thank you Robert! i'm back in the shack.
you spared me some reading i guess. but anyway i had understood these arguments before (earlier in this thread, maybe, i dont know anymore).
"Of course a species can and often does change its form in response to changing environments. It can adapt, morphologically. It can even exist in many varieties. But if those environments are themselves changed the species can respond to those changes. By ways that are completely understood. Yet it always remains the same species".
i guess we agree on that, because "evolution" as i was more or less told (no one did any sort of "evolutionist propaganda" in the schools i frequented), to me, has never precisely meant that i was the super-grand-son of a fish. certainly because when "evolution" was evoked, it was mainly to talk about the "homo" family, man and his ancestors (you know, the famous poster that displays a certain number of variably hairy individuals, the far-left one almost creeping, and the far-right one walking straight). i suppose that you agree to say that we humans are of the same family that contains great apes (if you do, i won't consider you as an obtuse creationist at all (and i already don't, because you're well informed). on the other hand, i think the theory that says life was first born in water doesn't sound more far-fetched than the other that implies that animal species came out of "we don't know where". both sides are trying to dig more, i hope. and here is what i've always been about: i never said Darwin and his theories were to followed as holy book, but i hardly can believe we came out of nowhere, even if at the start we looked a little different, with shorter necks and foreheads for instance. no matter haw far-fetched our reflections are, and how many mistakes we make in our judgments, measures, and deductions, we just can't be satisfied, saying that species were simply made by intelligent design. intelligent design sounds to me as hard to believe as darwin's theory can be to intelligent design partisans.
about the bonobos:
http://www.bonobo.org/whatisabonobo.html
to me the difficulty to accept THIS view or THAT view could be due to the kind of vertigo provoked by the blanks that are to be filled. evolution theory has been described as fanciful, and intelligent design (some people say it's not exactly creationism) sounds as fanciful to others.
"Man cannot alter the fundamental cycles of nature. No matter how much he may try. The seasons, for example. These are fundamental to the existence of the world we live in. Crazy scientists and polluters may temporarily wreck the effects of the seasons but they (the seasons) will always, inevitably, reassert themselves. Even if, sometimes, their reassertion is violent. For example, man can pollute the atmosphere and chop down all the trees. But the effects of doing so would cause nature to reply, to re-assert itself."
is there any evidence to prove this? can we read the future? here again i believe precaution (even in error) is better than some faith in nature.
"Mankind is the steward of nature. Not its lord. And science, real science, learns from nature"
you sure know the story about the slave and his master... but i agree with you, science learns from nature. and i believe lamarck, darwin, mendel, whoever, have all tried to watch nature as hard as they could.
as for the "laws of heredity", i'm still not convinced they are a "knockout blow" for evolution theory. but maybe i'm not informed enough yet. so i'll keep on looking good documentation.
now: this has nothing to do with the above. maybe your mentioning russia has inspired me to listen to this:
http://www.deezer.com/track/1233202
thank you again! see you.