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To: r9etb
Evolution is forensic science. Your glow-in-the dark pigs are and interesting challenge, but that is all. Forensic science works with probabilities and best available explanations. It does this all the time.

In criminal cases the best available explanation sends people to prison, even to execution.

Why not exercise your brain on something interesting? Tell me how a forensic science would go about solving puzzles for which we do not yet have a certain answer?

How were the pyramids built? Were they built by people using technology that we believe was available at the time, or did the builders have alien or divine assistance? How would you go about deciding whether people could build the pyramids with simple technologies?
418 posted on 01/17/2006 6:25:26 AM PST by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
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To: js1138
Evolution is forensic science.

I'm not sure that's an appropriate description, as forensic is defined as "relating to or dealing with the application of scientific knowledge to legal problems."

If I'm not mistaken, what you're really saying is that evolution attempts to explain how things got to be the way they are. That's a reasonable description, although I suspect that you're not actually stating the majority opinion on that, because you'd be faced with the same problems of testability and predictability that supposedly face an ID hypothesis.

Your glow-in-the dark pigs are and interesting challenge, but that is all.

They're an interesting test of "evolution as forensic science." We already have "the best available explanation," in that we already know the real answer. The test for your "forensic science" is to see whether or not it can come up with the real answer on its own. And if it cannot ... well, that does raises a rather interesting scientific problem, doesn't it?

Forensic science works with probabilities and best available explanations. It does this all the time.

And in the case of glow-in-the-dark pigs, what do your forensic probabilities tell you about the "best available explanations?" Can your forensic science tolerate a hypothesis that these pigs were caused by intelligent agents?

Why not exercise your brain on something interesting? Tell me how a forensic science would go about solving puzzles for which we do not yet have a certain answer?

Hmmmm..... Well, I'd say that testing the ability of your forensic science to get the right answer in this case is an interesting exercise.

428 posted on 01/17/2006 6:48:19 AM PST by r9etb
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