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To: Aquinasfan
Can your argument be tested experimentally?

To what argument are you referring?

If you are referring to the concepts of evolution, there are forensic aspects and process aspects.

The processes necessary for evolution have all been subjected both to observation and experimental analysis. Mutations happen; they are subjected to selection. those are the minimal requirements for evolution to happen.

Evolution predicts that the boundaries between closely related species should be fuzzy and difficult to establish definitively, and in real life, this is the case.

When you make a forensic case for a proposed history, you are making predictions about the self-consistency of additional evidence that might turn up after you tell your story about what happened. Since evolution was first proposed, we have had 150 years of additional evidence, all of it consistent with the assumption of common descent.

Different sciences have different kinds of data available to them. Astronomy is strongly forensic. It tells a story about what has happened in the past, and it relies on the consistency of its predictions to support its veracity. It cannot conduct experiments on the composition of stars.

75 posted on 05/12/2005 8:33:30 AM PDT by js1138 (e unum pluribus)
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To: js1138
Can your argument be tested experimentally?

To what argument are you referring?

"the idea that arguments can be settled by experiment."

83 posted on 05/12/2005 8:38:32 AM PDT by Aquinasfan (Isaiah 22:22, Rev 3:7, Mat 16:19)
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