Why Creationists don't 'get' evolution

You don't get it because you don't want to get it. Just like any religious zealot (I would not hesitate to compare a fundamentalist Christian to a fundamentalist Muslim) it does not matter what is presented, there will always be some 'faith based' excuse to get you out of it.

I have to confess, I really enjoy reading the rebuttals to these posts.

But for those in here who legitimately have not been able to get a good exposure to ideas (ignorant family life, overbearing church, lack of education, etc…) and would like to make a decision based on facts, here’s a few.

What is evolution??

It is not a creature simply ‘waking up one day and deciding to breathe oxygen, although one member of every species was the first to ‘do’ something (call it the Adam effect if you would like).

Biological evolution refers to the cumulative changes that occur in a population over time. These changes are produced at the genetic level as organisms' genes mutate and/or recombine in different ways during reproduction and are passed on to future generations. Sometimes, individuals inherit new characteristics that give them a survival and reproductive advantage in their local environments; these characteristics tend to increase in frequency in the population, while those that are disadvantageous decrease in frequency. This process of differential survival and reproduction is known as natural selection. Non-genetic changes that occur during an organism's life span, such as increases in muscle mass due to exercise and diet, cannot be passed on to the next generation and are not examples of evolution.

Evolution is not a random process. The genetic variation on which natural selection acts may occur randomly, but natural selection itself is not random at all. The survival and reproductive success of an individual is directly related to the ways its inherited traits function in the context of its local environment. Whether or not an individual survives and reproduces depends on whether it has genes that produce traits that are well adapted to its environment.

Individual organisms don't evolve. Populations evolve. Because individuals in a population vary, some in the population are better able to survive and reproduce given a particular set of environmental conditions. These individuals generally survive and produce more offspring, thus passing their advantageous traits on to the next generation. Over time, the population changes.

Oh yea one more thing. For any Catholics out there (Michelle maybe) the Pope even recognized evolution:

Chicago Tribune, Friday, 10/25/96, "POPE BOLSTERS CHURCH SUPPORT FOR EVOLUTION", by Stevenson Swanson, Tribune Staff Writer, Dateline: New York.
"In a major statement of the Roman Catholic Church's position on the theory of evolution, Pope John Paul II has proclaimed that the theory is 'more than just a hypothesis' and that evolution is compatible with Christian faith. In a written message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the pope said the theory of evolution has been buttressed by scientific studies and discoveries since Charles Darwin ... "It is indeed remarkable that this theory has progressively taken root in the minds of researchers following a series of discoveries made in different spheres of knowledge', the pope said in his message Wednesday. 'The convergence, neither sought nor provoked, of results of studies undertaken independently from each other constitutes, in itself, a significant argument in favor of this theory..."
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