[BaseballMan]

Great point, and good example.

Im not here to challenge anyone's faith, I myself have faith in god, but I do think a lot of people take the things first mentioned by Darwin, and completely take them out of context.

When Darwin was studying in the Galapagos islands he had no idea how animals, or plants passed along "their" traits to their offspring. What he did notice was that species where greatly adapted for life on that island, and that they passed along these "traits" to their offspring. This explains the hole that many people find in evolution, which is how did new species originate? If you take one species and separate them in completely different climates, and leave them there for hundreds of years, they will adapt to that climate. If left alone for long enough, their genes will be completely different, and no interbreeding could occur, which would technically make them different species. It doesn't mean a species learned to walk upright and then gave that trait to their offspring, it's just that a species with the best ability to walk would be able to travel farther, use their limbs more effectively, and would then pass that trait along to their offspring. So if you can agree that species can adapt, then you have technically agreed with evolution.

The work of Gregory Mendel on crossing pea plants showed how "traits" (genes) where passed from one generation to the next, and how interbreeding between the new generations would produce different percentages of each offspring (Tall, short, wrinkled seeds, etc.) Mendel made these discoveries during the lifetime of Darwin, but Darwin did know about Mendel's studies. Mendel's studies later lead scientist down that path that lead to the discovery of DNA and RNA which have greatly increased our understanding of how genes work.

It was a summer’s day in a monastery garden in Czechoslovakia over 100 years ago. Most of the monks saw nothing special about the pea plants growing there. To one of them, however, they were of great interest because he was performing scientific experiments with them.

What particularly fascinated Gregor Mendel was the way in which the plants handed on their characteristics to the next generation. 'What could happen', he thought, 'if I crossed a white-flowered plant with a red-flowered? Would the next generation have red flowers or white? What if I crossed a tall plant with a short one? What height would the offspring be?'

As Mendel performed these experiments and carefully analyzed the results, he realized that he had discovered some fundamental laws concerning inheritance. Greatly excited, he published his findings in a scientific journal—but the scientific world ignored Mendel’s work completely. Discouraged, he abandoned his research. When he died in 1884, Mendel had no idea that 20 years later, he would have become world famous as the founder of a new science. Mendel’s work is now regarded as the beginning of the science of genetics, the study of inheritance.

In the preceding chapters we have looked at the rise of evolutionary theory and the evidence of the fossil record. Now we must consider whether—as is generally claimed—the findings of genetics support the idea of evolution.

Mendel published his findings in the late 1860s at just the time when Darwin’s theory was becoming immensely popular. Mendel published in a reputable journal and his paper was widely circulated and certainly known about. Yet it was not until 1900, 16 years after Mendel’s death, that the work was rediscovered and its importance realized.

Why ignored?
Why were such vital discoveries ignored? The answer almost certainly is that they conflicted with Darwin’s theory of evolution. This is seldom admitted today, yet it is still true that what Mendel discovered disproved one of Darwin’s most important assumptions. This is demonstrated by the fact that after Mendel’s work was rediscovered, Darwinian evolution suffered a temporary eclipse. After a while, evolutionary thinking re-emerged in a slightly different form which was said to be quite consistent with Mendel’s genetics. As we shall see, however, the two are not consistent and both cannot be true.

What did Mendel discover that spoke against Darwin’s theory of evolution? This can best be answered by considering what he actually did. Mendel crossed various races of edible peas. When a red-flowered plant was crossed with a white-flowered, the offspring were found to be red-flowered. Mendel then crossed these red offspring with each other and found that they produced offspring of their own in the ratio of 3 reds:1 white.

We can best understand this by considering the genes involved in these crosses. A gene can be considered as a unit which determines a particular characteristic, in this case flower color. It can exist in one of two forms, one giving rise to red flowers and the other to white. The offspring of the original cross of red-flowered plants with white were all red-flowered, although they did in fact possess both a gene for red-flower and a gene for white.

Mendel concluded that the red gene must be dominant to white, so that any plant that possessed them both would be red. When these red plants were bred with each other, it was possible for two white genes to come together and so give offspring that were white. The chance that the offspring would receive at least one red gene is 3:1, as the diagram shows below.


Mendel's experiment
Mendel found that when he interbred the red-flowered plants obtained as the offspring of his original cross, he got white flowers as well as red. Darwin’s theory rested on the assumption that in such a case as this, the white characteristic was a new character acquired by the young plants which their parents had not possessed. After all, a race has got to acquire new characteristics if it is ever going to evolve.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation...netics.asp