Is evolution a fact or theory?

[Iamme]

Originally Posted by Iamme :
What makes you even think that a bee wing has anything to do with a skeletalized bat wing?

Schneibster:
Errrrmmm... I dunno... because you can FLY with them?

Iamme:
That was good. i like that.

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

Iamme:
I liked that too.

Originally Posted by Iamme :
This to me proves nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Schneibster:
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.

Iamme:
Awwwww. I really dont' think you want the debate to go away. Probably hoping *I* go away. You mean to tell me that everyone, like many Ph.D.'s who don't believe in macro-evolution, are idiots? Check out Dr. Carl Baugh at Creationscience.org. He claims HE was an evolutionist himself...once.

Regarding the Bible: Seeing my life is incomplete and I don't understand everything yet, I am reserving judgement on the Bible, even though I agree with you that a lot of what is said in there sounds rather odd. There is more REALLY odd stuff in there. Go read Deuteronomy once.

 

[metacristi]

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

I had in mind an explanation / interpretation of some observed facts which to be considered 'crucial' by the scientific community determining them to prefer a variant of ID as the first choice program, this possibility is in no way eliminated by the above mentioned type of examples. I do not know exactly what justification presented the above mentioned authors but it is even possible that they are right in absolute though the actual version of rationality (non algorithmic anyway) used by scientists do not indicate their views as being the first choice program now. We must never forget that the actual minimal scientific methodology is imperfect, being only our best 'tool' so far to make sense of observed facts. Future might still be full of surprises (some of my thoughts dealing with philosophy of science, supporting what I said above, can be found here and here).

 

[Schneibster]

Errrrmmm... I dunno... because you can FLY with them?

That was good. i like that.

Heh, well, if it's just a philosophical argument, then glad you found it amusing.

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.

Awwwww. I really dont' think you want the debate to go away. Probably hoping *I* go away. You mean to tell me that everyone, like many Ph.D.'s who don't believe in macro-evolution, are idiots? Check out Dr. Carl Baugh at Creationscience.org. He claims HE was an evolutionist himself...once.

Now, keep in mind, evolution is a fact- but the theory of evolution by natural selection is a theory. The theory attempts to explain why evolution occurs, not that it occurs. We can see it occurs; that's not in question (unless you care to ignore the entire science of biology). Unless of course you prefer to believe that god is out to fool us all; personally, being an atheist, I don't believe there is a god, but even if I am wrong I have read enough of the bible to be relatively certain that god would do no such thing, and all the evidence of the physical sciences says that in fact, if s/he does exist, s/he would not.

Regarding the Bible: Seeing my life is incomplete and I don't understand everything yet, I am reserving judgement on the Bible, even though I agree with you that a lot of what is said in there sounds rather odd. There is more REALLY odd stuff in there. Go read Deuteronomy once.

Now don't misinterpret me; my intention was not to present an actual argument against the bible, it was instead a reductio ad absurdum showing that the argument you presented against evolution is senseless, and leads to incorrect conclusions. I'd count this one a swing and a miss on your part.

 

[flume]

When the proponents of ID assume their ideas are the only alternatives to current evolutionary thought, I believe they are wrong. There are oher alternatives and 'controversies' floating around. Pleomorphism (discussed in the "pH Miracle" books by Young and also books on alkalinizing by the Jubbs) is an idea which contradicts cell theory and germ theory. This is another idea originally from the 1800s. It proposes that life is formed from the coalescence of tiny particles which can make viruses, bacteria, fungi and higher eukaryotic cells reversibly, so that various lifeforms can appear and change into one another spontaneously. (E.g. Young, doing 'live blood cell analysis' with a microscope, 'saw' a red blood cell change into a bacteria and then back into a red blood cell.) Young calls this the New Biology.
I assume this belief would require a different version of evolution (although the Jubbs do apparently accept evolution at some level.).
(There is also the idea of biological transmutation from Louis Kervran, which describes chickens changing silicon to calcium in their bodies in response to calcium deficiency.)

 

[swstephe]

i think you guys are falling into the "id" trap: that of lumping everything together and discrediting the bundle because certain parts are not directly observable. inside the "evolution" lump, they are including the fact of natural selection, the overwhelming evidence of similarity of biological structures and the hyposthesis of the origin of current speciation.

it is kind of like a murder trial. you have the facts of evidence, (blood stains, dna, all that good csi stuff), you have some substantial correlations, you come up with a verdict, which is the most reasonable hypothesis for what really happened, (beyond a shadow of a doubt). the hypothesis can't become "fact" without detailed recording.

id-ers want to have the case thrown out entirely without presenting any evidence, correlation but simply one testimony, (not even by an eye witness -- which would have been thrown out as "hearsay").

 

[HeyLeroy]

This is the most succinct explanation I've found to put down the "just a theory" argument. It's from the November 2005 issue of Discover magazine.

"Theory

Most people use the word theory to mean uncertainty, guesswork, or a rough idea, but in science it has a different meaning. A scientific theory explains facts or phenomena that have been shown to be true by repeated independent tests and experiments. An educated guess in science is called a hypothesis.

Scientific theories are not laws, which describe phenomena thought to be invariable. Theories are generally used to describe why certain laws work. For example, the law of gravity is known to be true for falling bodies, but how and why it works is explained by Alfred Einstein's general theory of relativity. Einstein's theory was accepted as true only after repeated experimentation and observation. Yet not even laws are absolute. They are rarely overturned, but they may be amended should new data warrant it."

--Maia Weinstock

(Or it could be Intelligent Falling, just the same. Arrrh!)

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I'm sorry, but there is something about the name "Alfred Einstein" that I find hysterical. Perhaps I'm thinking of Alfred E. Neuman.

~~ Paul

 

[HeyLeroy]

I'm sorry, but there is something about the name "Alfred Einstein" that I find hysterical. Perhaps I'm thinking of Alfred E. Neuman.

~~ Paul

Yeah, my bad. I proofed it for spelling but that one slipped by. I'm posting on the sly from work, but that's no excuse.

Throw me in the bulk bin!