If you think that the odds of winning $350,000,000 in a lottery equate to the likelihood of even one beneficial and inheritable mutation, let alone the spontaeous generation of a living cell, you have no concept of the numbers involved. I don't play the lottery, and am not sure if the winner had to pick the numbers in order. If so, the odds of winning were something 1 in 17,000,000, and of course millions of tickets were sold. The odds of there being at least one winner were pretty good. If the numbers didn't have to be in order, the odds were more like 1 in 142,000. On the other hand, many assumptions go into the speculative statistics used to equate the odds for evolutionary origins and progress, but a typical number figured for the odds against randomly forming even one protein molecule in nature would have another hundred zeroes.

Regarding belief in evolution, of course "promotion" matters. And of course evolutions promote what they believe. Else why would you or a Richard Dawkins or anybody else care what's taught about origins? And of course there has been a conscious effort to promote evolution as a dogma. National Geographic devoted their Nov 2004 issue to exactly that theme. There are scores of websites dedicated to promoting the doctrines of Darwinian evolution. There are numerous publicly funded resources intended to equip school teachers to promote evolution. Why do you pretend outrage?

There is a vast difference between Ben's "I believe in the Bible as written" and Essay's "I believe in the Bible too" with the subsequent qualifiers.

Let's see, you ask for a list of three "THREE who have respectable credentials in fields of science pertinent to evolution and no pre-existing religious agenda" who dissent from Darwinian evolution. But that's a red herring. Anyone, from atheist to Muslim fundamentalist might be assumed to have a "pre-exisiting religious agenda" if you don't agree with them. The link Ben supplied already provides just such a document signed by some 500 current PhD professors in the sciences at respected universities, including biology, molecular biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, engineering, etc. The dissent is there, among trained professionals in the sciences.

We can have dueling dogmatic statements yet again... As has been stated here before, the doctrine of evolution not only is not a cornerstone of biology, it is completely irrelevant to research and discovery in biology, which require experimentation, testing, and observation. But never mind.

Essay, you're wasting time and space restating what you've said before. We've already been down this road in 2002 and 2003. You aren't bringing up any new information or ideas or beliefs on your part, you're regurgitating the same things you said then, and I really don't care to take the time to compose point by point answers again. That's why we have archived pages (pages 5-6 in this case).

For the curious, see threads such as those begun with post 679 or 815. We've already talked about chewing the cud, and the sunrise, and Genesis and pagan myths, and so on and so on.

Looking back at the "transitional form" mentioned in post 815 (which was a "promotion" and which Essay also posted verbatim on other sites at the same time), detailed analysis or current discussion of those published finds, or really the lack of it three years later in science forums is noteworthy. Not even the putative discoverer, Dr. Xu Xing, touts microraptor as any sort of transitional form, and less is certain about the fossil now than when it was first published. It's difficult to find anything published about that find three years later. In a three year old article found here http://www.china.org.cn/english/culture/60033.htm the following paragraph deals with it:
The crow-sized Microraptor represents the most bird-like dinosaur found so far. Its integument, characterized by a rachis, appears to be exactly like feathers preserved on the bodies of birds in the same rock. It also has other features that further ally it with birds, such as the clawed feet that may have been adapted for tree-dwelling.

Curious that the microraptor fossil not only isn't transitional, but actually was found in rock with birds, which somehow was left out in popular reports. Also curious that the story of birds and dinosaurs from an evolutionary perspective is competely up in the air as to any relationship at all at this date, despite what is presented in the popular media.

The same article referenced above also mentions a problem archaeologists of all kinds have to deal with:
Despite the many exciting discoveries, Zhou noted that advances in the understanding of the Jehol biota have been hampered by illegal collecting, the manufacture of fake and composite specimens, and the illegal sale and export of fossils.

And even such notable publications as National Geographic and Nature, in their zeal for promoting evolution, have published some of those fakes, the most notable having been National Geographic's hasty publication of archaeoraptor in 1999.

Meanwhile, right now, the debate about how to interpret fossils goes on among evolutionists. In the recent article on the open question of dinosaur feathers at http://www.hon.ch/News/HSN/528434.html we have highlights of the total disagreement about the speculative evolutionary relationship between dinosaurs and birds, noting diametrically opposed viewpoints. One thing I find interesting is that when researchers tried an experiment to see whether an illusion of feathers might be produced in a fossil of an animal with no feathers, and the experiment apparently did produce the illusion of a feathered dolphin fossil, the reaction of Dr. Xu Xing was:
"I don't agree with their argument," said Xing Xu, the museum's resident expert on avian evolution. First of all, he said, looking at the recently decayed remains of a modern animal tells us little about how dinosaur protofeathers might or might not have been preserved in stone tens of millions of years ago.

So then, modern processes "tell us little about" the formation of ancient fossils? Amazingly enough, evolutionary ideas not only can't be experimentally verified, they can't even be experimentally challenged or clarified or evaluated in scientific terms at all. That a strange kind of science.