Evolution debate comment

I personally think the evolution debate is as ridiculous as the claims of flat-earthers, but for some reason, it is one scientific issue (along with global climate change) that has been hijacked by politics and ideology. Why isn't the church still arguing against Copernicus? Anyway, here is a repost of a comment I made on The Fray @ Slate.com, in response to a post by a person undecided on evolution, in response to an article about blind salamanders. (apparently we have not evolved enough to get rid of laziness, hence the incoherence of the previous sentence)

===From a post on The Fray @ Slate.com===

If you are saying that the salamanders in question once had eyes and then lost them during the course of their lives, you are mistaken. The salamander population as a whole gradually lost its eyes over many generations. When one individual changes a characteristic, such as a chameleon changing its color, a bird changing its nesting location in response to predators, a human building a house to have shelter, that is adaptation. When an entire population gradually changes its characteristics through the dying out of weaker individuals, that is evolution. You are not going to witness evolution except in bacteria that evolve extremely rapidly in response to antibiotics that kill off large portions of their population. Do you believe in atomic theory? Have you ever seen an atom? Do you believe that the Earth orbits the Sun? Have you been to a location where you can tell that is true? The scientific debate over evolution is no different than a debate over any other theory, yet it is the one issue on which nonscientists claim to have the correct view on. The scientific record supporting evolution is no less solid than that supporting other theories, yet we laypeople still doubt it. Science cannot be subordinated to ideology. Science is what our entire society is built on.

As far as the blind salamanders go, they have no use for eyes in the lightless environment in which they live, thus salamanders without eyes (or with incrementally less functional eyes) have to put less energy and resources into maintaining their eyes, thus are better equipped to survive. The chance to survive may only increase by tiny fractions of a percent, but again, the process occurs over many many generations. If people (not necessarily the original poster) can base creationism on pure faith, the leap of faith to believe in evolution is far smaller. Even for us commoners to trust in and partially understand the science is a smaller leap than to trust purely in the Bible.

By definition, science is based on logic. Scientific=logical. There is no way that anything involving even the slightest bit of faith can be completely logical. Note this doesn't contradict my previous statement, as the facts are all there to support evolution, it's just a lot of it is only accessible/comprehensible to scientists. The basic premise of any system involving a creator/designer is the existence of such a being, which can never be logically proven.