I'm afraid I'm running into the same problem in my comprehension as before - I can't work out why "cyclical evolution [i]is not[/i] evolution". The theory posits that one day very, very long ago my ancestors lived in an aquatic environment. They continued to develop complex ways of extracting important chemicals from that environment such as oxygen. They made themselves some fine and fancy gills to pull that off. That no doubt took quite a lot of time, trial and error. Skipping ahead a few million years, I am a land based humanoid happily devoid of gills. Without the ability to revert, to back down, to give up entirely on strategies as and when it was expedient, my species would still be trying to grow an ever better set of gills. Which I think we can all agree would not be evolutionarily advantageous. Especially in light of [i]Waterworld[/i]. In some cases environmental pressures are temporary. Such as the introduction of DDT. If the pressure are temporary, then the adaptations [i]can [/i]be cyclical. Light sensitive cells come. Light sensitive sells go. Whale leaves the sea. Whale goes back in the sea. But other environmental pressures are constant. Such as gravity. And for such permanent pressures such as gravity, a host of different coping strategies have been attempted. Such as skeletons, muscles, wings, feet. Should gravity one day turn out to have been a temporary condition in the universe, the theory suggest that all those clever adaptations that seemed pretty darn permanent at the time will all start reverting, proving those too are cyclical. Keep in mind that the only, singular, totally narrow purpose of evolution is the perpetuation of the gene. All this fancy-pants human equipment, the whole body and brain and thumbs are just a vehicle for those tiny little blobby fellows. We have evolved into the very splendid entities you see around you now in order to carry those genes around, to try and perpetuate them. These human vehicles are responses, created by increments of micro-evolution in response to what has been [so far] permanent environmental pressures. Such as gravity and the rest of the fairly hostile physics rules of the universe. Should all of those pressures somehow go away one day, the theory would hold that our genes would slowly start the process of getting rid of all these unnecessary vehicular extras. Natural Selection boils down to whatever gets to be bigger and tougher and not die gets to reproduce more often. Evolution being '[i]mindless and without values[/i]' does not go against Natural Selection, it supports it. Inspired by Evolution, Tennyson described nature as [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Memoriam_A.H.H.#Nature.2C_red_in_tooth_and_claw]red in tooth and claw[/url] - although for him it was ultimately no barrier to his faith. Which leads me on, with great personal disappointment, to the innuendo that because of this "[i]the followers of atheism have no obligation to be kind..." [/i] This is a shame. All of the above comments have displayed excellent reasoning, an inquiring and questioning mindset. This attitude is a boon to any community regardless of whether it puts its faith in an invisible, unprovable, unobservable Deity.....or invisible, unprovable, unobservable Particles That Are Also Somehow Strings. Science goes absolutely nowhere without authorities being questioned. And without its authorities being questioned religion goes bad places. I have no obligation to be kind. As an agnostic [yes, worst of both worlds - I know] I do not believe that there is an Authority who will spank me if I am not moral. I'm absolutely certain there's a cop down the road who will come and get me if I stab the guy next to me in the neck with a pencil, but there is no universal compulsion upon me to be nice. I try to be kind because that is what I chose to do, because I believe that act has value to me and my un-stabbed colleague. Being kind because you believe [i]that is what you [b]have [/b]to do[/i] is without value. It is a gesture. I can train an animal to stop upon my vocal command, but the animal will not be stopping because it thinks I probably know something it doesn't, like maybe there's a car coming - it stops because [i]that is what it has to do[/i]. That completely personal and subjective point aside, you are asking the atheists why their questions and responses do not have a moral element. You are asking them why their biology has no values, why their chemistry has no moral compass, why their physics is not guided by an intelligent, loving hand. Those espousing the validity of the theory, myself included, have asked if things are likely to be 'true or false'. But you are asking us to validate those statements not in terms of what is [i]true [/i]and what is [i]false[/i] - but in terms of what is [i]good [/i]and what is [i]bad[/i]. This utterly devalues all of the above debate, because it reduces all the questions asked not to searches for truth, but to judgement of values. The question is reduced not to what is true, but to what should be true. The subject of each inquiry no longer considered on its own particulars, but is compared to a entirely external set of non-referential criteria. The only question left becomes "[i]Even if that was true - is it [b]good[/b][/i]?"

Agnostic? Aren't agnostics never at either end of the discussion?