1 piece of evidence to disprove evolution..

Hi Zealot!We have a huge amount of evidence that evolution happens. Demonstrating that evolution doesn't happen just doesn't seem conceivable.Some Creationists argue that evolution across a "kind" boundary isn't possible, but there is no evidence supporting this position. The argument can still go round and round on this topic, but primarily only because Creationists insist on talking about "kinds", a non-scientific term for which Creationists supply no clear defintion, while science talks about species, a much more definitive term that nonetheless has some gray areas. When evolutionists point to a speciation event, Creationists reply that it is still the same kind, and evolutionists cannot point to any observed speciation event so dramatic as to counter this claim, primarily, they explain, because there hasn't been enough time since Darwin. But most significantly, Creationists are unable to point to any genetic barrier preventing change beyond a certain limit. Errors during the reproductive process are inevitable, and errors that aren't fatal or too disadvantageous accumulate with time.So the bottom line is that not only does evolution happen, and this is conceded by most Creationists, but there is no evidence for any barrier limiting evolutionary change. In other words, the odds of falsifying the acceptance within the scientific community of the occurrence of evolution is very close to nil.But you're focusing on another aspect of evolution, this historical aspect. Taking avian evolution as an example, even though the fossil evidence makes clear that evolution happened, the fossil record is still only a partial and very incomplete record, and so any reconstruction of past evolutionary events is likely to contain a great deal of speculation, and hence be very open and amenable to change in light of finding even just a single new fossil, or even due to modest reinterpretations of existing fossils. The difficulties of reconstructing evolutionary history from fossils and other data has no bearing on whether evolution happens. Someone could come along and completely revamp all our ideas about avian evolution tomorrow, and it wouldn't affect acceptance of evolution and natural selection as the driving force of change one iota.--Percy

Hi Zealot!You began this thread by asking, "However I'm merely curious as to what it would take to change an evolutionists mind?", and you then raised the issue of avian evolution. Even if you showed that current views of the evolution of avian flight were all wrong, it would not affect the acceptance of the theory of evolution by the scientific community one bit. Falsifying reconstructions of evolutionary history has no impact on the theory of evolution. These reconstructions are merely the interpretation of the fossil record within an evolutionary framework, and given the paucity of fossil evidence there is much speculation involved.In other words, you're taking the wrong tack. Evolution has been observed in the wild and in laboratory experiments such as with fruit flies and bacteria. How are you going to falsify observation?As I explained in Message 9, nearly all Creationists accept evolution. They even accept one species evolving into another. What they reject is one kind evolving into another.So you're going to have to clarify your question. Are you really asking what would "disprove evolution?" Or are you really only asking how one would disprove current speculations about evolutionary history like avian evolution? They're not the same thing. The former is unlikely in the extreme, while the latter is, in my opinion, the opposite. The baseword you're looking for is "layman".As Mark Twain apparently did not say, "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years." In other words, learning doesn't stop at 14. The other members here are not 14-year olds with bigger dictionaries. The only member I can think of who purposefully tried to use big words he didn't understand (badly, I might add) was a Creationist.--PercyPS: Mark Twain also apparently didn't say, "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt." Neither did Abraham Lincoln. Some of the best sayings apparently sprang from nowhere.

What drastic transitions? As has been explained, evolutionary scenarios for the emergence of avian flight all involve very gradual change over long periods of time. The changes were always small and incremental, providing an advantage that was also small and incremental.Let's say that you conclusively demonstrate that all current ideas of avian evolution are wrong and send things back to square zero. What Creationist views are you thinking might then be possibly be valid? Try out a few:

• Because we have no idea how avian flight evolved, evolution between kinds is not possible.
• Because we have no idea how avian flight evolved, the dinosaurs must have been created at the same time as the rest of the world around 6000 years ago.
• Because we have no idea how avian flight evolved, most existing geological formations are the result of a global flood about 5000 years ago.

Do any of these conclusions seem to follow from the initial premise to you? They don't to me.--Percy

But what kind of question mark:

• Is it that we have no idea how avian flight could have evolved within an evolutionary framework?
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• Or it is that we are unable to determine which of many evolutionary possibilities is correct?

It's the latter, right?Look at it another way. Someone tells you the score of a football game was 41-36, and that's all the information they provide. You're then asked how many touchdowns, extra points, fieldgoals and touchbacks each team got, and their order during the game. You can't answer the question, can you? There's simply not enough information. Can this absence of information in any way be construed as evidence that the football game didn't happen? Or that there's no such thing as football? Of course not.I see you're in the UK, and my example was American football, so let me translate this to another sport. Someone tells you that Tiger Woods scored 68 in his last round, and that's all the information they provide. You're then asked how many holes in one, eagles, birdies, pars, bogies, double bogies, etc, he got, and on which holes. You can't answer the question, can you? There's simply not enough information. Can this absence of information in any way be construed as evidence that the round of golf didn't happen? Or that there's no such thing as golf? Of course not.In the exact same way, the insufficiency of available information to conclusively answer the questions about avian evolution in no way reflect on the viability of the theory of evolution. Added by edit:By the way, the situation you're looking for within evolution would correspond to a score in American football of 1-0 (impossible since the smallest scoring play is 2 points for a touchback), and in golf of 17 or less (impossible since it would require at least one hole-in-none). There is no possible way such scores could occur. In contrast, the evolution of avian flight has countless ways by which it could have happened.--Percy[This message has been edited by Percipient, 08-16-2003]

I think speculations about things like avian evolution might be called theories when speaking casually, but speaking for myself it doesn't seem feel correct to speak of the Theory of Avian Evolution or the Theory of Equine Evolution and so forth. To me they are speculations, reconstructions, or at best hypotheses. That being said, I guess I have no strong objection if other people prefer to call them theories.In order for a fossil or set of fossils to represent a problem to evolutionary theory, they would have to be unconnected in significant ways to other life. The fossil structure would have to resemble no other life, fossil or otherwise, ever discovered. Such fossils could not be placed in any evolutionary context, and would represent a significant puzzle. In other words, you don't want to be examining things like avian evolution, for which proposals abound, but things for which no one's been able to develop any evolutionary possibilities. You need an evolutionary anomaly.That being said, keep in mind that the modern synthesis is actually the merging of Darwinian evolution and the science of genetics. Because of genetics we know all the "hows" of evolution, and we've observed speciation in the wild and created speciation in the lab. Evolution has been observed to occur. And the fossil record is one of evolution. Falsifying all this is hard to imagine and would be very difficult in the extreme.--Percy