I said that you lied about me when you said I "intend to deny" the inductive evidence used to arrive at common descent (or that inductive reasoning applied to the evidence makes common descent plausible, whichever). I "denied" nor "intended to deny" no such thing, and you can't name a single post to the contrary.
That's what I said. How many times shall I repeat this?
You rapidly dismissed it, all 29 lines of evidence for macroevolution, as evidence for a theory and nothing more.
I didn't "dismiss" all those 29 lines of evidence as evidence for a theory. I said that it is evidence for a theory. Which it is.
When you show me evidence for a theory and I say, "Yup, that sure is evidence for the theory", how the heck is that "dismissing" it? What did you want me to do, applaud?
And why do you think that to call a theory a theory is to "dismiss" it? (Let alone to "deny" it.) You really don't seem to understand what "theory" means. When I say that evolution is a theory, you seem to hear "evolution is false". I am not saying that evolution is "false". I am not "denying" it. I'm saying it's a theory. Which it is.
You really ought not to be so defensive and thin-skinned about the fact that evolution is a theory. What's your huge stake in the whole bizarre self-contradictory Never-Call-the-Theory-of-Evolution-a-Theory campaign, anyway?
You insist that any mere preponderance of evidence, no matter how large, for facts some people don't want to face should not prevent such facts from being publicly branded as somehow conjectural.
What is this "publicly branded" jazz? Do you think that calling something a "theory" is to brand it with a scarlet.... well, "T"? Listen, there are stronger theories than "evolution" which have been labeled theories with no ill effect.
It seems like you're deathly afraid that if evolution is admitted to be (oh sorry "publicly branded" as) a theory, then it will collapse. If that is really so, then perhaps evolution is not so strong a theory after all. You can't have it both ways; if there's such a preponderance of evidence in favor of evolution then what's the harm of telling the TRUTH about it and calling it a theory?
You are doing exactly what I just told Rightwing you are doing.
No, you told him that I "intend to deny" "[c]onnecting the dots [which] is inductive logic". I do not "deny" inductive logic (whatever "denying inductive logic" would mean), let alone "intend to" deny it. And the fact that inductive logic applied to the evidence from biological history leads to common descent as a hypothesis is NOT something I "deny" or "intend to deny" either. So, I am doing nothing of the sort that you told Rightwing I am doing. You are a liar. As I said.
I don't know how else to explain it. If you still have a problem understanding this it can only be because you do not understand the English words you and/or I am using very well. (For example, you seem to think that Calling It A Theory and Denying It are one and the same. You think the word "theory" means "false". This is incorrect; look in any dictionary.)
You've spent dozens of posts just to me chanting your "just a theory" mantra, defending this creationist wedge-strategy disclaimer as fact
Evolution IS a theory, and the disclaimer does state a FACT. Ask ANY scientist. You could even ask any of the (presumed) scientists or mathematicians posting on this thread (Physicist, longshadow, donh...), although you'd probably have to catch them in one of their more honest/sincere/less nit-picky moments when they're not spending all the time dissecting how I'm using words like "true"....
So who's lying?
You are, liar.
You deny it factual basis. You have done so repeatedly. I have made up no part of this. Your behavior is here on this thread for all to see.
Now, it is possible to deny almost anything a factual basis in total disregard of all evidence. If you're going to spin stories and start wondering about how exactly do we know anything, really, then nothing is solid. Science cannot bend over backwards in such a fashion and neither should science textbooks.
[Furthermore, we know who is pushing the disclaimers and why they are pushing the disclaimers and it's actually not good science education policy to let such witch doctors start scribbling in the science books.]
What I have defended to Rightwing and everywhere else on this thread is exactly the right of science to say that the evidence looks a certain way because this initially controversial idea is obviously true. Only if science is allowed to do that can it ever stop arguing about the phlogiston theory of combustion versus Lavoisier's newfangled chemical reaction theory and move on to the next step. What you are saying, on the other hand, is that any sufficiently organized Luddite group can label anything in science, however well established, as conjecture and By God get a warning label pasted in the front of a science textbook so stating.
I don't blame you for being ashamed of this. But there you are.
Evolution IS a theory, and the disclaimer does state a FACT. Ask ANY scientist.
OK, since you have no problem with evolution, I propose to replace every occurrence of "evolution" in the disclaimer with "plate tectonics." "Origin of life" will similarly be replaced with "configuration of land masses" and so forth. This will make you and the rest of the disclaimer crew just as happy and we'll all laugh about it and go away, right? Because all you really want to do is raise awareness of theory, right?
Why do I get the feeling that this proposal isn't going to fly?
Any scientist?
Evolution as Fact and Theory, SJ Gould.
Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.Evolution is a Fact and a Theory, Laurence Moran (Professor of Biochemistry, U. of Toronto).
Finally, there is an epistemological argument against evolution as fact. Some readers of these newsgroups point out that nothing in science can ever be "proven" and this includes evolution. According to this argument, the probability that evolution is the correct explanation of life as we know it may approach 99.9999...9% but it will never be 100%. Thus evolution cannot be a fact. This kind of argument might be appropriate in a philosophy class (it is essentially correct) but it won't do in the real world.OK, I just asked two and they don't agree with you. Evolution is a theory, yes, but it's also a fact and cannot in 2002 be dismissed as a conjecture.