Do you believe in Evolution?

[Negrek]

But apparantly, all the fossils that have ever been found only ever date back to a certain period in history. Can't remember the date. But there have been no fossils found anywhere in the world which predate this certain "date" in history. Now, soft celled organisms don't fossilise well, they're soft celled, so they decay instead, unlike hard-celled organisms, which preserve nicely. (fossils are cool, hooray!)

So, as far as I remember, this seems to mean that there could have been soft celled organisms pre-dating any fossils that we've found so far, because of the fact that they don't fossilise.

I guess this could therefore imply that there were human-like organisms before the fossils we've already dated.

It's true that there were fossils long before what we are able to detect (or so we assume). However, the farthest back that we've gotten fossilized evidence of life is waaaay back to the single-cell days, when there was hardly any oxygen in the atmosphere and things were very different than they were today, in general. Certainly, a human as we know it couldn't survive in those times.

We haven't, of course, found a conclusive "origin" fossil for the human evolutionary chain that, like archaeopteryx, seems to represent a turning point in evolution or point the way towards what's to come; it's entirely possible, if not almost certain, that there are fossils of human-like organisms that predate any that we have currently found. However, there are fossils from well before when humans are thought to have emerged (dinosaurs and so forth), so although there might be fossils farther back in the human lineage that we haven't found, they're certainly not older than anything we've discovered (in terms of resemblance to currently living humans, anyway).

In short, I fail to see how that would refute evolution... ?

[DarkTemplarZero]

Well yeah, beer is weak, except John Harvard's Pale Ale, that's good stuff. Smirnoff is the shiz (I'm Russian, what do you expect?). But I digress.

"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes." -- Gene Roddenberry

[Katie]

Well considering pretty much everything we know about biology relies on the concept of evolution, yes I do believe it. I haven't seen any reasonable evidence that contradicts it either. Hell, we've SEEN microevolution, and micro + time = macro. I guess if you believe the earth is 6000 years old, that could be a roadblock. But we've dated rocks back to 4.55 billion years, and archaebacteria fossils back to 3.8 so.........
If the theory ain't broke, don't fix it. Give it a century or two and it'll probably be a law.
Hypothesis = untested idea.
Theory = hypothesis that has been tested a lot, and hasn't been disproven yet.
Law = theory that is very very unlikely to disprove.
There's not going to be some random fossil we'll find that will automatically change it from a theory to a law, so I wish people would stop using that stupid "evolution is just a theory durrr" line.
On a related note, intelligent design. Oh god. Everyone's entitled to believe in ID if they want, but it's fucking retarded to try to shove it into schools. It'll cripple the advancement of science. ID is basically writing on a math test "I don't know how to do this problem, and therefor it cannot be done. Since there is an answer, and no way it can be done, I'll just assume that only a being of a higher power could work out the middle part." Don't just GIVE UP, FIGURE IT OUT. Jesus.

Personally I find the whole idea of evolution and the origin of life/origin of planet and whatnot fascinating. I'm taking a Historical Geology class next semester, can't wait!
There is one thing I don't really get though. Since evolution is based on mutations, does that mean that every human living right now developed from one individual animal that happened to have that one trait?
...I can't really phrase this question. Argh. Ok. Rephrase.
A million years ago there were 5000 same species monkeys. One has [random important trait]. Do ALL 4999 other monkeys' family trees die off, and EVERYTHING that ever evolves from this species of monkey is a direct descendent of that one single monkey with [random important trait]? Or could multiple monkeys have developed [trait]? I hope someone can translate my jibberish and form an answer, because it bugs me.