You're lecturing me about really basic stuff that is a "given" in all that I was writing.
You don't have to do that. In 1980, when I was a newspaper editor for a large high-tech location with 4,000 employees, I attended night school in environmental science.
My professor in the year 1980 was a member of the Nature Conservancy and I got 'A' in the course
in part because of a deep interest in the subject.
In the 1970s I loved visiting the zoo, the aquarium and the Pacific Science Center, and watching NOVA. I mean I was really charged up about these !
Also in the 1970s, I lobbied my community college science department chair to have an astronomy course because there wasn't one. I was in the science club at my college. On Earth Day, 1978's edition of my college paper, I had a long letter to the editor published about ecology.

I have never really been an anti-evolutionist in the sense of opposing old Earth or origin of species by random mutation, natural selection and others. Though one time my professor strongly requested I play a creationist in a classroom debate between two halves of the class over evolution and creation. I think our side won, that day only, on theatrics and flair, in part because evolution is pretty complicated and if folks are refusing to comprehend what you're saying (the way Harv, you, and Mario especially do) then there's no convincing them.
But we also "won" because some evolutionists are just as much true believers as their creationist counterparts and don't really care what anyone else thinks, especially not somebody who disagrees. To really know a subject, you just comprehend what its SINCERE detractors are really saying.
I would say more but you don't have the proper level of clearance.

• "have to comprehend what its sincere detractors are saying" - carefuluniverse - June 1, 2002 - 16:35 UTC