[old-ager]

JS -
I like your simple definition of Darwinian evolution.
Here's what I propose though:
- In matters of science, stick to what can be physically observed right now or well within a human lifetime. The science does not have to be simple, but there has to be a simple physical proof. For example, hardly anybody understands how 50kbps of data are encoded on to your analog phone line, but everybody's uncle uses it and knows that it works.
- Everything else is speculation, or philosophy, or religion.

[js1138]

In matters of science, stick to what can be physically observed right now or well within a human lifetime.

Totally absurd. Rules out all of history; rules out the forensic processes in criminal investigation, because they require making inferences; rules out geology; rules out astronomy.

In fact it rules out the processes of science completely, because science involves making inferences, educated guesses, and testing them against new evidence as it accumulates. Science is a process of continuously improving the confidence in guesses.

In 1860, natural selection was an educated guess. After 144 years of evidence accumulated by tens of thousands of researchers, after withstanding thousands of challenges, it is one of the most confidently held propositions in science.