How did food evolve?

An overview of evolutionary theory would be Talk.Origin's "Introduction to Evolutionary Biology" at No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html.The Talk.Origin Archive site has a multitude of articles, mostly examining creationist claims and explaining what's wrong with them, but also informative articles on aspects of evolution and of age-of-the-earth (a 6,000-to-10,000-year-old earth being an essential part of young-earth creationism, the kind that had most commonly been promoted before they went stealth by using "intelligent design"). And, yes, they also examine and discuss "intelligent design". Their newsgroup, talk.origins, is very active (but don't go bursting in there; comparitively speaking we've been coddling you immensely) and the Archive posts the newsgroup's Post of the Month. And they publish the feedback emails that they receive along with their responses.All in all, a very informative and valuable source of information.PS
BTW, many of the contributors to talk.origins are Christians and believers in a divine Creator. Creationism tries to paint all "evolutionists" as atheists, but that is clearly a false claim.In case you haven't been told this yet, it is not at all a case of evolution vs God, nor even of evolution vs religion. Science does not say anything about the supernatural except that science cannot deal with the supernatural and therefore cannot include supernaturalistic explanations as a part of science. Science is not denying the possibility that the supernatural could exist, but rather denying that the supernatural can be used in science.This is called "methodological materialism", which is quite different from "philosophical materialism" which would claim that the supernatural does not exist. Please note that "intelligent design" falsely claims that science is based on philosophical materialism.Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.

A couple books I would recommend for someone, such as yourself, just starting out:"Darwin for Beginners" by Jonathan Miller and Borin van Loon. It was part of a series of intro books, the only other one I know of being for Einstein. In a kind of comic-book format, Sherlock Holmes investigates "The Strange Case of Charles Darwin and Evolution". It covers the historical development of evolutionary ideas and present them and a number of the principal players. It's still in print, as far as I can tell."Blueprints: Solving the Mystery of Evolution" by Maitland Edey and Donald Johanson. Provides a historical overview of the development of the ideas relating to evolution. Its main strength is that it describes how the principal players had arrived at their conclusions. One of the main problems with science education is that it just presents the conclusions of science without showing how those conclusions were arrived at, which among other things gives the false impression that science is dogmatic. This book appears to no longer be in print, but copies should be in libraries (you might have to visit a college library) and people are selling it on amazon.com.Do drop in now and again to let us know how your studies are going.

It is a common creationist trick to have a list of "unanswerable questions" that they will toss out at their opponents. This "how did food evolve?" is one such question, albeit more idiotic than most. They will insist that they really want you to answer that question, but when you do (as I had several times with one particularly dishonest creationist, Bill Morgan of http://www.fishdontwalk.com) then they suddenly lose all interest in that question and immediately toss a different "unanswerable question" at you, again insisting fervently that they really and truly want to hear your answer, only to react in the exact same way when you do answer it.Bill Morgan once let slip his reason for asking those questions: he wants to make his opponent look foolish. They are also used in proselytizing, by putting your mark (ie, con-game victim) in an untenable position where he will be vulnerable to conversion. As I stated back in 2000 on my page about Bill Morgan's "unanswerable questions" (at No webpage found at provided URL: http://members.aol.com/billyjack6/morgan/bills_questions.html):

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Bill's questions to me were never meant to be answerable. Their purpose is as part of proselytizing, whereby they are meant to put me on the defense, to knock my feet out from under me, or at the very least to discredit me and my position before others. They came more-or-less directly out of the Christian-to-atheist example dialogs that appear in the fundamentalist literature and which are meant to be training tools for proselytization. Bill has included a few in his own writings, such as his "QUESTIONS ATHEISTS HOPE YOU'LL NEVER ASK THEM:" section of Weird Science (No webpage found at provided URL: http://members.aol.com/billyjack6/morgan/weird_science.html).

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Bill had our dialog all planned out and, I think, much of Bill's frustration with me was that I refused to follow his script. I would answer his unanswerable questions, as directly and honestly as I could, to which he himself had no response. Furthermore, I would also explain to him what he was trying to do with his question. He often tried to claim that I had not answered his question, but he never ever answered my question of why he thought so. I have never seen Bill make any attempt to support any of his claims.

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And at the same time, he, like far too many creationists I've encountered over the past few decades, absolutely refuse to answer simple answerable questions that I pose, such as "what did you mean by that statement?" and "Why do you think that poses any problem for evolution?" and "Could you please clarify this particular claim?" and "Why do you think that I hadn't answered your question?".I posted a number of his "unanswerable questions" at No webpage found at provided URL: http://members.aol.com/billyjack6/morgan/bills_questions.html, along with links to my response and his lack of response. You might recognized a few that have been thrown at you:

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"Do you think the earth is 4.6 billion years old? Why?"

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"Which life appeared first? Please answer that."

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"Please give me the strongest piece of scientific evidence that the blue whale is related to bacteria."

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"So give me the strongest reason why you think bacteria are the ancestors to blue whales."

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"You consider yourself "wise," yet believe in spontaneous generation. If you do not beleive in spontaneous generation please provide me witht eh best explanation you have for the origin of life. Can you? Will you?"

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"Do you have a better explanation than the Garden of Eden for the origin of Meisosis reproduction? Do you beleive Mitosis reproducing animals are the ancestors of Meisosis animals?"

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"If God exists, should the kids be taught about Him?"

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"Dave, what is an explanation for polystrate fossils?"
(I requested that he give me an example of one plus its documentation; he had to admit that he could not)

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"mr Wise.....give me your best explanation for the origin of life."

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Edited by dwise1, :

Thanks for the link. I'll add it to the snakeheads, walking catfish, and mudskippers.He blocked off all communication when I kept calling him on a deliberate lie that he posted repeatedly on his websites, one which he has yet again posted in the meantime. My page about this is at No webpage found at provided URL: http://members.aol.com/billyjack6/morgan/q_ozone.html.