herk,
It seems to me that if feet and hands started to develop in an ancient animal because it felt a need for them, we should see such development of other "add-ons" going on right now. No matter how much we may want them, none of us can focus our concentration so much as to start developing wings, or the long-distance vision of an eagle, or the ability to see at night like an owl, or to make our way through the dark using sonar like a bat, etc.No scientist believes that evolution is caused by thinking about "adding on" new features. None. Blind genetic mutation accompanied by a selecting agency -- nature red in tooth and claw -- account for evolutionary adaptation, and this over millions upon millions of years. Not to mention symbiosis at the cellular level and sexual selection. It seems you know not a thing about evolutionary biology.
Additionally, everywhere people, plants and animals are constantly dying. They grow through a stage of advancement from youth to maturity, but then their lives ebb and decline. If evolution were true, it seems to me, there would not be this receding into extinction. If life was originally sparked into existence eons ago, it would have died before very long, just as living things do now. No living things live long enough to advance into something better. Instead of advancing to a newer and better stage of development, they devolve into something inferior to what they were when they began until they finally die.What the hell are you taking about? "If life was originally sparked into existence eons ago, it would have died before very long, just as living things do now." Ever hear of reproduction? No individual organism on it's own evolves. It's populations over time that evolve.
Old cars may still run, but eventually they deteriorate into a heap of rust and useless metal. They don't of themselves sprout new tires, a new engine, a new paint job, etc. Old trees don't develop thinking ability. When they sprout their final crop of seeds, they don't pass on intelligence to any trees that sprout from those seeds. I have a neighbour whose dog sounds like he can talk. He's been trained to sing, and it does sound almost like a human. But when the dog dies, her ability to sing will die with her. Any puppies she has will not know how to sing without being trained, and their ability, in turn, will die with them. The same is true of us humans. We have kids, but those kids have to start from the very beginning just as we did. They don't immediately know instinctively all that we learned as we walked through life. And they don't inherit any skills that we developed. No matter how much we yearned to sprout wings so that we might fly, they won't be born with that same yearning. Whatever they become, they have to start from scratch as we did and grow for themselves.Here's a little puzzle for you high-school biology enthusiasts: How many straw-man arguments does "herk" use in this paragraph?
I honestly don't think I'm being stubborn about this. I've read several books that promote the idea of evolution, with the thought that maybe I'm missing something that might enlighten me. At this stage, I see evolution as simply another religion invented by humans. It's just another dogma that fills a need for some.
Total bullshit. You don't know what you are talking about. What are some of the "several books that promote the idea of evolution" that you have read? No, really -- I want to know. Name the titles and authors and what you didn't understand in their argument. After that, take a look at Richard Dawkins' "
The Blind Watchmaker" and Ernst Meyer's "What Evolution Is." Or just go to www.talkorigns.org and you will see not only the arguments for evolution simply explained, but also the arguments against the oxymoronic "Creation science."