What other theories for the "mechanism" of evolution are there besides natural selection?  Just curious.

I, as an agnostic, consider why evolution and God cannot both co-exist?  Why does it have to be one or the other?  Our own "laws" of thermodynamics seem to fall apart when you consider that if all the "stuff" here wasn't created (matter cannot be created or destroyed), then where the hell did all this matter come from?  Has it really just "always been here"?  Also, the 2nd law of thermodynamics basically says that in any energy transformation, the net "usefullness" of the energy tends toward a more chaotic or more dis-orderly state.  So how do you account for our present level of "energy quality"?  How did giant suns with God knows how much high quality energy in them arise from total chaos?  How does a superheated cup of coffee arise from a vast freezing ocean without intelligent intervention (eg, humans setting up a tidal powerplant which turns a generator which provides electricity which then powers a coffee maker)?  The big bang?  Oh, well that explains everything.  Instead of "magic man done it!!!"  "Its big KABOOM done it!!!!"

As an agnostic, I don't know a damn thing about the unknown, and I don't pretend to know.  I just ask questions.  Maybe God exists and maybe he doesn't.  However, I am amazed at religious people who know for certain that God does exist and at aetheists who know for certain that God doesn't exist.

The atheists you speak of will probably tell you as well, that they're atheist with respect to whatever God you are referring to, as they are atheists to unicorns and fairies. We cannot know for sure, just like there are countless things we cannot know for sure. We can, however, go by consistency, logic, and evidence. I'd bet you don't believe in Zeus or Thor do you? Why not?

With regards to magic man vs big kaboom, we have evidence consistent with the big kaboom and none for magic man. Besides, even if big kaboom turns out wrong, magic man has to stand on it's own, with it's own body of evidence to support it. Also, they know that the big bang isn't "knowledge". Nothing in science is absolute knowledge.

Like anything else you'd want him/her to believe. Perhaps that if he/she blows him/herself up as a martyr, he/she gets to go to a paradise of 79 virgins/hunks/Demigod v1.2 patch or what have you.

I said nothing of anyone leading impoverished lives. Much more often than not, it's the religious that accuse atheists of that. However, don't you think life's too short to waste on hocus pocus? I certainly do.

You have that a bit wrong.

It is energy that can not be created or destroyed. Matter is simply an altered form of energy, and it can be created and destroyed. If it is destroyed (like when matter and anti-matter combine) it simply reverts back to its original state of energy.

Perhaps not usually, but sometimes it's 'better' to believe a lie.

Please give an example.

I suppose I might as well throw in my 2 cents  In all honesty its can be, at times, far eaisier to belive in Creation, or a God than in evolotion or some other theory. I dont say that because of the sterotypical "Oh God created everything, so i dont need to explain it" type of thing. Most people blow the Bible and the whole Creationist theory off, because its not "scientific" In reality this is not the case, but merely just an excuse to not see it as a viable option. There are many more evidences of a Creator than there is for an evolutionistic theory. Take the salinity of the ocean, if it had been around for millions of years its salinity would be MUCH higher than it is now, and its not, in fact its right about where it should be if the earth was a few thousand years old! Also, take moon dust for example... when the astonauts first landed on the moon, it was expected that there would be about 30-40 ft. of dust to account for millions of years of accumilation.... but again it was only a few inches, or a few thousand years worth. And where is the evolutionary proccess in the fossil record? there isnt any! Beleive what you will belive, but i personaly am convinced otherwise

As for the salinity of the ocean, that's a 300 year old concept that's been thoroughly discredited.

@ Obscenitor-

Ok, I admit that I suppose I used irrelevant/otdated proof.. but still there's plenty of evidence

There is no known scientific law that would allow one kind of creature to turn naturally into a completely different kind. Insects don't evolve into more complex non-insects for instance, because they don't have the genes to do it.

To show that all life evolved from a single cell, which itself came from some type of chemical soup, there would have had to be massive genetic information gains.

But evolutionists have failed to show how this gain of new information occurred. Where did the information come from for the first bristles, stomachs, spines, intestines, complex blood circulation systems, intricate mouthpieces to strain special foods out of the water, and so on, when these were supposedly not present in the ancestral species?

The theory of evolution teaches that simple life-forms evolved into more complex life-forms, such as fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. There is no natural law known that could allow this to happen. The best that evolutionists can come up with to try to explain how this might have happened is to propose that it happened by mutations and natural selection.

But mutations and natural selection do not show gain in information, just rearrangement or loss of what is already there — therefore there may be beneficial mutations without an increase in genetic information.

Mutations overwhelmingly destroy genetic information and produce creatures more handicapped than the parents. (See our article on TNR, the Totally Naked Rooster.) And natural selection simply weeds out unfit creatures. Natural selection may explain why light-colored moths decrease and dark moths proliferate, but it cannot show that moths could ever turn into effective, totally different, non-moth creatures. Moths do not have the genetic information to evolve into something that is not a moth, no matter how much time you give them.

That was a copy paste, since im not sophisticated enough t say it myself

Where did God come from? God is not the simplest solution, because a god capable of making not only our own complex world but the universe which is so large we can't really even comprehend it infinitely more complicated.

There's a lot of answers we're just never going to get from science, but adherence to the scientific method is critical when trying to understand our world and the universe.

There may be a god, obviously I don't know, but resorting to faith to understand the world simply slows down the process of learning about it.

By the way Coelocanth... http://www.straight-talk.net/evolution/fossil.htm thats what im talking about

Too bad it's spelled incorrectly, its Coelacanth, heh