Outcome is measured by the veracity of the process, checked against proven standards set by a record of past successes in like fields of study. We cannot allow the process to be prejudiced by our cherished notions of an ideal cosmology. Nor can we be true to the scientific process if we expect the outcome to champion our political agendas or justify our religious faith.
Advocates of creationism or ID seem to fall into two categories. Some don't appreciate that science is as essential to our survival as raising children to be the mature, intelligent and moral adults needed to propagate our species. Then others - often in a paranoid tone - mischaracterize science as a religion or cult, and they typically fixate on the theories of cosmology and evolution as potential threats to their own religious faith and family values.
Again, I'm not a scientist, nor would I ever be tempted to embrace a false concept of science as religion, and revere its theories as absolute and involiable doctrine. I hope I'm wrong when I suggest you would suspect a reasonable person of such a travesty.
A great example of natural selection driving beneficial mutation is the common flu virus. Every year we concoct a new vaccine to combat the outbreak, and every year, a new strain finds its way into our bodies from diseased chickens in China every year. Last year's vaccine killed of the virus strain with genetic traits we predicted when we devised the serum. Any viroids that inherited beneficial traits from last year's survivors will be immune to last year's vaccine. So the cycle begins anew. Every so often a superstrain emerges, and we find ourselves vulnerable until we can work out a winning vaccine. Of course, thousands of generations of the flu strain come and go in the course of a year, each organism living only hours or days.
How can a dead fish remain unmolested on the ocean floor and never decompose? I take it you're wondering how science can address the issue of fossils. Well, oceans are big places, and not every deceased fish will draw the attention of a scavenging shark. So over the centuries and eons sediment piles up, and the combined wieght of the water and sediment compress the body, and over a million years perhaps the fish is fossilized.
Abiogensis, the theory that inanimate matter is transformed into animate life. Hmmmm....this cannot be a true scientific hypothesis, let alone a theory. Why do you demand that science explain this fiction? I'm waiting for quantum physicists to provide me with their overdue explanation for vacuum-genesis....
How does new (genetic) information enter into a "closed" biological system? I have no idea. Don't all lifeforms have to eat and then eliminate? Don't they procreate and bear offspring? Ask a microbiologist.
And now a space question! Ever heard of nucleosynthesis? Essentially, it is a theory - successfully proven by observation - that explains how all the chemical elements, the atoms that compose our planet and our very bodies were produced inside long gone stars through the process of fussion. I'm no astrophysicist, so I suggest you find a book written by one that explains this more consicely than I can.
I'm not really into evolution as much as astrophysics, so I'm going to pass on this issue. I suppose the more specimens they can classify from field study, the better they get at predicting what specimen goes with what species. Another opportunity for independent study.
And finally, my crack about creationists as liberals. I couldn't help pointing out what I see as a common trait shared by those who present an alternative view to a genuine scientific theory, but cannot muster any evidence of their own to win over the skeptics. If ID can explain the origins of phenomena that current science cannot address, I'd like to read your White Paper. If you can't publish your proposal and defend why you believe ID is a likely source of empirical knowledge missed by science, you won't get any further in your inquiry. Meanwhile, though my science IQ doesn't qualify me to teach String Theory at Columbia University, I'll continue to appreciate and defend the scientific process, and the notion that humans are a speicies of advanced primates, that dark energy is speeding up the inflation of the universe and......that for reasons neither I nor any scientist can explain...praying with my rosary and reading Psalms and Ecclesiastes heals my soul. - PEACE!
"Science is an accumulation of ordered knowledge acquired by rigorous observation and documentation of phenomena, and the investigation of possible causes of the phenomena, which can be reduced to a testable hypothesis, either debunked or qualified by process."
And...
"We cannot allow the process to be prejudiced by our cherished notions of an ideal cosmology. "
According to these two statements, it is pointless to say that Creationism or Evolution is a product of scientific inquiry, since none of "the phenomena can be reduced to a testable hypothesis". You can't reproduce the Big Bang, abiogenesis, or even one case of macro evolution, and I can't create the heavens and the earth and all that is within them in six literal days. Now try convincing the God haters of this, who won't even permit the consideration of Creationism in a public forum without the usual calls of legal action, heckling, and gratuitous insults. We don't even need to go that far, for instance, your next paragraph is a outright lie and gratuitous insult at all Creationists.
Advocates of creationism or ID seem to fall into two categories. Some don't appreciate that science is as essential to our survival as raising children to be the mature, intelligent and moral adults needed to propagate our species. Then others - often in a paranoid tone - mischaracterize science as a religion or cult, and they typically fixate on the theories of cosmology and evolution as potential threats to their own religious faith and family values.
I can only assume that this statement arises from a projection of your own paranoia, fear of religion, and little appreciation that science is as essential to our survival. I don't believe for a minute your original statement: "I'm not a scientist, but a student of its development in history and its applications in our world." unless your definition of "student of its development" allows you to only read Scientific American or intellectual dreck from talkorigins.org. How is it possible for you to be "a student of its [science's] development" and not read about Creationists Sir Frances Bacon, Johannes Kepler, Robert Boyle, Nicolaus Steno, Sir Issac Newton, Carolus Linnaeus, Samuel F.D. Morse, James Simpson, Louis Pasteur, Henry Margenau, William Paley, August Friedrich Leopold Weismann... to name a few?
I am further offended by the insult to suggest that Creationists are the antithesis of scientists. We are not narrowed eyed hill scoggin that marvels at the flashlight as some sort of magical firestick. After lecturing us on the scientific principle, you turn around, ignore your own words and universally announce all Creationists, by virtue of them being Creationists, as opposed or scared of science. The ultimate slander is that you completely ignore the beliefs of science's founders and state just the opposite by claiming that Creationists stand in the way of science - imperiling the lives of our children. These Creationists who you scorn and mischaracterize (presumably for a person vendetta and agenda) are those who were the founders of modern science. Who in the evolution community has founded a science that benefits mankind based on their evolutionary world view? You talk about endangering the lives of our children, but it is an evolutionary world view that brings us the death cult of abortion, euthenasia, eugenics, communism, moral relativism, extreme environmentalism, genocide, and the destruction of human rights.
Also, I observe that you are very confused about the place of science and religion in world history. Even the pagans in Egypt and Central America furthered their studies of the heavens based on their religious beliefs. The early world based confidence in their finds because they believed that the cosmos had a purpose. Evolutionary cosmogonists categorically reject purpose and have a world view that must accept in toto an accidental, impersonal, pointless, chaotic universe. What do you think is a better legacy to pass on to one's children? A world view that devalues human life and equates it to the same value as a bug, or one that says that all men and women are made in God's image - the very God who created the entire universe. Who is man that the Creator of all things would take special interest in him? It is ignorant and desperate to state that evolutionary cosmogony is superior to monotheism due to its dependency on idle speculation.
A great example of natural selection driving beneficial mutation is the common flu virus. Every year we concoct a new vaccine to combat the outbreak, and every year, a new strain finds its way into our bodies from diseased chickens in China every year.
This statement proves the danger in evolutionary thinking. You accept the contradiction to science that information appears ex nihilo, and that new species of viruses appear out of nothing, or exist out of a beneficial mutation from preceding viruses. You completely and totally ignore history and science when making this foolish statement. When Europeans visited the New World, they brought with them diseases of their own country that did not previously exist in the New World. These people had not developed an immune system (an immune system that defies rational explanation by the evolutionary crowd). No new virus was formed ex nihilo, no mutation was made to an existing strand; no sheep or dandelion turned into a virus that killed the natives; it was simple exposure to a foreign virus on a people who had no built in immunity to it. Similar to your chickens from China.
Another statement based on blind allegiance to a flawed concept. Do sharks have to be the only hungry critter in the ocean? There are countless critters in the ocean, not necessarily with fins, nor those that will bite your hook, that feast upon the dead. It is crazy talk to assume that the ocean is so devoid of life that not one single critter will touch a dead fish for thousands and thousands of years. It requires a mind that unquestionably accepts Alice's Wonderland to think that there are no processes in the ocean that would separate the fish's bones within thousands of years of open exposure. Is this science to you? Blind allegiance to a religious faith, worshipping at the feet of the god of Chance and declaring yourself an accident of birth to an unknown ape who had its origins as lifeless goo?
Ever heard of nucleosynthesis? Essentially, it is a theory - successfully proven by observation
That's total Bravo Sierra. There is no mechanism for producing heavy metals from energy according to Big Bang. The best you folks have is a mathematical formula to make hydrogen, but there isn't the consolidated energy to fuse heavy metals. There is even argument that what we claim to know about the sun's fusion isn't even close to being correct.
It is perfectly clear to me that you have confused "science" with scientists speculating, despite your opening statement.