Are you like this with every complicated scientific theory that's out there, or only evolution? For example, I think your complaint would apply equally to the germ theory of disease. I personally have never seen a germ, and I haven't seen a germ do whatever it does in the body to cause illness. If I ask for the evidence, I'm either going to be pointed to the various medical journals where that evidence is laid out, but in a way I'm not going to understand without extensive study and training; or I'm going to be pointed to layman-oriented summaries of the evidence that I can pick holes in if I have a mind to. Would it be reasonable for me to demand that a doctor show me a particular pathogen attacking a specific cell before I accept the idea that germs make people sick?
Or take your animal husbandry experience. Can you actually show me a sperm cell sperm fertilizing a cow egg and a cow fetus developing? How do I know you didn't put that calf in there yourself?
Every complicated theory that's out there. If I've demonstrated a principle to myself, then I consider my self to know it. If I've been assured that it is true and works by someone I trust and I understand how it's supposed to work and it makes sense with what I do know, then I believe that it's true -- not know. To me, each of the complicated theories that I know about but do not know to be true I consider to have a certain level of certainty based on how well I understand them and their dependent sciences, and how much sense they make, and the like.
For example, I think your complaint would apply equally to the germ theory of disease. I personally have never seen a germ, and I haven't seen a germ do whatever it does in the body to cause illness.
Well, some diseases are bacteria based. I've seen bacteria eating and multiplying in my microscope. I even videoed a paramecium splitting in half. Does that help? :-)
While I have not, for example, seen a virus taking over a cell or whatnot, I do know that I've had many colds. I've got one right now if you needed to know. I've also observed that people tend to catch colds from eachother. So while I consider myself to know that people catch colds from eachother, I don't know just how the mechanism works. But from what I understand of germ theory, it makes sense with what I do know, so I consider germ theory to have a high certainty.
Would it be reasonable for me to demand that a doctor show me a particular pathogen attacking a specific cell before I accept the idea that germs make people sick?
The fallacy here is the idea that one would demand to know how it works before knowing that it does work, even though they witness it working with their very own eyes. You've mixed here two different issues. What would be reasonable would be for you to demand that before knowing that a certain pathogen is catchy, that you'd have to witness someone catching it. Or, it would be reasonable for you to demand before knowing just how a certain pathogen attacks a certain cell -- you would want to see that pathogen attacking that cell.
Or take your animal husbandry experience. Can you actually show me a sperm cell sperm fertilizing a cow egg and a cow fetus developing? How do I know you didn't put that calf in there yourself?
Now see this is a great question! And this is the difference between Historic Speciation by Evolution: If you doubt the result of my experiment, you can easily try it for yourself! Get some rats, mice, or the all famous guinea pig. The difference is we can all get some mice and see what happens. But this really isn't a fair comparison because we can't go repeat the experiment to see whether a fish became a dog, because we're talking about history. So the next best thing would be for the scientists (who for wish more people to be able to know rather then at best believe) to organize the data and provide high resolution photos and complete data in such a way that any careful observer could inspect all the evidence and see just what there was, and come to his own understanding without having to rely in information about thing's he's never seen from people he's never met.
Thanks,
-Jesse
Have you ever heard this joke?
Q: What did the paramecium say after dividing?
A: A pair of me, see'em?! (para-me-see-em)