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To: ScubieNuc
Ok. Lizard turning into a bird. You know what the point is....If it can't be experimented on, if it can't be observed, and data collected on it, then it is an guess. A scientific guess, but a guess none the less.

A fact is something that has actually existance, something that can be observed. The archeoptorix may have been a unique species, it may have be a one of a kind hybrid, it may actually be a lizard and a bird fossilized at the same place.

However, until you can reproduce lizards turning into birds or any other creature, you don't have facts to support the TOE.

If you followed that standard uniformly, you would have to throw out nearly all of science. No one has ever seen an atom, much less the protons, neutrons and electrons that supposedly make up atoms, or the quarks which allegedly make up those particles. No one has seen continents slide across the ocean floor and bang into each other.

I could go on, but the point should be obvious. Science-- all science-- does more than observe what can be observed in a lab. It draws inferences from those observations, formulates hypotheses, makes predictions, and tests if those predictions come true. If they do, we have a high degree of confidence in our theories.

We cannot absolutely prove anything in science. After all, maybe we are all strapped into chairs in the Matrix and the entire observed universe is a hallucination. But we can make very reasonable assumptions about the universe, which we hold with a high degree of certainty. We all do. You turn on the electric light in the morning without wondering whether the polarity of electrons has changed from negative to positive overnight.

People who object to the Theory of Evolution-- one of the best-supported of all scientific theories-- demand of it a degree of certainty they demand of no other branch of science (or, indeed, of any branch of human knowledge).

It is understandable why you do so. It threatens certain religious beliefs. Some of the popularizers of science (Dawkins is a particularly bad example), and some of my fellow FR evos, make this worse by trumpeting how Darwin supports their atheism. But there are many of us who accept the overwhelming evidence of the common descent of all life on earth, and do not lose our faith that evolution is a part of God's creation just as gravity and relativity are. Evolution is how God created us in His image.

558 posted on 03/16/2006 10:23:21 AM PST by Lurking Libertarian (Non sub homine, sed sub Deo et lege)
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To: Lurking Libertarian
No one has seen an atom, but based on the theory of atoms you can make assumptions and test them in a lab. If the test results are consistant then you have observation that your theory is correct.

"You turn on the electric light in the morning without wondering whether the polarity of electrons has changed from negative to positive overnight."

That is an example of how we can verify certain theories of electron flow. You can not do any of that with the origins of life theory. When you can get a lizard to mutate to a bird, then you have observation.

"People who object to the Theory of Evolution-- one of the best-supported of all scientific theories-- demand of it a degree of certainty they demand of no other branch of science (or, indeed, of any branch of human knowledge)."

You got that backwards. It is the Evo's that have demanded that the theory of origins is certain to such a high degree of certainty that us Creationists/IDer's are labeled "insane" to believe anything else. When we point out the inconsistancies, the "song-and-dance" team quotes, like the one up above come out.

"Evolution is how God created us in His image."

And you know that...how?

Sincerely
575 posted on 03/16/2006 3:36:28 PM PST by ScubieNuc
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