Well, my bar isn't impossibly high for the other sciences. Works just fine for those. But maybe this science requires a higher level of hope in things not yet seen, or more faith in umm other people?
I don't know what you mean by "see and know."
Simple. A stone falls to the ground. I can see and know that. A resistor gets hot if you put too much power into it. It might even go up in a puff of smoke. I've done that. I've seen that. I know that. No belief required. I have seen animals give birth to offspring that was not an identical clone. I know that such a thing happens and has happened. I've seen it. I can show you. But then someone comes along and tells me that the goat and the dog are related. At best, I can only believe them. I cannot see that as a fact for myself, nor can I know it to be true, except by believing somebody I've never met about a thing in the past that I've never seen. (and which they didn't actually see either.) Does that help explain what I mean by seeing and knowing versus believing?
Much of the evidence for evolution is found at the level of molecules and genes, which are kind of hard to see.
Are you talking about the kind of evolution I have seen (some call it micro) or the kind I haven't seen? I have noticed that a lot of evidence of "micro" evolution is used as proof for ASBE (All Species By Evolution.) If we're talking about the evolution I've seen, then we have no disagreement. The problem is, the evolution I've seen does not prove ASBE.
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.
Well what would this look like? The problem is there are people who do not believe ASBE is true. Maybe not as many as those that do. For example I have a book here titled "In 6 days: Why 50 [phd] scientists choose to believe in creation." Now I'm not saying that because 50 pHd scientists say it that it means it is so - but it proves my point that not all scientists agree. So is it just an opinion poll? This doesn't sound very scientific.
Said MrJesse: is the only way to "know" to believe in people I've never met about things I've never seen?
Replied HaHa: If you mean that literally, then yes, it is.
Yes, I mean literally. You see, this is how ASBE evolutionary science differs from the solid sciences -- with ASBE much more faith or belief is required.
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.
Ignoring for the moment that it sounds like a sort of popularity contest or opinion poll to find out whats true (since not all scientists agree that ASBE is true) it sounds like I do have to have faith in your word that there are thousands of scientists who have all studied these things and are telling the truth. But I haven't met much less gotten to know any of these scientists! How many of the thousands have you gotten to know? or even met? It sounds to me like I have to have faith in the dozens of people I talk to, who are each having faith with the dozens of people they talk to, who have the faith in the dozens of people they talk to -- and who actually has gotten to know these thousands of scientists?
I already have figured out that people will readily propagate an untruth if they think they can get away with it, and they will do it in large numbers too.
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.
I know just enough about statistics to know that by correctly selecting the data to be charted, one can draw all sorts of incorrect conclusions. For example, see this image below. I drew two sets of unrelated dots, with some randomness. Of course this only uses two dimensions. But then by selecting just certain dots which happened to line up, and disregarding all the others, I can make it look like the dots were placed along a line, and therefore must all be related!
If I gave you a bucket full of marbles of random sizes, colors, and shades, you could choose any subset of marbles you liked and could show a correlation that showed that the bigger ones were brighter, or whatever, even though no such thing was true.
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.
Okay, so my analysis is at least partly correct -- ASBE is different then other sciences. It does contain much more faith or unproven belief for the average guy like me then do most other sciences.
Another thing is that these "thousands of little pieces of evidence" don't actually prove anything about ASBE but rather about the kind of evolution that I have seen.
Furthermore, some of the things that have made it into textbooks are of such non-evidence in nature that it causes me to doubt the existence of real evidence. For example, the peppered moth: It is cited as evidence for evolution. But both species existed before! This just shows what we already know - that if you breed black dogs you tend to get black puppies, and if you breed white dogs you tend to get white puppies! But here's how WP concludes the topic:
While it is true that this example shows natural selection causing microevolution within a species, it demonstrates rapid and obvious adaptiveness with such change,[10] and despite the claims of creationists, there are no barriers preventing such changes from accumulating to form new species.First of all, since both varieties existed beforehand, I'm not even sure that "evolution" is the correct term. (Unless you want to define it as "the change in frequency of alleles in the gene pools of two different varieties/subspecies/whatever.") The fact is, it could have been white moths and black butterflies, completely non interbreedable, and one species went near extinction while the other flourished, then went back to previous population ratios when the trees lightened up. (But certainly being able to interbreed is the only thing that kept the white varieties from going totally extinct).
But then look - they go on to say that there's no barriers preventing such changes from accumulating to form new species - such what changes? Both the light and dark varieties existed before and they both existed afterwards!
The only thing that changed was the ratio of the two pre-existing varieties! You can't get a new species by changing the ratio between two existing varieties! -- and how they look at the peppered moth and conclude that nothing bars a new species from developing is beyond me.
so don't you think they are stretching things a little, there?
There is no doubt in my mind that there is an agenda to push a worldview.
ASBE is a world view with a moral outcome, it is taken by faith and there is a reason that nobody can show me the best proof that ASBE is true - no great proof or evidence exists!
There is definitely a problem for the common amateur scientist who wants to pursue ASBE as a science without relying heavily on a lot of faith. There is just no way that most people can get to know these tens of thousands of scientists in order to know that ASBE is true. For most people, ASBE and "All from Nothing" will never be able to amount to anything more then a faith and a belief which allows them the freedom from the concept of right and wrong, and the freedom to do what they want, with whom they want -- as long as they think they won't get caught.
For most people, if not all, ASBE and all from nothing will never amount to anything more then a faith or a belief! That means that for most people, ASBE and "All From NOthing" will be their religion! Remember - whether or not a belief is true is irrelevant -- if it is taken on faith and believed without knowing for one's self, and yet it is used as a guiding core ethics for their life, it's a religion or a sincerely held world view!
Thanks,
-Jesse
