For those that care here is my background and education. (for those that don’t care, skip to the next paragraph). I have a degree in Biochemistry and a doctorate in Medicine. The degree in Biochemistry included courses in biology, vertebrate morphology, taxonomy etc. I am a conservative Christian and believe in creation and not the modern Theory of Evolution.
The Theory of Evolution has always been and will always be a theory and one that lacks good evidence. I think that so many discussing this topic these days lack a basic understanding of the scientific method. A theory is an idea that explains observations. It can never move from a theory to an established law without experimentation and repeated verification. The evidence from the fossil record is very weak and no matter how many “missing links” you come up with you can never prove the Theory of Evolution because you 1) were not there to observe the process and 2) cannot reproduce it. (I am not talking about and we should make a clear difference between the Theory of Evolution and Natural Selection. Natural Selection can be observed directly in nature and actually can be reproduced. Natural Selection does not prove the Theory of Evolution. Just because I can change one species of fruit fly into another one in the lab does not mean I can change a frog into a dog no matter how much time is given to me. The leap of faith that people take from Natural Selection to the Theory of Evolution is enormous.)
The fossil record is simply a scattered series of “snapshots” of nature’s past. The theory part comes in when you try and assemble all of these snapshots and try and make them tell a story. Imagine taking a film (that you’ve never seen) and isolating 1% of the frames from that movie randomly. Now lay those pictures out on a table. Think you could tell the story accurately. Even if you had a large number of frames and knew what order to put them in you are still not seeing the whole movie. To take this analogy even further you first have to take a leap of faith and “believe” that the frames of the movie lead from one to the other. I must first “believe” that one species evolved into another species in order to explain two similar fossils. And that’s what we are left with: a theory to explain an observation – not proof!
In my office I have a 4’x 6’ chart of all of the typical biochemical reactions that occur in a living cell. Very small print, thousands of reactions. I find it much easier to believe that Someone created than to believe that it all happened by chance.
Call me a skeptic...
Theories don't graduate to laws. I am surprised, to say the least, that you don't know this, given the background you claim to have.
evidence from the fossil record is very weak and no matter how many “missing links” you come up with you can never prove the Theory of Evolution because you 1) were not there to observe the process and 2) cannot reproduce it. (I am not talking about and we should make a clear difference between the Theory of Evolution and Natural Selection. Natural Selection can be observed directly in nature and actually can be reproduced. Natural Selection can be observed directly in nature and actually can be reproduced. Natural Selection does not prove the Theory of Evolution. Just because I can change one species of fruit fly into another one in the lab does not mean I can change a frog into a dog no matter how much time is given to me.
Hoo boy. I suspect you skipped a couple of classes along the way.
Theories aren't "proven." And your references to "nobody was there to see it" and to changing "a frog into a dog" suggests that you acquired your scientific education from a creationist website, not a university.
Inferences from circumstantial evidence are both necessary and credible in scientific research and inquiry (which, given your "doctorate in Medicine", you should be well aware of). And Evolution is not biological alchemy.
Prepare for personal attacks by the zealots.
How many frames do you think it takes?
24 frames per second makes a pretty convincing movie. We have more frames than you imagine representing evolution.
But the most damning thing about your position is that you have no basis for interpolating frames, and biologists do. So every intermediate frame that pops up is a new creation to you, a lost frame to evolution.
Then how is it you make so many elementary mistakes about science in the following?
I am a conservative Christian and believe in creation
Feel free.
and not the modern Theory of Evolution.
Then how do you account for the vast amounts of overwhelming evidence support evolutionary biology? Oh, right, by just pretending it's "lacking", as you imply below.
The Theory of Evolution has always been and will always be a theory
True, since "theory" is the highest level of explanation achievable in science, there is no higher "step". Your subsequent comments reveal that you're ignorant of this very basic tenet, however -- how did you manage to achieve your degrees and remain completely unaware of this?
and one that lacks good evidence.
Completely and utterly false. Where did you "learn" this, some creationist pamphlet? You clearly haven't actually bothered to *look* at the evidence. If you don't find it personally convincing, so be it, but it takes a remarkable degree of unfamiliarity with it to claim that evolutionary biology "lacks good evidence". There are vast amounts of stunningly good evidence for evolution, enough that it would take more than a lifetime to cover it all.
I think that so many discussing this topic these days lack a basic understanding of the scientific method.
...you say, and then go on to reveal that you "lack a basic understanding" of it yourself, and are just parroting stuff from creationist tracts.
A theory is an idea that explains observations.
That part you've got right, but that's about the only part.
It can never move from a theory to an established law without experimentation and repeated verification.
EERRNNTT! Here's where you reveal that you "lack a basic understanding of the scientific method". Theories don't "move from" a theory to "an established law" AT ALL. They are different classifications of description. Laws don't become theories, theories don't become laws.
How did you manage to screw up something so basic?
The evidence from the fossil record is very weak
Complete nonsense. Parroting your favorite creationist pamphlets again?
For one example, how is the excellent fossil record of the transition of reptiles to mammals "very weak"? Go for it, this should be good for a few laughs.
and no matter how many “missing links” you come up with you can never prove the Theory of Evolution because you 1) were not there to observe the process and 2) cannot reproduce it.
Wow, *more* favorite creationist canards! Where did you "learn" your "science", exactly? Kent Hovind's DinoLand? No one who had an actual science education from a good institution could be this grossly mistaken on basic issues, unless they weren't paying attention at all.
1. Science does not deal in "proofs". Only someone who "lacks a basic understanding of the scientific method" would think that it does (which explains why it's a favorite creationist fallacy).
2. Science deals all the time with processes that "were not there to observe" or which can't be directly observed due to scale, speed, etc. In fact, it's not much of an overstatement to say that science deals almost entirely with processes which "you can't be there to see", because if you could, you wouldn't need to use science in order to investigate them. Science is all *about* investigating the things which you can't just pull up a chair and watch in all its details. Hey, what's the last time you actually watched a hydrogen atom link up with an oxygen atom? Is chemistry therefore not science? Clue for the clueless: Science is valuable precisely because it has accumulated reliable methods of acquiring and validating knowledge about things we *can't* fully "be there to see".
3. If you had actually learned about basic science, you'd like that the "observations" which science requires are the "sit there and be able to see the event/phenomenon in question" nonsense which you presume (see item #2), it's the ability to observe *evidence* or *effects* which can be used to test hypotheses about the thing being investigated. Sheesh.
Just how in the hell did you allegedly get a science degree without knowing these completely elementary things about science?
(I am not talking about and we should make a clear difference between the Theory of Evolution and Natural Selection. Natural Selection can be observed directly in nature and actually can be reproduced.
Fine.
Natural Selection does not prove the Theory of Evolution.
No one claimed it did.
Just because I can change one species of fruit fly into another one in the lab does not mean I can change a frog into a dog no matter how much time is given to me.
No, but the vast and overwhelming mountains of evidence along multiple cross-confirming lines which indicate that ancestral amphibians evolved into dogs (and all other mammals) shows that this has, indeed, occurred.
The leap of faith that people take from Natural Selection to the Theory of Evolution is enormous.)
It would be if that's what they were basing their conclusions on, but since it's not, you're just a) engaging in a "straw man", and b) revealing your ignorance about what people actually do base the Theory of Evolution upon.
The fossil record is simply a scattered series of “snapshots” of nature’s past.
It's more than that, but I won't quibble when you've got larger errors which need correcting.
The theory part comes in when you try and assemble all of these snapshots and try and make them tell a story. Imagine taking a film (that you’ve never seen) and isolating 1% of the frames from that movie randomly. Now lay those pictures out on a table. Think you could tell the story accurately. Even if you had a large number of frames and knew what order to put them in you are still not seeing the whole movie.
Wow, what a flawed analogy. How about arguing your case on its actual merits instead of hand-waving about movies in the hopes that it might have some vague relevance to the actual issue of determining evolutionary histories from multiple lines of evidence? If you even can, I mean -- you argue this like someone who's not very familiar with the actual science, but real familiar with favorite creationist fallacies.
I'm not going to waste my time with all the dozens of ways your "movie" analogy is flawed, but here are some of the highlights:
1. Events in movies change too rapidly for a 1% sampling of all "frames" to give you more than an extremely fragmentary view of the whole. The same is not true of evolutionary change, which unfolds much more slowly -- even a one-in-a-million sampling would give you roughly a representative individual from every generation that has ever lived, which would be a very complete picture indeed. Your analogy grossly misrepresents the difficulty. For a more appropriate analogy, try 1% of all frames from a super-slow-motion movie, where even frames several hundred frames apart have changed only very minutely from each other. In that case, it would be very easy to confidently and correctly match up which frames came before/after each other in the proper sequence.
2. Sampled movie frames don't come with independent lines of evidence which can be used to cross-validate which frames belong where. Evolutionary evidence does. For a better analogy, try 1% of frames from a super-slowmo movie for which independent accounts exist of the sequence of events in the film.
3. Movies contain abrupt and drastic scene changes which can make it difficult to determine what frames might belong in what relationship to other frames. Evolutionary histories don't.
4. Movies don't follow specific rules which restrict what frames can follow other frames and how, which could be used to correctly rule out certain alternative arrangements of frames or determine which frames necessarily belong between pairs of others. Evolutionary sequences do.
5. Even in your movie analogy, you "forgot" to mention that many inherent details of the frames can be used to determine their proper sequence, for example if there's a ball rolling down a hill in the background of one scene, it can be used to align the frames of that scene, since balls roll down hills, not up them. The same is true of many independent features of evolutionary sequences.
How many more points would you like me to list showing how poor and (deliberately?) misleading your "movie" example is when it comes to understanding how evolutionary histories can be reconstructed with a high degree of confidence based upon massive amounts of independently cross-confirming evidence?
And how did you manage to get a biology degree without knowing any of this?
To take this analogy even further you first have to
...you first have to be willing to stretch already poor and inappropriate analogies to the breaking point.
take a leap of faith and “believe” that the frames of the movie lead from one to the other. I must first “believe” that one species evolved into another species in order to explain two similar fossils.
There's no "leap of faith" involved at all, son. There's vast amounts of evidence which validates such conclusions, and then re-validates them over and over again across more than a century of literally millions of potential falsifications and validations. Sort of "forgot" to mention that, eh? Or are you just really that ignorant?
And that’s what we are left with: a theory to explain an observation – not proof!
One. More. Time. Science doesn't deal in proofs. Only those who "lack a basic understanding of the scientific method" could mistakenly think that it might. It does, however, deal in many methods by which explanations are overwhelmingly validated beyond any reasonable doubt. And evolutionary biology passed that point before you or I were born, and it has only further solidified its evidenciary foundation since then.
In my office I have a 4’x 6’ chart of all of the typical biochemical reactions that occur in a living cell. Very small print, thousands of reactions. I find it much easier to believe that Someone created than to believe that it all happened by chance.
I'm sure you do, but that's often the case for people who are unfamiliar with the vast amount of evidence overwhelmingly indicating that complex life has, indeed, descended from simpler life, that evolutionary processes (which are very inaccurately described as "by chance" -- there's a lot more to them than that) can and do indeed produce stunning complexity, and that countless times, large and small, when the histories of various pieces of complex biological systems are examined, they are found to be in excellent accord with the results of evolutionary change.
I don't have time to do my usual flood of citations supporting each and every one of my assertions (my wife and I are about to run off to meet some friends), but I'll be glad to do so later if you wish.
In the meantime, let's turn things around for a change -- why don't you explain to us what exactly is flawed in the findings and methods by which, say, endogenous retroviruses are used to validate evolutionary relationships? We'll wait. After you get done with that I've got several thousand other lines of evidence for evolutionary theory for you about which you can show us the error of our ways.
It seems to me that this a statement that says "my mind is closed forever on this". "Always will be..." a very strange way to 'think' that new evidence might appear or that you might be open to a new idea.
How long ago was this? In my assessment you don't seem entirely up-to-date on the theory of evolution.
Do you have an example of an established scientific law that was once an unproven theory?