Why should evolution be accepted on authority?

robinrohan writes:

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What do I care if someone supposedly "repeated" a study? I have no direct evidence of that.

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No, but are you so skeptical of everything that you require direct proof before you believe it?It's true that it would require enough scientific knowledge to repeat cutting-edge scientific studies and experiments that no layman could pull it off. But other scientists can pull it off, and they do. What you and I as laymen can do is a bit of research on the scientists who performed the experiment(s) in question and those who peer reviewed it. If we find that we are dealing with reputable people, why would we question the validity of their claims?Doctors are a specific type of scientist. If your doctor tells you that you have cancer, you might very well visit another doctor for a second or even third opinion. If all the doctors agree, who are you to stubbornly insist that there's no proof you have cancer?As I understand it (again I'm not a scientist) there are many, many reputable scientific hypotheses which conflict with each other. Where this happens you and I are perfectly free to choose whichever hypothesis makes the most sense to us. But when basic concepts like evolution are accepted by virtually all reputable scientists, who are you and I to stubbornly insist that there's no proof of it?

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Keep America Safe AND Free!

We are not going to win this game, Berberry. There are far more religious people than there are scientists.

Well I'm with you there. We've got a long way to go to convince most people that evolution is not "just a theory". It'll be an uphill battle, but as I see it the most important thing in the immediate future is to prevent the replacement of a liberal or moderate SCOTUS justice with a conservative one.With all the challenges to ToE being mounted by school boards all over the red states, the courts are our only hope. That's one of the reason I urged folks a week or so ago to join the ACLU. They're out there fighting this fight every day. They, and other groups committed to teaching science accurately in the public schools, deserve our support.

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Keep America Safe AND Free!

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Ermm - no, you both imply this invisible creationist MIGHT say something or IF he says something...And I'm telling you that this doesn't mean that a creationist has done something.

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Which is exactly how it was meant to be read. It DOESN'T claim that creationists have said anything - only that they might.

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If they do this then they are guilty.

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They are not guilty = they haven't done it. - and so far, you haven't provded they do do it.

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I actually mention it - because it's how bullsh** starts pertaining to creationists.

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For which YOU have presented no evidence. And even if you had even ONE example there would still be nothing wrong with what is said.You're just trying to pick a fight over quite innocuous statements.

Yes there is a difference between accepting the word of a single Christian over the consensus of the Christian community. For a start themany single Christianais are not aware of the distinction between the doctrines of their sect and the doctrines of Christianity. If you want to know about Christian beleif a single Christian could easily give incomplete or wrong answers to your questions.The difference between Christianity and science is that science has a reliable menas of discovering information about the natural world. Christianity cannot demonstrate that it has an equally reliable sorce of knowledge (and in fact we can be sure that it does not in areas we can check).

not just christians there are muslums, jews, himdus... ectbut when i hear some new information or theory i remember it... then i go out into the world and see from my experiences IF the theory works for me... thats how i've been making my decisions sicne i was little. what i would like to see are varieties of these options because not everyone gets a choice it's either one or another... and usualy one is more appeasing because you got a knife to your head telling you to chose that one.but hey thats who we are, we like to control... yes we do.and stop with the abriviations... or make some library because i'm lost in what people say :'( so sad being new here.

PerfectDeath writes:

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what i would like to see are varieties of these options because not everyone gets a choice it's either one or another...

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I'm not sure how this relates to evolution. Could you elaborate a little?As for the abbreviations I used in the post you responded to:ToE = Theory of Evolution
SCOTUS = Supreme Court Of The United States
ACLU = American Civil Liberties Union

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I find it very peculiar that you accept so off-handedly that static on your TV is evidence for the Big Bang. There could be dozens of other explanations, yet here is Mike, who sees snow on his TV screen and pronounces without further thought: "Yup, Big Bang allright."For most people, the theoretical framework that led scientists to posit the idea of the Big Bang is much harder to understand than the basic tenets of the theory of evolution, which are 'imperfect replication' and 'selective pressure', ideas that can be readily understood by the layperson.What's more, the evidence for evolution is much more visible and accessible to the public than the evidence for the Big Bang. You can literally see imperfect replication happening in nature. And you can logically conclude that the environmental circumstances must exert selective pressure on different individuals of the same sort.The only thing you cannot directly witness is the long-term continuing repetition of imperfect replication under selective pressure. That's where fossils come in handy: they are evidence that this continuing repetition has taken place. Looking at the fossils, it doesn't take 'Columbo brilliance' to figure out what happened.What you ask for, Mike, is an experiment you can do at home that produces new species. Well, that's easy: just breed horses for a couple of millions of years. I'm sure you'll end up with some very different horselike creatures that can't interbreed. If you continue the experiment even longer, you might end up with something distinctly non-horselike.You don't get to live millions of years? That's too bad, Mike, but that's your problem, not evolution's. You have to accept that some processes in nature take a little bit more time than your short lifespan. Like the universe cooling down sufficiently to produce the 3K background radiation you see on your TV as static.

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

Robin,
I am a biologist who accepts modern evolutionary biology completely. This "faith" is based on personal observation and acceptance of authority. But one thing that i have learned in science is to never accept anything you cannot at least examine in some capacity (reading AND understanding supporting/contrary literature, etc.).Science is littered with, well, bad science. Not deceitful necessarily, but mistakes. Peer review is an excellent way to weed these out, but it is not by any means 100% successfull. Here's an example from my own work.When I was defending my MS thesis (and composing the same into a paper to be sent to Marine Biology) one of my committee members found a subtle yet critical flaw in my math. I was ALMOST right, and the wrongness would have gone unnoticed by pretty much everyone in my field. I had the incredible fortune to have a scientist on my committee outside of my field completely who was a population geneticist and therefore very familiar with the equations I used incorrectly. As it turned out my conclusions were still supported. But I have no doubt that the paper would have passed peer review in this respect. It was on caridean shrimps, and the reviewers were caridean shrimp biologists. Had this happened it would have been found out when the world was watching (well, at least all 7 caridean shrimp biologists in the world ) and been a blot on my record. After graduate school we scientists lose that safety net of a diverse committee and mistakes can and do make it through.I also have found that scientists can be as closed-minded as any creos. Again (in my field) I have an example. I apologize for the lack of details, I am not giving names or details on purpose, but these are true events. There is a relatively new, very expensive and high-tech technique being used in population biology. A scientist I have worked with is working with this quite extensively. They gave me some papers to look over when I questioned some aspects of this technique. When I found they same flaw in the 'landmark' papers I was in trouble. I was told it was good to question everything but these were published papers and passed review by people far more qualified than I. I researched my point and put together a short essay of what I found to be wrong. The primary author of the papers (a different person than above) admitted that my points were valid and asked me to look over another manuscript being worked on. I am not in any way opposed to the technique, but also don't believe it to be the magic solution to all of pop-dy problems either. When its results conflicts with other techniques I don't believe we should throw out the old data without questioning. A tool is a tool.So my point is that you should not accept evolution as a fact without looking at the evidence yourself. Part of this might be to read the extensive literature on the subject. Please please please read Darwin's Origin. While hard to read at times it really sets the stage for everything that has come since. I know it is difficult without access to a scientific library, but try to look up seminal papers and read them before popular literature. Beware of scientists who go to the press while manuscripts are still in review. This seems to be more common in researchers that deal with human evolution. Also, beware and be suspicious of any story that contains "Earliest *blank* discovered* ", "Common ancestor of *blank* and *blank2* found" etc. Very rarely are these the claims of the scientist in question but interpretations of the article writer.So keep questioning!

Its always scary when reviews of literature come out studying the use of statistics in papers, they almost invariably show that a large number are innapropriately applied. Similarly there are worrying studies showing many instances where conclusions detailed in the abstract are not only not supported but sometimes flatly contradicted by the actual contents of the paper. Individual scientists, or even groups of them, are all too fallible but thes system has enough built in safeguards that the mistake very rarely have any catastrophic impact.TTFN,WK

I can read all the literature I want but that in itself will not get me any closer to the physical evidence. If we read a book, we accept the inductive evidence (real life samples) on authority since we have no practical access to those samples. What we can do is to ask ourselves,"Suppose this physical evidence mentioned in this book is real: does that prove the theory sufficiently?"In other words, we can figure out if the theory makes sense as a theory apart from the evidence, but we still have to accept the evidence on authority.

Accepting that other people are not involved in a massive conspiracy of lies is not the same as accepting on authority. What you're describing is paranoia on a massive scale.

An excellent question. How DO we (i.e., the unwashed masses), know whether a scientist is including all available evidence? Lithidod-man and Trixie both mentioned the answer: you have to be willing to dig through the literature. Even if you don't necessarily understand the argument, you can at least see if there are dissenting opinions. In that case, you are justified in withholding acceptance of the claim. One of the dissenting opinions in the P-T extinction debate, for example, noted that one of the rock formations used in support of the claim didn't actually contain rocks from the boundary date. I don't have the first clue HOW they determined that, but the fact that someone called into question something so fundamental to the claim justifies my unwillingness to accept the claim as valid until/unless this anomaly is rectified or explained.There are really two things to consider when you or I (as card-carrying members of the Great Unwashed Masses - GUM) are asked whether or not we accept a claim:1) what is the nature of the claim? IOW, is it an everyday claim or is it an extraordinary claim? For example, if I say that it's snowing today where I live, there's no real reason to doubt my "testimony". After all, it's December and winter in the Northern Hemisphere. Assuming I live far enough north where snow is possible, you can probably take my word for it - the claim isn't outside the realms of possibility. You may have other reasons to doubt it (i.e., I'm a known pathological liar, or somesuch), but absent that extra information, you can accept my claim at face value. OTOH, if I claim that I was kidnapped last week by aliens and taken to the far side of the moon for bizarre medical experiments, you are fully justified in demanding that I provide substantial evidence for the claim. It's the old "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". If someone attempts to overthrow the reigning paradigm, then us GUMs are justified in demanding they provide quite extensive evidence to support the claim before we take it as valid.The second issue is: us GUMs actually know way more than we think we do. Any moderately intelligent person does. It never ceases to amaze me how accurate my intuition can be (it can also be wrong, of course ) when examining some scientist's claims - or the claims of politicians, advertisers, writers and others of that ilk. If the claim raises doubts in your mind - even if you can't put your finger on precisely what is wrong - then your intuition is attempting to tell you something. At that point, you need to start asking questions. Where do the claimant's facts or figures come from? Does the claimant have first-hand knowledge or experience? Is the claimant using logic or appeals to emotion when presenting their case? Was the study/book/report published in a generally reputable source that has published validated works in the past, or is it a fly-by-night self-publisher or known crank journal? Does the claimant reference other works - and can these be checked for relevancy and timeliness? Do other works reference the claimant's work (an interesting way to see what OTHER poeple think about it)? Has the claimant made his/her original data available to other people in his/her field? Is the evidence presented objective or anecdotal? etc etc. You get the idea.Ultimately, it may come down to simply accepting a claim at face value - but being willing to reject the claim if new/contrary evidence is presented. You're not bound to defend-to-the-death a claim you accept if it is shown to be wrong. It's not a contract (as someone noted). You're allowed, and even encouraged, to change your mind as the situation changes. Even "no opinion" is a valid answer to a claim you're uncomfortable or unsure about.Hope this answers your question.

I'm not quite clear as to what evidence you think could be reasonably thought of as inaccessible. What evidence is being kept back? Most of it is accessible to some extent and nowadays most of the genetic material is openly accessible over the internet, and you could certainly verify the genetic evidence with a very modest knowledge of molecular biology and bioinformatics. Doing a few thousand random samples on apppropriate genetic material, which you could extract yourself if you like, using PCR primers against sequences from Genbank and seeing if you got products with sequences that matched. Once you were confident of the general reliability of the databases of genetic data you could do lots of phylogenetic analysis.It takes a lot of effort but if all your inaccessibility is going to come down to is that its too much like hard work then it isn't really much of an objection.TTFN,WK

It's not being "kept back"; it's just that in the nature of things the layman cannot access it. It's not very realistic to say that I can go and look at the remains of Lucy. And even if I could, I don't have the training to be able to tell if the claims made about Lucy are valid or not. The only way I could do that would be to become a biological anthropologist. We can't all be researchers in the field of evolution.