Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

To: CyberCowboy777
I suppose you're going to tell me next you can't find it.

These days even most creationists acknowledge that microevolution has been upheld by tests in the laboratory (as in studies of cells, plants and fruit flies) and in the field (as in Grant's studies of evolving beak shapes among Galápagos finches). Natural selection and other mechanisms--such as chromosomal changes, symbiosis and hybridization--can drive profound changes in populations over time.

The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. [Note too that many of these links were missing in, say, Darwin's day but turned up after people started searching in the right places. -- VR] But one should not--and does not--find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (65 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly. [ . . . And the many potential falsifications of evolution remain purely potential. -- VR]


648 posted on 06/17/2002 3:14:24 PM PDT by VadeRetro
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 641 | View Replies ]


To: VadeRetro
I do not counter Micro

which is indeed what the fossil record shows.

Hypothesis and Conjecture. Nothing outside of normal current Human differences has be found even partially complete. I am not sure "who" the current save all is supposed to be, is it still "Lucy"? Of course I do not see a link or a study I can look up.

And what the hell is a "verifiable predictions about future discoveries", it seems to be the foundational stone of Macroevolution.

666 posted on 06/17/2002 3:38:29 PM PDT by CyberCowboy777
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 648 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson