Posted on 09/19/2005 3:24:26 AM PDT by snarks_when_bored
Edited on 09/19/2005 3:36:21 AM PDT by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
Excerpt. Story follows: Los Angeles Times
How can you be sure that they haven't tried without success?
Substantiating ToE cannot be done in the same way as the laws of physics of chemistry can be substantiated.
That is true. "Controlled laboratory settings" are not the only way good data can be collected, though. No one has produced a hurricane or earthquake in a "controlled laboratory setting" either, but meteorological and geological theories depend upon their observation.
Creation science has been around for hundreds of years without success. There are still flood geologists, people who believe a recent dinosaur fossil contained fresh red meat, dino+human footprints.
The difficulty I have with taking natural selection seriously is that so many of those who argue against it do so out of motives that have nothing to do with the relative merits of the theory...likewise many who favor it.
Any time I try to read something substantive on natural selection I find myself wondering "Is this a real argument, or is the author merely defending his ideological turf?"
It's enough to make one take up basketweaving.
Why is substantiating ToE science but falsifying it not science? Or if falsifying is science too, maybe that's all the ID folks have to work with at this time that might be capable of producing something irrefutable. The problem is though that scientists tend to just ignore things that don't jibe with their prejudices or are embarrasing to their prejudices.
I'm so glad you acknowledge the infinitesimally small differences between Homo sapien and other animals.
Absolutely. But there's "observation" and then there's "observation".
Ask the people of New Orleans if a thing called a "hurricane" exists. It's not a theory. It's an observed fact. Laboratory setting not required.
"Evolution" is a little different. I find a fossil here. I find a fossil there. I find lots of fossils. By observing the location of these fossils, I build up a timeline and a series of logical conjectures about what took place over a time span of, perhaps, millions of years. It's observation.
But not quite as irrefutable as a hurricane knocking down your house.
What happens when someone breaks any of the laws of physics?
The leaders of NOLA dismissed the need for planning and preparation, because hurricanes were just a theory.
The difficulty I have with taking natural selection seriously is that so many of those who argue against it do so out of motives that have nothing to do with the relative merits of the theory...
I started to say, well, it wouldn't make sense to dismiss natural selection simply because you question the motives of those who argue against it, but then you added
likewise many who favor it.
But you're correct to try to distinguish between ideological turf-defending, on the one hand, and the marshalling of evidence and argument in favor of (or against) natural selection, on the other hand. I'll confess that I don't often find it hard to distinguish between these two, since the turf-defender almost immediately tips his hand by resorting to ad hominem's or other shifty debater's tricks.
But, you know, everybody needs at least one good basket...
Problem is, most anti-evolutionists actually are ignorant on the issue.
And those that aren't ignorant have all the hallmarks of charlatans making a living off the ignorant anti-evolutionists.
It is a very good business after all. Lots of ignorant people out there are willing to give money to charlatans that give the veneer of respectability to their uninformed world view.
I wouldn't put it in the same league with a law of physics or else you could make some definite predictions about a population of eels (say) and what they will be in 2 million years. I think it's more along the lines of a law of economics. Do you call laws of economics laws of physics?
Who can break the law of gravity? Any attempt to break it invariably fails.
How can you verify a process that in nature takes many thousands of years?
Instead, you have to test a theory like evolution by formulating predictions based on the theory that can then be verified.
For example: Suppose you see two similar species, judged to be similar based on anatomical similarities and so forth. You hypothesize that they are closely related, that they have a recent common ancestor that they've both evolved from. How can you test this hypthesis? You reason, if they're that related, then when we examine certain genes, we'll find they too are similar. For example, mammalian species all contain the gene for hemoglobin. But often there are slight, inconsequential "spelling errors" in this gene and other genes, which differ from species to species. You may find your two closely-related species do indeed share most of the same spelling errors. This would greatly strengthen the assertion that species have common ancestors. And indeed, this type of observation has been made many, many times -- if you look at the genes, you will see that all species have common ancestors.
So the evidence is extremely strong that all species have a common ancestor and that this happened over hundreds of millions of years. The actual mechanism might still be under debate, on the fringes of modern biology. I myself believe in theistic evolution: God created a system of life that creates itself, with at most only an occasional nudge from the Creator to ensure that sentient life would result.
Another candidate for The List-O-Links, in the "THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON CREATIONISM" section.
I agree that evolution is more difficult to observe than other natural processes. Changes (including some that have caused speciation) have been observed directly in nature. No one has directly observed the change of an animal/plant/bacteria/etc. from one family or order to another, of course, this would never happen on an observable time scale.
Many of the more elaborate theories in science rely on indirect observation to formulate theories. Atomic theory is a good example. No one has "directly" observed an atom, only their effects. Even electron microscope "pictures" of atoms you may have seen have to undergo reconstruction using rules of quantum physics before a picture can be produced. The existence of atoms, though, produces testable physical consequences, as does the theory of evolution. Atoms are are removed from us by orders of magnitude of size, while huge evolutionary changes are removed from us by orders of magnitude in time.
The ToE stands strong because it stands up to the scrutiny of many unrelated lines of inquiry, and keeps fulfilling predictions, that's all it can claim to do (as does any scientific theory). There is no scientific alternative that succeeds in the manner that evolution does at explaining the natural origin of biodiversity. In plain speaking, it simply works and no one has found anything better to replace it.
So, just what is a scientific law?
What the heck are you talking about?
There is a difference between evolution, which is an observed part of nature, and the theory of evolution which is a human developed explanation for how the observed evolution works. If anything the theory of evolution shows the objective equality of arbitrary subgroups of humans.
Sorry, I didn't put in explicit [sarcasm] tags :-)
But I suppose the penalty for thinking you can break the law of gravity to forfeit one's rationality
Evolution does that on it's own - no "who" required.
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