Like most people, I never really bought the idea that life just
spontaneously developed out of nowhere, and then humans came from fish
or whatever.

Neither did Darwin.

Seen this...?
http://www.boardsmag.com/screeningroom/commercials/1959/

I were you I'd stop telling people to read stuff by Dawkins if your
goal is to convince them that the Theory of Evolution has any basis in
fact.

Conspiracy of Doves wrote:

Try reading Dawkins for once instead of Hovind, Gould instead of Behe,
unless of course you wish to make sure that you can keep yourself
ignorant of any actual facts regarding evolution and you want to hide
behind your ignorance so you can continue to believe in magical
explanations like creationism for no other reason than that you want to
believe them.

I don't want to tell you your business, but if I were you I'd stop
telling people to read stuff by Dawkins if your goal is to convince
them that the Theory of Evolution has any basis in fact. Or is the
following what you consider to be evidence and facts?

-----
Richard Dawkins on how birds started to fly. (In his book "Climbing
Mount Improbable") He doesn't know how *it* happened, but he is
insistent that it *did* happen. Richard Dawkins has *faith* in
evolution.

pages 125 and 126
"Here's one guess as to how flying got started in birds. The
hypothetical ancestor, which we can imagine as a small, agile dinosaur,
runs fast after insects, leaping in the air with its powerful hind legs
and snapping at the prey. Insects had evolved into the air long
before. A flying insect is perfectly capable of taking evasive action,
and the leaping predator would benefit from skill in mid-course
correction. To some extent you can see cats doing this today. It
seems difficult because, since you are in the air, there is nothing
solid to push against. The trick is to shift your center of gravity.
You can do this by moving bits of yourself relative to other bits. You
could move your head or tail, but the obvious bits to move are the
arms. Now, once the arms are being moved for this purpose, they become
more effective at it if they develop surfaces to catch the air. It has
been suggested that the feathers on the arms originally developed as a
kind of net for catching insects. This is not so far-fetched as it
sounds, for some bats use their wings in this way. But, according to
this theory, the most important use of the arms was for steerage and
control. Some calculations suggest that the most appropriate arm
movements for controlling pitching and rolling in a leap would actually
resemble rudimentary flapping movements.

The running, jumping and mid-course correction theory, when compared
with the tree-gliding theory, reverses the order of things. On the
tree-gliding theory, the original role of the proto-wings was to
provide lift. Only later where they used for control, and then finally
flapping. On the jumping for insects theory, control came first, and
only later were the arms with their surfaces commandeered to provide
lift. The beauty of this theory is that the same nervous circuits as
were used to control the center of gravity in the jumping ancestor,
would, rather effortlessly have lent themselves to controlling the
flight surfaces later in the evolutionary story. Perhaps birds began
flying by leaping off the ground, while bats began by gliding out of
trees. The debate continues. In any case modern birds have come a
long way since those early days."
----------

A long way indeed!, considering that Dawkins has absolutely no clue
whether they came about by the "running, jumping and mid-course
theory", or by the "tree-gliding theory". Just a *little* difference
between those two "theories", wouldn't you say? But that makes little
difference to Dawkins, because he *knows* birds evolved from small
dinosaurs. He *just* knows it.

The obvious bits to move are your arms? What about the tail--you know,
like monkeys do, today? And these alleged creatures where supposed to
be small dinosaurs? Running dinosaurs typically have large back legs
and tails and usually small front legs (arms). Why, then, would the
arms be the obvious "bits" to move in order shift weight, while
leaping? The obvious bits would seem to be the tail and hind legs,
where most of the weight is concentrated.

Dawkins wrote a lot of words here. But they can be summed up simply:
"I have no damn clue how birds evolved from dinosaurs. They just did".

Or did I miss an actual fact in any of--what appears to be the
droolings of a toothless codger, boring the hell out of his
grandchildren? No--I didn't think so. Dawkins and all evolutionists
have no clue, whatsoever, how birds *supposedly* evolved from
dinosaurs.
------

From page 123
"Our species seems to be the only mammal to use the two legs in the
alternating, bird-like gait, but we are not very fast and we use our
arms, not for flying but for carrying things and making things. All
the fast-running, two legged mammals use the kangaroo gait in which the
two legs push together rather than alternately. This gait grows
naturally out of the horizontal spine-flexing of a typical running
quadruped such as a dog. (By analogy, whales and dolphins swim by
bending the spine up-and-down, mammal style, whereas fish and
crocodiles swim by bending it alternately to left and to right,
following the ancient fish habit. Incidentally, we should wonder more
than we do at the unsung heroes among the mammal-like reptiles who
pioneered the up-and-down gait that we now admire in sprinting cheetahs
and greyhounds. Vestiges of the ancient fish wriggle are perhaps still
to be seen in tail-wagging dogs, especially when the movement spills
over to the whole body in the squirming of a submissive dog.)"
-----

That's what I always think about when Spot wags his tail. "Ah, yes,
the *ancient fish wiggle*. Well done, Spotty, 'ol boy!"

"And, now, let's give a toast to those *unsung heroes*, the first
*mammal-like reptiles who pioneered the up-and-down gait*".
-----

From page 273
"Wings are tools for spreading genetic instructions for making wings.
In the peacock's case they make their mark as gene preservers
especially when the bird is surprised by a predator and shoots briefly
into the air. Plants manage something akin to flight organs for their
seeds (Figure 8.6), but in spite of this most people would probably not
be happy to use the word 'flying', in its true sense, for plants.
Plants, it seems, don't fly, and they don't have wings.

But wait! From a plants point of view, it doesn't need wings of its
own if it has bee's wings, or butterflies' wings, to do the job for it.
In fact, I wouldn't mind calling the wings of a bee plant wings. They
are organs of flight that are used, by the plant, to ferry its pollen
from one flower to another. Flowers are tools for getting plant DNA
into the next generation. They work like peacocks' fans, but instead
of attracting peahens they attract bees. Otherwise there is no
difference."
-----

"Uh... sure thing Mr. Dawkins. Tell you what--don't call us--we'll
call you."

The whole book is full of crap like this. This is not science, folks,
not by any stretch of the imagination.

Richard Dawkins is an idiot who should be an insult to evolutionists.
The fact that evolutionists regard him as a *great thinker* is a
testament to their lack of scientific integrity.

-----
Paulo Joe Jingy
Sometimes some things just ain't right.