Hi Terry

Yup, I thought that the Islamic science stuff was true and I think that it was an impotant factor in my experiences converting to Islam and staying remaining a Muslim.

Have you seen that book 'An Illustrated Guide to Islam'?

It explains all these so called scientific miracles. Like that mountains as pegs stuff. I've seen it all over the place.

I plan to do a series of posts going through each of these 'miracles'.

I'm glad that you seem to have found a peaceful way in life, and that you seem able to understand reality without religious bias :)

Charles

Hi Terry

1. You mean the pic in the sidebar, right? I use to be a Muslim and that pic is from that time.

2. Check out verse 13: http://www.ummah.net/what-is-islam/quran/noble/no...

The noble Quran is a translation done by scholars ftom the Islamic University in Medina, Saudi Arabia: http://kitaabun.com/shopping3/product_info.php?cP...

I wouldn't worry about it too much, though. It's sometimes hard to figure out what its really talking about. Especially as many people seem to be able to derive almost any meaning they like from the texts.

Something wrong with the above wiki link for list of human evolution history fossils:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_evolut...

Yeah, I can see a comment saying you forgot an important site and another asking why your posts aren't appearing.

Both of those comments were approved automatically and I don't know why they are not showing...

Got an exam tomorrow so no time to try and figure it out now.

Also, to say that there are no fossils showing primitive (in an evolutionary sense) characteristics is not true either. Textbooks on Biology are full of references to them.
Here’s a list of fossils which help us understand our own evolution:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_evolut...

Here is some info from wikipedia on someone from your video that I chose at random:

"John Corrigan "Jonathan" Wells (born 1942) is an American author and a prominent advocate of intelligent design.[1] A member of the Unification Church, Wells wrote that the teachings of church founder Sun Myung Moon, his own studies at the Unification Theological Seminary and his prayers convinced him to devote his life to "destroying Darwinism",[2][3] a term which intelligent design proponents often use to refer to the scientific consensus on evolution[4] and which he describes as the theory that various species developed as a wholly natural process "without G"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Wells_(inte...

Here's a quote from Britannica Online Encyclopaedia:" in biology, similarity of the structure, physiology, or development of different species of organisms based upon their descent from a common evolutionary ancestor. Homology is contrasted with analogy, which is a functional similarity of structure based not upon common evolutionary origins but upon mere similarity of use. Thus the forelimbs of such widely differing mammals as humans, bats, and deer are homologous; the form of construction and the number of bones in these varying limbs are practically identical, and represent adaptive modifications of the forelimb structure of their common early mammalian ancestors. Analogous structures, on the other hand, can be represented by the wings of birds and of insects; the structures are used for flight in both types of organisms, but they have no common ancestral origin at the beginning of their evolutionary development. A 19th-century British biologist, Sir Richard Owen, was the first to define both homology and analogy in precise terms."

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/270557/...

I included a link for a site by Berkley University where you can actually learn about homologies.

The video, which is American Christian creationist propaganda, is trying to confuse people with talking about analogies, and past mistakes, without explaining them.

Analogies occur when traits have evolved separately through parallel evolution and do not indicate shared ancestry. For example the flippers of whales and sharks are analogous, however they evolved separately. The whale is descended from land based animals related more closely to birds than to fish. However, even though the forelimb of a mammal can be adapted through evolution to be used as a flipper, because of the common oceanic environment that whales share with sharks, it is far less likely that the underlying bone structure common to all mammals evolved independently in the whale lineage.

Whales in fact have hind legs and pelvises within their marine bodies. Why do you think Allah would have put hind legs and pelvises in organisms he intended to live in the water? http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/... (picture at bottom of page)

Well a quick look at an example of a tautological argument in wikipedia gives this quote by Bush:

"It's no exaggeration to say the undecideds could go one way or another."

Above we see the same idea given in different words.

Now I argued that "Similarities between creatures can be evidence for their having shared a common ancestor".

"Similarities between creatures" and "evidence for their having a common ancestor" are not the same thing. This is a statement which can be investigated, whereas it would be pointless to investigate whether undecideds could go one way or another as they could do so by definition.

Your claim that no homologous traits have been identified is totally false.

Creationists constantly fabricate arguments against evolution which rely solely on the ignorance of people to be believable.

My major reference for this post was Biology (Campbell & Reece, 2008) which is a mainstream introductory text used for Biology (including for medical students) at Universities around the world including the University of Auckland.

A cow cannot mutate a wing as that would require someone to take the genetic code for a wing and stick it into the DNA of a cow in such a way as for it to be expressed appropriately.

Here's a good video about mutations. Also shows how they add new information!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp0esidDr-c

I'm not sure how an example dealing with parts of cars has anything to do with evolution.

We do not find in nature that organisms are made up of a bunch of parts that have been simply put together in different ways.

What we find is that the genetic code, the DNA, for organisms more closely related is more similar than for organisms more distantly related.

DNA accumulates different kinds of mutations. So say there is a small population of a species of gecko. Now imagine a river gets diverted through the middle of their territory. Now you have two populations of reproductively isolated gecko, population A and population B. Population A will now continue to accumulate mutations in its DNA independently of population B. Population A and B will become increasingly, at least at the molecular level, different. If the two populations become different enough then even if the river dries up, for example, they may not be able reproduce successfully and you have a new species.

Have the courage to be honest about modern science. Pick up a standard Uni textbook on biology and just learn. Then we can have a different kind of discussion.

Perhaps you will argue that "Allah" is testing our faith, or it is a deception of the devil, or a conspiracy from scientists all over the globe?