Natural Selection is one of the mechanisms which drives evolution. It is popularly characterized as "survival of the fittest," though that is not always the most accurate description. It is the tendency for life forms which are best suited to their environments to have a better chance to reproduce than those that are not. For example, in a cold environment, an animal with lots of fur is more likely to reproduce than a bald animal, since the bald animals will die more quickly.

This is an issue which often confuses the general public, as the two words have very different common meanings. But in science, their meanings are very similar. A theory is an explanation which is backed by "a considerable body of evidence," while a law is a set of regularities expressed in a "mathematical statement." This is why Newton's Laws of Motion are referred to as laws and not theories. They are expressed with simple equations (like f = ma for his 2nd Law of Motion).

While it is true that new traits can appear through the accumulation of small random genetic mutations, it is the non-random process of Natural Selection that determines which traits to keep and which to discard. For example, a random mutation may cause a brown squirrel to be born white. But if the squirrel lives on a brown tree, its color will quickly alert predators to its existence. The white squirrel will not live long enough to reproduce and pass on the trait. In this environment, nature selects for brown squirrels, not white.

This is accomplished through a process called Gene Duplication, which is believed to play a major role in Evolution.  Because of a mistake during meiosis, an organism may end up with two copies of the same gene. After this happens, the usual mechanisms of point mutation and natural selection can evolve one of the copies into coding for something completely new, while retaining the original gene.

As of the time of this writing, no, scientists have never created cellular life in a laboratory from scratch.  The technology simply does not yet exist to manipulate molecules with the precision required to create all of the inner workings of a cell.

However, many of the important building blocks of life have indeed been created in a laboratory, including amino acids and self-replicating RNA molecules, which are profound steps toward the goal of one day creating life.

Transitional fossils bridge gaps between two species. Due to the difficulties in creating fossils in the first place, and the fact that speciation sometimes occurs very quickly in small groups, transitional fossils can be rare in the fossil record.

The concept of a "missing link" between humans and apes arose in the 19th century, when the fossil record was largely incomplete. Large gaps separated species, casting doubt on the theory of evolution. But in the last 130 years, a plethora of fossils have been discovered, greatly narrowing the gaps between species. The Australopithecus afarensis fossil known as "Lucy" is considered to be a key fossil bridging the gap between humans and primitive hominids.

Darwin was very proud of his scientific discoveries, and it is highly unlikely he would have recanted them. There is no supporting evidence for this story, and Darwin's daughter, who was at her father's deathbed, refutes it. But even if it were true, it would not matter. Biological evolution has been experimentally proven many times over. The worth of a theory is measured by how well it is supported by the facts, not by who believes it.

Based on the experimental data of numerous independent dating techniques, we know the Earth to be approximately 4.55 billion years old.

The second law states that "In a closed system (one in which energy cannot enter), Entropy will not decrease." Since Entropy often refers to disorder, this law is often taken to mean that order cannot arise from disorder. How then would life, which is highly ordered, form naturally? The answer, simply, is that life is not a closed system. Energy is constantly being added to the Earth from the Sun, which fuels the plants, which in turn fuel other life. This is how plants, for example, can have more energy than the seeds they originally sprouted from.

This has been a hotly debated question in the media, classrooms, and many churches.  According to authors like Michael Behe, there are certain structures in nature which he terms "irreducibly complex," which, he asserts, could not have evolved naturally.  He gives bacterial flagellum and the eye, among others, as examples.  If true, these might be evidence for Intelligent Design.

No.  A religion is a set of beliefs based on the supernatural, which by definition is untestable and impossible to disprove (or "unfalsifiable").  Faith, in the religious sense, can be stated as "belief without evidence."  No aspect of science works this way, including the Theory of Evolution.  All scientific theories have been scrutinized through years of experimentation, and can all be falsifiable.  For example, the Theory of Gravity can be proven false if a scientist can devise an experiment where two bodies did not attract each other.  L