Question Evolution!

Sure, as long as you keep the Python in there.

Wrong. You really should learn more about science. Theories do not grow up to become laws. A Theory never becomes a law.

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The biggest difference between a law and a theory is that a theory is much more complex and dynamic. A law describes a single action, whereas a theory explains an entire group of related phenomena. And, whereas a law is a postulate that forms the foundation of the scientific method, a theory is the end result of that same process.

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A simple analogy can be made using a slingshot and an automobile.

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A scientific law is like a slingshot. A slingshot has but one moving part--the rubber band. If you put a rock in it and draw it back, the rock will fly out at a predictable speed, depending upon the distance the band is drawn back.

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An automobile has many moving parts, all working in unison to perform the chore of transporting someone from one point to another point. An automobile is a complex piece of machinery. Sometimes, improvements are made to one or more component parts. A new set of spark plugs that are composed of a better alloy that can withstand heat better, for example, might replace the existing set. But the function of the automobile as a whole remains unchanged.

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A theory is like the automobile. Components of it can be changed or improved upon, without changing the overall truth of the theory as a whole.

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Please show where I said that a theory will become a law. Please quote.I was only showing A difference between a theory and a law, I was not saying that your quote is untrue - I would also say that a theory is more complex, my statement did not preclude this.Edited by mike the wiz, : No reason given.

I am talking about applying logical form to science for the sake of proceeding logically.I am talking about using conditional implications in a way that can be used to confirm or falsify a theory succinctly. It is not a big deal, it just shows the inductive reasoning versus the deductive reasoning. It means that if you have evidence, you can't conclude anything.Your above syllogism does not follow logically. You can't state that if there is evidence P therefore theory X, that proposal does not follow, so it can't be used as a framework. We are making an apparatus by which we can proceed completely logically by inserting ANY theory.It is NOT a non sequitur to state that If a theory is true, then certain evidence should follow, but the other way around, is ALWAY ONLY false. If there is a red ball then there are only red balls, is what your syllogism allows you to infer.The reason why the antecedant is used as the theory is obvious, because if you found a thousand red balls (induction), you could still not infer , "therefore red ball theory is true".Sure - I would also accept your form of syllogism but what about falsification?How could your proposal be falsified in a logical form?If we do "not" find evidence P, according to your syllogism, then we could not state that the theory is therefore false, because the form would be not valid.The only reason the evidence is regarded as the consequent is because of the weakness of inductive reasoning.Even if you had found evidence of 1 billion red balls, it would only take one blue ball to thwart the theory.Example;If P then Y evidence (red balls)
NOT Y (blue ball) evidence therefore NOT theory P.I am not at all confused, I am just making it so that the theorist has to eternally confirm his theory.For example in this form he could conclude nothing more if he found a red ball, but with your syllogism it can be inferred that the theory is correct.Look.Theory P, then evidence X.He finds evidence X therefore (?)Therefore nothing - which is the whole point. Science only allows him to proceed. If he had a big induction, he might have a justified true belief that his theory was true, but that is all.It's not a big deal really, it is just a way of making sure you have a sound logical proposal.If the form is right, and the condition follows, rather than being a non sequitur, then the whole point is that you are proceeding logically. You are not inferring anything from your evidence, unless you are finding falsification evidence.None of this would change what evidence is, evidence is something that should exist given a proposal, no matter which way you have it.So we can ask it like this;If this is true then we should expect to see X.There's no need for us to debate this, it is not even a debate, as we could use your form or my form, I simply think my way is more succinct, because you can use it as a blank canvas, and automatically proceed logically, in a neat way.Edited by mike the wiz, : No reason given.

The most I can make of your ideas is that you're trying to say: "You only believe it because all the available evidence supports it".Well, yeah. And obviously that doesn't make evolution special in any way.

No, that's a misunderstanding. If all of the available evidence supported evolutio, you would be making a LAW of evolution. You would be able to show, APRIORI, that every single piece of evidence was predicted, there is no way that every single piece of evidence was predicted by evolution without even one anomaly. You would also be making the following logical statement;"all evidence dealt with is evidence of evolution,".It is not fair to simply say that 100% of the induction of evidence has favoured evolution, that's not logical or scientific.So you would be able to state that evolutionists would expect a Cambrian explosion to follow if evolution were true. But that was not consistent with evolution. (I am not stating evolution is therefore false, I am stating that to say that every piece of available evidence supports evolution posteriori, when you already know what all the evidence is, and have then given modified evolutionary explanations, is simply not true)Even evoutionary scientists admit that not every piece of evidence favours evolution. While this does not apparently, make evolution false, you do nevertheless have to accept posteriori, after-the-fact explanations. So you might then modify the theory, by saying, "infact there is a way around this", but the more you do that, the more tenuous the theory grows because again and again and again, anomalous evidence is being explained away rather than accepted for what it actually is, which is not favourable evidence, at the very, very least.What you actually have is an induction of evidence. Evidence should be regarded, not as the final say, but as something that makes a theory viable. You can continually proceed with the theory.Science doesn't deal in truth or absolutes, or certainly not full truth.I see confirmation evidence in a completely objective fashion. It is something tentative. It is easy to find confirmation evidence. Sometimes if you are looking for something to be true, it's a strange thing in life but you will find many things you would expect to find if it was true. But that doesn't make it true.I, personally am not intellectually satisfied by an induction of confirmation evidence, especially when there is falsification evidence not consistent with a theory. But I am trying to shut up more, and read more about evolution, to see if there are amazingly good pieces of evidence that scream, "evolution", as obviously those types of evidence are going to have more weight and value.For me personally, the ToE is the greatest claim of all time, so the evidence must be correspondingly great in quality. No, I would say of you as an evolutionist, that you have a justified true belief that evolution is true, as far as the evidence can help you on thatparticular path of knowledge/truth.Don't forget, we know a lot, but what we also do not know, could be an even greater induction.For me personally, I can't truthfully find peace from what science can show, in my own mind. It is not a voluntary matter, I can't make persuade myself against what I know.It is the same for creationism, there is evidence which would fit with creation being true, but it's not enough to come anywhere near making it true, that is largely taken on faith.75% of my creation position is faith alone. That faith also INCLUDES the possibility of evolution but nobody ever actually stops to ask me anyway, so it kind of doesn't matter at places like this. If it helps, according to my statistics, as a 9 year member, I have spent 6% of debating in the science forum.

As near as I can tell, you seem to be making the same basic argument that I presented in my thread The scientific method is based on a logical fallacy. That thread began with a fairly interesting discussion of the topic, then veered off into something unrelated. But the point is that science is not deductively valid. In other words, even when confirming evidence is found supporting a theory, it's still possible for the theory to be incorrect. This is a big part of the reason that all of science is considered tentative. It's also a big part of the reason why a theory doesn't become a theory until it has been thoroughly tested. Part of the testing process is looking for alternative explanations for the conclusions the theory has come to.The important point to remember is that this is true for all of science. Every single scientific theory, law, and hypothesis. You cannot criticize the ToE on this basis without bringing down all of science. They stand or fall together on this point.

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Your above syllogism does not follow logically.

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Mikes, that IS modus ponens of course it follows logically.

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You can't state that if there is evidence P therefore theory X, that proposal does not follow, so it can't be used as a framework. We are making an apparatus by which we can proceed completely logically by inserting ANY theory.

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There's no logical problem in inserting ANY theory. And if you want to restrict science to strict logical deduction you are being very silly. Science has to go beyond that because strict logical deduction is too restrictive.

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The reason why the antecedant is used as the theory is obvious, because if you found a thousand red balls (induction), you could still not infer , "therefore red ball theory is true".

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Actually it isn't obvious why anyone would use an invalid argument. I believe that your assertion is something of a strawman - the real argument is not pure logical deduction.For instance, looking at a thousand balls is different from looking at only one, and if we were fairly sampling the balls finding a thousand red balls and none of any other colour would make us very confident that your "red ball theory" was true or very close to the truth. We would not think that with only one observation.And that is why we don't have to "eternally confirm" a theory. With good enough evidence we can leave it and move on, unless and until a reason to question the theory comes up.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

No. You still do not understand the difference between a law and a theory. A theory does not become a law when all evidence supports it. Laws and theories are completely different animals and do completely different things. Theodoric explained it very well in his Message 62.

No offense guys, but I am getting sick of the sound of my own voice. I am bailing, it seems we are splitting hairs here and there is no real beef between us at this stage.I think it is enough that I have said that I will try to learn more, and maybe try not to debate evolution, it seems you are not allowed to without being an avid reader of the science.Personally, I am not an intensely intellectual person, I am a lazy thinker except when things really really interest me, academic information is exceedingly hard going and it takes a lot of motivation for me to go and read about things like gene flow when I could be reading James and the Giant Peach to be amused by the centipedes cheeky attitude. Thanks for the debate, goodbye for now, too much of this gives me a headache! There is only so much wiz-power in my mega-irrefutability matrix.

Mike, what we can say is that Evolution is a fact, not something subject to even debate.Once that is acknowledged then we can go one.The Theory of Evolution is the ONLY model that exists today that explains the diversity we see.

You haven't understood what I am getting at. Just leave it.

Exactly!Here is another attempt:

Theory: a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena; theories can incorporate facts and laws and tested hypotheses. Theories do not grow up to be laws. Theories explain laws.

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Theory: A scientifically testable general principle or body of principles offered to explain observed phenomena. In scientific usage, a theory is distinct from a hypothesis (or conjecture) that is proposed to explain previously observed phenomena. For a hypothesis to rise to the level of theory, it must predict the existence of new phenomena that are subsequently observed. A theory can be overturned if new phenomena are observed that directly contradict the theory. [Source]

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Law: a generalization that describes recurring facts or events in nature; "the laws of thermodynamics."

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From Wiki: Physical laws are distinguished from scientific theories by their simplicity. Scientific theories are generally more complex than laws; they have many component parts, and are more likely to be changed as the body of available experimental data and analysis develops. This is because a physical law is a summary observation of strictly empirical matters, whereas a theory is a model that accounts for the observation, explains it, relates it to other observations, and makes testable predictions based upon it. Simply stated, while a law notes that something happens, a theory explains why and how something happens.

I did not state that a theory becomes a law, I was only highlighting one element, one difference.If I am wrong, then taking a leap off a building would one day break the law of gravity. With a law, you can't have a falsification evidence such as that, all know examples are consistent with gravity, in that sense.You are looking too deeply into a simple statement I made. It was only a musing, I am not arguing with any information you provide of the differences between law and theory.

I wouldn't disagree with that quote. I don't think my original statement would preclude an explanation such as that from being true.If anything I am stating that a law can not have conflicting evidence, such as an example of a man flying like superman, but such an example could still falsify a law, it's just that there are never any such examples.I did not give an explanation or an articulation.