Leaderboard

Foothills of the Elkhorn Mountains about five miles SSE of Helena, Montana, where my wife and I grew up. Altitude at our house is roughly 4,414'. We have mulies and white tail, lots of elk (naturally), black bear and and very likely some griz, though not officially, wolf the same and mountain lion (saw one about 80' from my front door in August of '11). The red triangle roughly outlines our 2 acres with a small creek along the NNE boundary. If you follow the green belt of the creek up hill in the overview shot you can see it extends past the densest development. Most of the creek runs in a ravine which, at the upstream end of our acreage is 25 to 30 feet deep with extremely dense vegetation including russian olive, fir, pine, spruce, choke cherry, aspen, giant ropeweed and some seriously thick wild rose and clematis vines (think a highway for Tarzan) that literally climb and kill the trees. When we first moved up here from the Helena Valley in August of '06, it took me 2 hours with a saw and machete to make a narrow path through about 30' of it to where I could actually see the creek. That was near the downstream end of the property where the ravine slopes are less precipitous and it is only about 15' deep. Excluding the ravine and the front yard, most of the land runs a 4 to 8 percent grade and is fairly broken with bedrock running from 12" below to 15' above the surface, which makes heavy impacts on the ground tend to reverberate. While our daughter was still in college she returned home one summer evening and came down to our family room where my wife and I were watching a movie. She said she could feel the sub-woofer vibrating through the concrete driveway on the other end of the house and 6' higher. Made those bi-pedal footfalls pretty intense.

Well I would like to answer your question in the way that I feel would quantify my position, but to do so in full would violate the rule set. To answer the question in a way that does stay within the rule set would be to say there are a great many who still believe that evolution has not been effectively proven. I am one of those many left that don't feel evolution has been sufficiently proven to such a degree as it has been so readily accepted. I do see evidence of variation of species and adaptation of a type, but that is not evolution. Certainly it is believed to be correct by a admittedly larger group than the other beliefs(theories) I would also say that it is a fact that although the scientific community claim to be ..shall we say rigorously scientific...that it is a well established fact that liberties are taken in order to either maintain a particular theory or change the rules in order for such a theory to remain viable, which is not very scientific at all by anyone's measure. So my point is that I feel science has a much larger sense of protection to preserve their previously held positions and that until the SSq can be shoehorned into that particular construct with proof then we will continue to see science stonewall or put forth theories that only fit their evolutionary model. I also maintain that I feel they already know that it does not fit and that this is the reasoning behind the disavowing and smokescreens. For you and I perhaps truth is the word of the day but this is not the driving force for many and if that is not clear to you or anyone else then we can certainly agree to disagree.