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I can't imagine what would possibly fill the bill to your satisfaction. I remember someone once pointed you to a vast library of articles on evolution, and you complained that there were too many.

First of all, I may be no genius but some things are obvious: People tend defend what they believe in and pretend it's scientific and state it as true when they don't know for a fact that it is true.

Remember, my question is "How can I know without having to practice undue faith.."
93,000 articles written by people who believe in evolution as their world view is not proof in and of itself. Now maybe some of them report on actual findings that I can go verify and would find do indeed prove ASBE -- but most of the articles don't provide any such evidence -- and nobody will show me which one does provide the evidence. I looked over several of them but I don't have time to go read 93,000 articles because some of them might contain the evidence. It's your side of the argument you're trying to support, why don't you show me which one contains some good evidence! I'm working already too solid/real to prove your point. You're supposed to prove your point!

Remember: It's religious folk who just take as gospel what their leaders or priests or teachers say. As scientists, that's not how we do things -- I need to be able to know that something is true because I can verify it for myself, if I am going to say that I know it and if it is to be scientific. It doesn't matter whether there is evidence or not that all species came by evolution -- if I believe it without knowing it, I am merely practicing a faith! Maybe the faith would be correct, maybe it wouldn't -- but it's not science, it's faith and belief! You see, if you don't know, then at best you can believe. If you know, then you don't need to believe.

So try to put yourself in the shoes of an objective young scientist who has a clear distinction between the concept of knowing and believing, and explain to me how he would come to know that ASBE is true (all species by evolution) -- without it just being a faith! Remember, how sincere a faith is does not have anything to do whether it is a faith or not.

So let me turn the question around: what kind of evidence that you can see and know, that wouldn't require you to have confidence in the work of people you've never met, would you accept? Do you really expect to be able to watch a dog give birth to a goat? Or what?

Do your best and we'll discuss it. On the farm we had an animal that barked give birth to a goat. ha ha ha. But seriously, why would it matter what I need to see in order to believe? Is the evidence a product of the belief? No! That's the neat thing about science - we can discuss the evidence even before we know what it all means!

This is my main point: Just what does it take for me to know? Do I have to study evolutionary biology for 4 years in just the right school to know? Do I have to do some rite of initiation? or is the only way to "know" to believe in people I've never met about things I've never seen?

Perhaps I'm handicapped, having grown up learning about the solid/real sciences - electronics, computer programming, mechanics, even a touch of chemistry and math -- I'm used to science being well demonstrable. If I say "A transistor behaves in such and such a way" and you doubt me, all I've got to do is say "well here watch I'll show you -- or you can do the experiment yourself."

You see, I'm used to being able to understand things and observe them. Nobody expected me to take electronics or mechanics by faith - and I don't see why any other science should be different.

Now I realize that some sciences are very complicated and may require years of study to understand them well enough to be able to know them. But so far nobody's told me that such is the case with ASBE. So what am I missing? Is ASBE an exercise in faith? or does it just take years of training in the right schools before I too can know it?

What exactly is the roadmap to me knowing that ASBE is true?

Given enough time and bribed with enough dried apricots, I could lay out a "roadmap" of things to read and experiments to try that would teach you how a transistor worked or how any of the other gazillions of science work. By the end of the "course" you would not only know that transistors or whatever worked the way they did, you could demonstrate it to anybody who doubted you! Who can lay out such a roadmap for me so I too can know that ASBE is true?

Thanks,

-Jesse

Do your best and we'll discuss it....But seriously, why would it matter what I need to see in order to believe? Is the evidence a product of the belief? No!

The reason I asked is that I wonder if you've set the bar impossibly high. I don't know what you mean by "see and know." Much of the evidence for evolution is found at the level of molecules and genes, which are kind of hard to see. If you're not willing to take the word of people who have looked at them about what they've seen, then you won't accept that evidence, no matter how good it is.

is the only way to "know" to believe in people I've never met about things I've never seen?

If you mean that literally, then yes, it is.

So what am I missing? Is ASBE an exercise in faith?

I'm not sure I'd call it faith. But I think you'd have to accept that the thousands of scientists studying fossils, and the thousands of other scientists studying molecular biology, and the thousands of other scientists studying genetics, know what they're doing and are, for the most part, telling the truth about what they found and drawing their best inference about what it means. And--here's an important part--drawing their best inference in light of what all those other scientists are doing.

One of the other recent threads on this subject touched on the term "consilience," which means "the agreement of two or more inductions drawn from different sets of data." That's the power of the theory of evolution: it ties together the inductions from morphology, fossils, genetics, molecular biology--not to mention those from nonbiological sciences like geology. They all line up to present a consistent picture, while competing explanations require each of those other inductions to be wrong in a specific way that doesn't have anything to do with the way any others of them are wrong.

So that's my answer. It's not just that there are thousands of little pieces of evidence, it's that the ToE enables all of them to hang together consistently. I guess if that's not enough, you'll have to wait for that dog to give birth to a goat.