect,  a defect that didn't kill off a particular line of organism.

mrupert wrote:

Why argue over this anyway? I believe in God, some do, some don't. I'm not sure why faith in God is offensive to some people. I assume we all at least like running, otherwise we wouldn't be here.

If you don't want to argue about it then don't click on this thread!  Nobody is twisting your arm.  By the sounds of it you have it all figured out anyway...you pointed out in an earlier post that you believe in God (you mentioned in this post too), go to church, have bible study, etc...you already have all the answers you need, right?

I think we just have to base our beliefs on the best and most accurate data we have available to us.  Best and most accurate involves using a method that has been known to deliver extremely accurate results in the best.

Another important thing to remember about science is "not been proven yet" does not equal "disproven." It takes a signifcant amount of data to prove or disprove something to a reasonable degree of accuracy.

I love a good argument, and I find it strange when people try and prove their faith unto other people. If I don't have to believe for you to believe, why are you trying so **** hard to make me believe?

Faith is believing in something bigger during times of doubt...And its about believing in universal truths, not specific ones. Keep the honesty, forgiveness, love, and modesty with faith. Let science take care of the dinosaurs, analysis, laws, and theories...