You: It would cause less confusion if we simply said that common descent is a fact; natural selection is an ovserved fact and also a theory to explain common descent.
You:This isn't arrogance; it is just the way things are. The major advocates of ID would agree with this statement, even though they deny that the theory of natural selection is completely adequte.
Not to beat a dead horse, and I am glad we are all still mostly conservative FReepers on most other topics but one last thing ;):
I am not as polarized as some from the Darwinists on this thread and fall into that category that feels evolution is quite rational but might has been started by something else. Not all of us are reactionary Bible-thumpers. And I have been trying to inject a little more philosopy into the argument.
But that can be just as much a part of a belief system as science. Admittedly, one might value one over the other, but that is a personal choice. And some might say "this is all just BS." But in the end everyone is their own arbiter of that, even when considering evolution.
Again you postedThis isn't arrogance; it is just the way things are.. What does that mean? How do you have such a handle on the way things are? In the very end, every human being interprets "the way things are" differently, so there is, consequently, no such thing. Explanations tend to vary just on the meanings of the words themselves, much more on the actual reality.
Didn't Quantum/particle theory shake up a great deal of what we thought we surely knew about matter? What is thought true in science seems to go through a great revision every so many years. Is there someone so brilliant out there now in any field holding the key to absolutes? Why will science not get stood on it's head again (with possibly beautiful results)? Why do scientists not understand the subjectivity of reality?
I know I am opening up myself to "yes you are" wisecracks, but I seem to be one of those "ignorant, stupid, or insanse" people, Dawkins condemns even though I have above average education.
Sorry for the book-like post.
Quantum theory went from first glimmerings to finished product in about 20 years. There are things about it that disturb some people, but it is less disturbing than the situation in physics before it came along, in which vast areas of phenomena admitted of no coherent explanation.
That would be the case in biology and geology without evolution.