Now the theory has been modified, and it's a huge ad hoc modification..."
First, convergence is not talking about the same features, rather about similar looking features in distantly related species.
Further, the similarities have to be unexpected since, for example, every large land animal has a heart & lungs and those are not considered "convergent".
But various forms of wings on birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and even fish -- those are considered "convergent".
Second, natural science has been "ad hoc" from Day One, it's fundamental to what science is -- observations, hypotheses, confirmations, theories, mathematical "laws", etc., all a mish-mash often contradictory sometimes falsified ever-growing more detailed & complex.
Over time ideas become clarified, explanations more consistent, but science, unlike our religion, never was and never will be "once and forever".
lasereye: "The convergent evolution theory came about after they realized things had virtually identical features that could not have inherited it from each other.
Nobody predicted it beforehand."
No, not "virtually identical" but rather similar in form or function.
Compare: a human heart is virtually identical to a chimpanzee's, but that is not convergent evolution since all evidence points to common ancestors with the same virtually identical heart.
But various forms of wings on birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians & fish, those are classified convergent, similar features on very distantly related creatures.
lasereye: "Therefore, observing things with the same features (that couldn't have inherited them from each other) did not confirm anything.
It has not been confirmed by anything unless you're using circular reasoning where the observed thing confirms the theory concocted to explain the thing."
It sounds like you've become obsessed with this notion of "circular thinking" and fixated by misunderstandings.
Indeed, if we can return to that Japanese samurai crab, you are like people seeing in the crab something which isn't there: the face of an angry samurai.
In fact, there's no samurai on that crab and no circular in scientific reasoning.
You just need to back up and reexamine your own thinking here.
lasereye: "I see nothing in the list of (allegedly) confirmed predictions that relates to convergent evolution.
You need to drop your claim that it's been confirmed by lots of observations."
But convergent evolution is a subset of general evolution, and anything confirming one will also help confirm the other.
Convergent evolution simply says that sometimes different species can evolve similar features, and why that should drive you to the point of silliness I can't imagine.
lasereye quoting from the link: "Evolution predicts that features of living things will fit a hierarchical arrangement of relatedness."
lasereye responding: "That is not a prediction of evolution.
It's something that can be seen as consistent with evolution."
First, that word, hierarchiacal, makes it a prediction, since it's an idea we impose on nature, whether accurately or not.
Confirmed observations (aka "facts") tell us if the prediction is accurate.
Second, once again: "convergent evolution" refers to similar features (not identical features) on distantly related species.
Such features sometimes caused confusion in the minds of biologists (i.e., Darwin himself) trying to determine how closely or distantly related those species were.
But recent decades of DNA analyses have brought great clarity to questions previously much in doubt.
This clarity wiped out whole genera and created new species, sub-species and breeds where none existed before.
It shows us the difference between distantly related species with similar features versus closely related species with recent common ancestors.
And DNA analyses further confirms what the fossil record and extant species morphology already suggested.
So I'm baffled as to where you get your claim of "no confirmations".
lasereye: "And, even if they were all actually predicted, which I doubt, that's a classic example of another logical fallacy, confirmation bias, otherwise known as cherry picking. "
Your perjorative "cherry picking" implies there is contrary evidence which would falsify the evolution hypothesis.
But in fact, there is none -- zero, zip, nada falsifying evidence.
So there's no "cherry picking", and the evidence confirming evolution theory is literally mountainous -- billions of individual fossils collected, covering hundreds of thousands of species, including innumerable "transition forms" which our anti-evolution FRiends can never quite see.
lasereye: "Darwin's original claim, that fossils would show gradual change, is false."
Again, in the past 150 years billions of individual fossils covering hundreds of thousands of species with countless "transitional" or "intermediate" forms.
And perhaps no prehistoric species have been more carefully studied for gradual change than these:
All told, remains of about 6,000 individuals, pre-human and early human found, including hundreds of Neanderthals demonstrating beyond reasonable dispute "gradual", "transitional" and "intermediate" forms.
lasereye: "The contradiction between the alleged evolution prediction that life forms must all have strictly hierchical features, while we simultaneously have another idea, convergent evolution, which would predict they won't all have strictly hierchical features, is exactly what the essay talks about. "
But your allegation here is false if you claim some inherent contradiction between evolution generally and convergent evolution.
There is no contradiction, logically or any other way, if you simply recall that we are talking here about features which only seem similar -- like samurai and samurai crabs.
There are no examples in nature -- none, zero, nada examples -- of advanced creatures (i.e., mammals, birds) only distantly related and yet whose form & features are identical.
lasereye: "Lost in this process are the ad hoc explanations, X4, X5 etc.
Rationally, they should be incorporated into theory T, where they might need their own confirmation, be subject to possible falsification,"
I think you grossly misunderstand science.
My guess: as a religious person you naturally equate science to religious beliefs, such as the divinely inspired Bible, written one time and forever true.
But science is not like that, never was, never will be.
Everything but everything in science started out as ad hoc observations and explanations, some made sense, many contradictory, others eventually falsified.
That's what science is, it's how science works.
That's why I say science is the opposite of religion because in science there is no permanent truth, no belief, no faith and certainly nothing supernatural.
Natural science strictly defined is all tentative, conditional, only grudgingly accepted for now pending further evidence or better ideas which might falsify it.
But many of science's soundest theories have been around for centuries now, confirmed innumerable times and used every day to design, power and direct our machines.
These ideas are not expected to ever be falsified and our lives depend on them working consistently.
One such theory is evolution which now permeates most every other scientific field and as such is confirmed daily.
Evolution theory in the past 150 years has never been seriously falsified, despite devoted efforts of anti-evolutionists like lasereye to misrepresent & confuse.