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Is evolution a fact or theory?

Schneibster said:
Evolution is a fact; we have observed it. Popular examples include the evolution of a new species of mosquito in the London underground (subway).
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That sounds interesting do you have a link to any article about it?
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
As usual, I shall mention Minsky's Theorem of Evolution:

Unless you can find a problem with the premises, evolution happens.

~~ Paul
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And, correctly enough, that is a FACT. Mutation and change is a fact. To date however, in the lab and in the ecosystem, mosquitos remains mosquitos, flies remain flies, bacteria bacteria, etc.

The THEORY is that every rna/dna lifeform (let's ignore viruses for the moment) has one common ancestor -- well, or is it two, prokaryotes and eukaryotes may, or may not, represent 2 different abiogenesis events.

"Species" -- say something we as laymen would recognize, cat & dog for example -- is the concept where evolution becomes The THEORY. The fossil record has been interpreted to bolster this claim, but in living things, any such macroevolutionary event remains a theoretical claim rather than a fact.
 
If we're interpreting "macroevolution" to mean "divergence of species", that claim is simply false. If we're talking about moving from one kingdom to another, then it's never been observed, and is highly unlikely to ever be observed.
 
hammegk said:
"Species" -- say something we as laymen would recognize, cat & dog for example -- is the concept where evolution becomes The THEORY. The fossil record has been interpreted to bolster this claim, but in living things, any such macroevolutionary event remains a theoretical claim rather than a fact.
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What about chimps and humans? Their DNA differs by something like, what was it, six percent?

How much "microevolution" must occur before it counts as "macroevolution"?
 
Melendwyr said:
If we're interpreting "macroevolution" to mean "divergence of species", that claim is simply false.
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We are not, and you are wrong.

If we're talking about moving from one kingdom to another, then it's never been observed, and is highly unlikely to ever be observed.
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Not for kingdom, nor for Phylum/Division, Class, Order, Family or Tribe, nor Genus, either. That is, species remain species no matter how much "mutation" is observed.

Schneibster said:
"The evidence for evolution does not depend, even a little, on observing macroevolution directly. There is a very great deal of other evidence."
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So pontificate defenders of The Theory. What is in indisputable evidence is that internal to a species, mutation occurs (that is, "evolution" is a fact in that sense).

Melendwyr said:
What about chimps and humans?
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What about 'em? Do we have data showing either critter
currently evolving into some new genus? Of course, The Theory demands a common ancestor; we just haven't found it. Usually based on genetic similarity, time estimates have been made as to how long ago this 'common ancestor' lived; those estimates vary by orders of magnitude from a few thousand years to millions of years.
 
Melendwyr said:
If we're interpreting "macroevolution" to mean "divergence of species", that claim is simply false. If we're talking about moving from one kingdom to another, then it's never been observed, and is highly unlikely to ever be observed.
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If the theory of evolution by natural selection, as it's understood at present (or indeed as it's ever been understood at any time over the last couple of centuries), is true then we won't see anything moving from one kingdom to another. We're back looking at creationist strawmen here.
 
OK, let's try the big stick.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA202.html

There is an enormous amount of interlocking evidence from different disciplines that all says exactly the same thing. There are atavisms, there is ontogeny, there are transitional forms, there is a full agreement with expected evolutionary patterns in both the currently extant species and among the fossil species, and these patterns interlock. We have observed speciation, over and over again; there are literally thousands of observations of new species. There are ring species. Different organisms, developing the same structure, do so differently; for example, the bee wing, the bird wing, the bat wing, and the pterodactyl wing all evolved differently, but all are wings.

The evidence for evolution is comprehensive, interlocking, consistent, and, at this time, irrefutable (except by false arguments or deliberate use of known logical errors). Not "believing" in evolution is equivalent to not "believing" in gravity, given the evidence. It has nothing to do with skepticism, and everything to do with emotional judgements and the rationalization of same.
 
hammegk said:
And, correctly enough, that is a FACT. Mutation and change is a fact. To date however, in the lab and in the ecosystem, mosquitos remains mosquitos, flies remain flies, bacteria bacteria, etc.
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Do you really believe that there is only one species of mosquito, only one species of fly, only one species of bacteria?

And, since mosquitos are a species of fly, do you not see the contradiction in this belief (if you do indeed hold it)?

Or are you just back to kinds or baramin or whatever?
 
Schneibster said:
OK, let's try the big stick.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA202.html

............; there are literally thousands of observations of new species. There are ring species. Different organisms, developing the same structure, do so differently; for example, the bee wing, the bird wing, the bat wing, and the pterodactyl wing all evolved differently, but all are wings.
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So?

Pretend that MAN is God, for a moment...just to see my point. Man decides to create a frying pan from scratch. He makes one batch of metal and forms it into pan. Then, someone else decides to take another batch of metal and make a kettle. They are both food holding things that you cook with ontop a stove. (Comparable to the variations amongst wings) Yet, they arose from two separate locations, individually, not related at all.

What makes you even think that a bee wing has anything to do with a skeletalized bat wing? The membranes are comPLETELY diferent, as is the musuclar/skeletal workings of each. JUST because they are wings..like the cookiing pans....soooooooo? This to me proves nothing. Absolutely nothing.

And chimps and human dna is only 1-2 % different (not 6% as someone else above offered). And does that prove we share the same ancestor? Could be. But then again, maybe not. Maybe God decided to use BASICALLY the same batch of ingredients, but decided to throw in a few bonuses with humans. How do you NOT know that that is true?
 
Iamme said:
What makes you even think that a bee wing has anything to do with a skeletalized bat wing?
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What makes you think that anybody has suggested that these have anything to do with each other apart from the fact that they have a similar function? The quotation you've posted certainly doesn't.
 
Iamme said:
What makes you even think that a bee wing has anything to do with a skeletalized bat wing?
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Errrrmmm... I dunno... because you can FLY with them?

Hey, you threw it out there- what, did you think I was just gonna watch it go by and not swing at it?

Iamme said:
This to me proves nothing. Absolutely nothing.
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It's one among seventeen bullet points, each point of which describes hundreds or thousands of actual data points, all of which interlock, each pointing to other ones, and all of which point to exactly the same conclusion: the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. Nice job, you just said that you're not convinced by one single example out of literally thousands, among an array of hundreds of thousands of facts that all point to exactly the same thing. Sorry, but I can't help noting that you're arguing about one single thing among hundreds of thousands. And claiming "there's no evolution" based on that SINGLE ARGUMENT. Great. Here's mine:

Somebody in the bible raped people, so it's an evil book. Period. I don't care what else is in there, it's got a rape in it, so it's EVIL. People who read it, or go to churches that are based on it, should be banned. We should teach in school that religion based on this evil book is evil too. It should be illegal.

End of argument.
 
apocalypse said:
While watching the classic "Cosmos", Carl Sagan makes the statement "evolution is a fact". Obviously, living creatures can change over time, this is a fact. Don’t drug-resistant bacteria and the silver fox constitute examples of evolution?

What I don't understand is the current Intelligent Design supporters stating that evolution is a theory. Do ID supporters mean that the evolution of man from ape is a theory? Yes, that's true, it's a theory, a very well substantiated theory. Just like the theory of gravity. Of course, ID supporters may want to call it "intelligent falling" as the website "The Onion" did in an article a while back. w w w.theonion.com/content/node/39512

Am I incorrect in believing evolution is a fact, or do I need to re-classify evolution as theory?
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No doubt you are not incorrect to believe that evolution is a fact, the actual version of the evolution theory fully deserve now the status of 'first research program' (thus the sustainers of ID do not have, currently at least, the right to claim epistemological privilege, not even equal privilege, with evolutionary theory).

However this in no way implies that a sort of intelligent design is impossible, though, of course, currently there is no sufficient reason to hold such a theory as being the first choice program in science, the actual 'normal science'. Indeed it would be enough a sufficient reason showing clearly that certain macro changes could not have happened naturally (at least not in the amount of time we think now it happened) to change things entirely.

A single such example, involving a macro evolution from one species to another would be enough, actually some ID supporters do not even dispute macro evolution in entirety. This scenario is still fully possible from all we know now, for example alien genetic manipulations.

Unfortunately from the mere fact that some programmes are not progressive now we cannot derive the much stronger conclusion that this will ever be the case...we must always retain fallibilism...Actually this is the big mistake of pseudo-skeptics, from the fact, for ex., that science does not study 'souls' they derive the too strong conclusion that 'souls' do not exist and that all rational people should not believe in their existence...
 
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Hammegk said:
And, correctly enough, that is a FACT. Mutation and change is a fact. To date however, in the lab and in the ecosystem, mosquitos remains mosquitos, flies remain flies, bacteria bacteria, etc.
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Define species any way you care to. What biological mechanism are you proposing that would limit evolution so that it could not bridge the species gap?

And, of course, you are ignoring the fossil record in your "ecosystem."

~~ Paul
 
Meta said:
A single such example, involving a macro evolution from one species to another would be enough, actually some ID supporters do not even dispute macro evolution in entirety. This scenario is still fully possible from all we know now, for example alien genetic manipulations.
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There are examples, and IDers will move the goalposts yet again to allow any and all forms of evolution, except for specific examples that are held back as demonstrating ID. Hell, they've already done that. In No Free Lunch, Dembski has us believing that the entire bacterium is naturalistic, except for its flagellum. Ridiculous.

~~ Paul
 
You know, I don't think I've ever heard a single good reason posited by creationists that all of the created "kinds" that lactate also have the same structure of inner ear bones, but none of the "kinds" that have feathers have that structure.
Why? I mean, not even one bird with mammalian ears?
Why don't any reptiles grow fur? Why do the only flying mammals have completely different wings than birds? (I think this is the point made above that Iamme failed to grasp..) Why do no feathered fliers have the same structures that all bats share?

Common decent explains this. "Special creation" doesn't. Of course Darwin pointed this out 150 years ago, but some people are still plugging their ears.

Now this isn't conclusive in and of itself. That's why we can also look at dozens of other lines of evidence. Including the refinement of the above argument that can be made with an understanding of DNA.
 
Belz... said:
But a theory isn't scientific unless it can be falsified, whether or not it is falsified.
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This is too simplistic an answer -- you're ripping out Karl Popper's thesis and taking it as THE model for a theory. You do know the history of Philosophy of Science, and how this "a theory is a construct that can be tested and is possible to falsify" idea works, right? Then you should know that Quine put forward a "web of coherence" which I believe is much more cohesive and renders the falsification requirement no longer definitive -- still useful, but no longer the base to inspect the status of a theory upon.
 
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