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To: Lucky Dog

The whole point is that evolution is both a fact and a theory. I guess there were too many words for you in it.


701 posted on 01/05/2005 2:21:32 PM PST by shubi (Peace through superior firepower.)
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To: shubi
The whole point is that evolution is both a fact and a theory. I guess there were too many words for you in it.

[from a previous post by stremba] It IS a fact that the allele frequencies of the gene pools of populations of organisms change over time. That is the definition of the term evolution. Therefore evolution is a fact.

[my response] If one accepts your posit that the definition of evolution is only “change,” then I can hardly take exception to your assertion.

Is that your (shubi’s) definition of “evolution”… just change? If so, I cannot argue that it is fact. However, if this all there is to “evolution,” it explains nothing. It is the equivalent of saying “things change over time and therefore, things are different.” From this wonderful “theory” I can predict that “things” we find in the present will be different from “things” in the past and further that “things” that we may find in the future will different from “things” now. Any observer would come to same conclusion.

Facts are observations that are independent of the observer (ignoring the Heisenberg principle). Facts do not change. New facts may be discovered. However, if a “fact” supposedly changes, it wasn’t a fact to begin with.

Theories pose explanations for how facts came to exist as they are observed. Theories change. Each time a new fact is discovered, theories change to accommodate that fact. Each time a theory’s prediction is discovered to be incongruent with facts or less consistent than a competing theory’s predictions, the theory is changed or discarded.

So which is it? Is “evolution” a fact, and consequently, will never change? Alternately, is “evolution” a theory created to explain facts and will change as new facts are discovered or its predictions fail to align as well some potential, competing theory?

Unless you are playing games with semantics, it is one, or the other, not both.
720 posted on 01/05/2005 5:36:08 PM PST by Lucky Dog
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