You are welcome to seek to minimize and poke fun at others believe systems (I am guessing to make your own belief feel better), but the fact remains there is no proof. If there were this would not be a debate, would it now.

I've never seen a hippo tale and couldn't find a good picture of it, with exception of this one.
It probably refers to either the skin or the thickness.
Not to mention the living examples.
There are species which got seperated over time due to island forming, natural disaster, human influences, etc. which evolved differently.
There's a nice read on this at the London Underground mosquito wiki page.

I'm sorry, just to clarify, are you now saying that dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time as Old Testament contemporaries? Really?
And as an example of how easily religious passages can be misinterpreted:
Job quotation: His tail sways like a cedar...
Faithful: With a tail like a cedar?
Faithful assumes that the passage equates this animal's tail to the size and shape of a cedar tree, whereas the words are clearly describing how the tail moves rather than the form it takes.
I myself was a practising Christian during my late teens, yet this sort of convoluted logic is what eventually made me turn away from strictly defined systems of belief. I try to keep as open mind as is humanly possible these days, as opposed to clinging to singular examples of scripture as proof against vast collections of tried and tested scientific theories and methods.

There's plenty of evidence to support the evolution theory.
So far there's zero to support creationism.
It's creationists/religious people (not only Christians) who debate/deny evolution theory.
Keep in mind that a large group of religious people both belief in God and live having a purpuse on 1 side and in evolution theory on the other side.

Biblical literalism is just ridiculous, even from a Christian viewpoint. Jesus himself taught his people with parables, for god's sakes.

Fair enough, good luck in your continued faith.

Fossils are proof of earlier lifeforms, which in turn are proof that at least that part of evolution, simplex->complex, holds up to scrutiny given our current knowledge. Evolution however has other aspects as well.

Fine. You weren't contributing anyway.

Sorry but I fail to see the validity in any system of explaining the world that boils down to "God did it". No matter how far you drill down into a subject, there'll always be an unknown and if those unknowns are constantly assumed to be the actions of a deity, our understanding of the universe around us will eventually plateau and to noones detriment but our own.
Frankly if you sit down 100 people who are genuinely educated in the finer points of biology and ask them, 99 of them will tell you that there IS no debate about evolution and that the 100th person is a crackpot. At this stage, if creationists want to discredit evolution, the burden of proof is theirs.
Hypothesis: God created the universe.
Elements required to prove hypothesis: Proof of the existance of the Universe (Check!), Proof of the existance of god (Still waiting).
Take the classical and utterly ridiculous argument that the human eye is too complex and therefore proves the existance of god. Apply this argument to an early investigation of the eye and if the people in question were content to assume god did it (so hard to stop myself typing gog), they would have stopped studying the eye, we'd have no idea how it works and we'd have been robbed of corrective surgery, artificial optics and the very glasses essential to the saucy librarian look.
As for my belief system, I don't really have much of one. In my opinion, debating endlessly about subjects that are actively impossible to prove (god vs no god, star trek vs star wars, xbox vs ps3) wastes energy that could be used on helping people, making the world a better place or at least whacking off to internet porn. The loud and opinionated thiests & antithiests are both guilty of this, constant repetition of "How can you not believe in god"/"how can you believe in god?" (made worse by the fact that neither side says anything different) is time they could be spending tending the sick, writing music or staring lasciviously as the sweet, sweet arse of Saha Grey. Now as for the people who believe or don't believe and have the common decency to shut the fuck up about it, I'm perfectly neutral towards them.
Now the obvious question is why I'm posting in a thread like this. Simple really, I'm firmly of the opinion that humans are fucking stupid (browse the net for a few minutes if you disagree) and the only thing that provides a hope of our species getting better is education. Creationism taught as anything other than a far out and unrealistic guess which is and always will be impossible to prove is taking up time that can educate students in things that actually exist and is retarding the progress of the species as a whole. Unfortunately I couldn't think of a porn reference to end this paragraph with so I'll just simply say: BOOBIES!

I love it when "believers" bring up that. "Blah blah the eye is so complex it couldn't have evolved from chance etc. etc." (basically, I don't understand a fucking thing of this, so it has to be magical).
In actuality, the eye is an excellent example that favors evolution. Not only can we prove that the first constructs that had the same basic function as the eyes of today were simply something made of rock (yes, rock, you know, granite, that sort of thing), but the eye has actually evolved many times, in many different species.
It is the most interesting and striking example in favor of evolution, when one actually looks at the facts. Maybe that's why intelligent design-people are trying to discredit it.

I ... don't really think bringing up research of eye is a good example here, since I think they found out how it works out of curiosity instead of proving god doesn't exist :D
But porn is good for science classes, kudos for that! :D

Yeah but the point was that if they'd been told that god did it and there was enough mumbo jumbo bullshit that sounds good until you start to think, they might not have looked any further

Or they might have looked deeper, to gain a better understanding of god and all that jazz. Religious Belief and Scientific Research are not mutually exclusive.
Hell, there is the exact same problem for the Cult of Science :p. People who believe that Scientific Theory == Fact are less likely to want to dig deeper. Imagine if people had taken Newton's word for it and never dug deeper.
Regardless of what you believe (or Believe), always dig deeper.
And while I do agree that the whole "lots of things have eyes" is a very good indicator that evolution is "true-ish" and the like, you kind of are opening the door for the other conclusion: If multiple things have eyes, wouldn't it make sense that some higher power thought eyes were a good idea?
Believe it or not, but facts and empirical evidence can be interpreted in just as many ways as any holy scripture :p
Oh, and just so that Stonebro won't get angry and accuse me of not "contributing": Der, religious people are stupid! :p

Quick question.... err.... make that a couple of questions... (just trying to figure out who's version of ID they are going to teach....)
Which Bible is the correct version? Which Faiths dogma is correct? Was there any form of editing done ever where by someone might have changed one word that could have vast impact?
Also.... Which G-D(s) are correct? Jewish? Cristian? Catholic? Lutheran? Prodestants? Angelican? Greek Orthodox? Russian Orthodox? Native American? Roman? Islam? Shia Islam? Sunni Islam? Hindu? Buddism? Mormon? Greek? Crow?
Obviously, they can not all be right........ Not trying to start a flame fest, just wondering, if a person happens to have another religion then yours, and their theory of E/ID happens to differ are they wrong simply based on your opinion? I mean there might be 2 billion of one faith in the world, but when you break it down, how many of those 2 billion can even agree on basic things? Heck it was 1546 before the "Bible" was even considered cannon to even the majority of the people.
Im just saying there are so many things each faith holds near and dear to them, what theory of ID are they teaching? IE Turtles all the way down? Or....?

I've already described to you the proper process to go through if you think the theory of evolution is incorrect, and if you actually do go through this process and successfully show that evolution does not accurately model reality or even better that a new theory models reality even better then those in the scientific community will abandon the theory of evolution. I think the fact that after being told this you then immediately went right back to your previous approach to the matter speaks volumes.