I'm glad I'm not the only theistic evolutionist on this board.

Pius? Is that not the most fitting name for a Pope ever?

And I don't think Hitler was any worse, nor any better, than Stalin. Based on what? Land invaded? Deaths caused? I'm sorry, I wasn't aware it was a game with a score. They were both human, as we are all human, and they were both wicked, as we are all wicked.

Given that we believe eternal life is attained solely by accepting Christ as one's Lord and Savior, and not based the sins of one's life, the fact that Hitler was Christian makes me think He's more likely to be in heaven than hell.

It's a lazy thought experiment though, we have evidence of evolution, we don't have evidence of god. Evolution works perfectly fine without god and has never needed one, so simply stamping "god did it" on the theory doesn't make it valid.

What about the cambrian explosion? http://www.skepdic.com/cambrian.html (i know it's skepdic, i don't care). A bunch of animals out of basically nowhere. People might say 'maybe their ancestors were soft bodied and could not leave fossils', but wouldn't there be transitory fossils? To go from not a spine to a spine, there's gonna have to be a lil guy somewhere in there was a basic spine. We've not found that lil guy yet. I'm not saying I don't believe in evolution, I'm saying that something had to have caused all them animals to show up.

Well we know what caused the animals to show up, it was a rapid period of evolution, just like many times before and many periods of extinction before and after it. The only difference with the cambrian explosion is that it was much larger in the case of sophisticated structures that in previous explosions. So we aren't really looking for the method by which it happened, we know that, we are looking for the factors that influenced such tremendous growth.

Also there are transitory fossils, I reference the Burgess Shale, which shows a decent development period for the cambrian. Creatures with basic hard structures, ones with a form of cartilage composition, etc. all of these are pre-development stages for creatures with bony structures.

I believe evolution could have created our physical bodies and maybe even the electrical signals to give us reflexes and physiological senses, but I don't believe evolution could create consciousness/self-awareness. I like what Zlamous said about material things being unable to create immaterial things. I think that applies to human physiology. A brain may be responsible for our physical reactions to stimuli, such as light, sound, etc., but I believe only a God could give us the ability to actually create our own thoughts.

Our consciousness is derived from our brains, there has been massive work to show this, and is even represented by showing someone who has been badly damaged to their frontal lobe/brain in general. They can completely change their personality, reactions, thoughts, and even lose their consciousness all together. We do not see dead people with a consciousness, we do not see brain-dead patients with consciousness, etc.

Also, glad you mentioned Zlamous because as I responded to him, he is wrong on a very basic level. Seriously I wonder if some of the theists on this board took biology in high school, because it covers these concepts. There are no abstract immaterial objects, the consciousness, ideas, concepts, etc. are all representations of electrical impulses from experiences and what not.

I'm glad you have this hypothesis about god giving us that ability, now you have to prove it.

Really, Noble? After everything we've been through, you're going to say "prove it" to me?