Isaac Newton who is widely recognized as one of the most influential scientists of all time is quoted as saying "In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.
You totally missed my point. And you are turning a blind eye to the facts. I suggest you read the book Undeniable by the distinguished engineer-turned-molecular-biologist Douglas Axe. His experimental work with enzymes and proteins is excellent reading though a bit technical at times. I suggest this book because it would be good for you and your students. And as far as teaching religion in school I’m going to repeat what astronomer Dr. Carl Sagan, said “evolution is a religion which masquerades as science”.
The fact that you won’t allow the discussion of creation in your classroom is very sad because everyone should get a chance to hear both sides an make up their own minds.
Yes there are religious people but also nonreligious people looking (but not having to strain very hard) to discredit evolution. In fact a number of years ago astronomer Dr. Carl Sagan, said that “evolution is a religion which masquerades as science”. When molecular biologist Michael Denton was asked about the claims of evolution being a fact stated “Now of course such claims are simply nonsense.”
You asked what facts lead me to stop believing in evolution, well let’s start with just one, fruit flies. Since the early 1900’s, scientists have exposed millions of these flies to X rays. This increased the frequency of mutations to more than a hundred times what was normal. After many decades, what did the experiments show? Geneticist and evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky made this comment “The clear-cut mutants of Drosophila, (fruit flies) with which so much of the classical research in genetics was done, are almost without exception inferior to wild-type flies in viability, fertility, longevity.”
Another result was that the mutations never produced anything new. And when mutated flies were mated with each other, it was found that after a number of generations, some normal fruit flies began to hatch. If left in their natural state, these normal flies would eventually have been the survivors over the weaker mutants, preserving the fruit fly in the form in which it had originally existed. Why this result? Because DNA, has a remarkable ability to repair genetic damage to itself. I could give you more facts but space on this forum is limited.
I’m glad you have faith in our Creator but your support of evolution is sadly misplaced. And as far as the fossil record goes, Darwin himself was the first to bemoan the extreme imperfection of the fossil record. But he was hopeful that time would supply the transitional forms between species. But time has not produced those transitional forms and I could quote you many scientists to back that up. What the fossil record does show is complete species appearing suddenly as if out of nowhere.
What I find interesting is that there is no harmony among evolutionist as there are many conflicting theories as to how it works. The one most people are familiar with is sometimes called “slow evolution”and that’s because of the time it supposedly takes to happen. The problem this is that the fossil record does not show gradual development of life from one type into another.
Now because of that many biologists think new species may be produced by sudden drastic changes in genes. This has been called the “punctuated equilibrium” theory. They feel that species maintain their “equilibrium” or in other words they stay much the same. But every once in a while there is a “punctuation”, that is a big jump to evolve into something else.
Of course these two theories are completely at odds with each other creating a conflict between the two groups, each attacking the other. And just as a side note these two groups are not harmonious within themselves, both having subgroups with varying ideas on how the mechanics work.
I once believed in evolution like you do now, but after careful study and research have concluded that it is simply not true to the facts.
Isaac Newton who is widely recognized as one of the most influential scientists of all time is quoted as saying "In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.