No Witnesses

Main sequence stars don't produce elements that can release energy by fissioning. I suppose that there could be some fissionable material in a star that resulted from the destruction of a previous star. Fissioning of light elements is endothermic.Once a star starts producing iron, nickle, and cobalt, which cannot release energy by fissioning or fusion, the end is near.

I didn't say that transmission via photon is unacceptable. I said that it was not viewing. We view objects by allowing light from the object to enter our eye, where portions of our eye are sensitive to that light.For what it is worth, with an STM, not only do we not view light, we also don't perceive the electrons. I think Dr. A has done a pretty good job of explaining why an STM is not viewing.An STM produces perfectly acceptable evidence despite the fact that it does not allow us to view an atom. But essentially an STM produces tunneling current readings which are converted to a display. The current readings can be presumed to be related to surface conditions of the specimen, so that (for example) we can use such readings to map out doped regions of a semiconductor. But we don't actually see those regions.I understand that your examples (e.g. gamma rays) are supposed to make me feel ridiculous, but they really don't achieve that effect. Yes we do know that there are gamma ray sources out in the galaxy, and we have instruments that detect them, and we can defect their effect on equipment. But we cannot see gamma ray bursts. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I can accept that criticism.My point is merely that when a creationist says that a dog giving birth to something other than a dog has never been witnessed, the statement is true, in at least some sense, yet irrelevant except to a creationist.What the creationist is really expressing is that regardless of what evidence and logical argument you provide, the creationist, who believes that his immortal soul is at stake, is not going to budge unless you can provide the kind of proof that involves a time machine and a chasing the descendants of a single breeding set of animals around for millions of years.Of course if a scientist ever did manage such a feet, the creationist would still avoid the Faustian bargain.I'm not going to quibble with Biology Online's definition, but it really isn't the definition that is at stake in an argument with creationists. A creationist believes that there is some absolute, God enforced barrier between "kinds", and that some law, be it the second law of thermodynamics, conservation of information, or whatever, that establishes that barrier.

Let's assume that crashfrog is exactly correct about the sloppiness of the English language, and that "seeing" atoms perfectly well describes watching the visual display of a STM.Then it must be the case that "seeing" atoms is not direct evidence of atoms bonding. It doesn't even matter if there is no English word whatsoever to distinguish between varieties of seeing. No amount of arm chair lexicography, including redefining the word "direct" in Orwellian fashion, is ever going to change the character of the present evidence for atoms or atomic bounding.Regarding the Loch Ness Monster, as Uncle Jed said in The Big Chicken episode, "Ain't no such thing." So if follows that no one has ever seen one. Accordingly, a definition of seeing that requires you to say that you have seen Lochy when you have only seen the picture in your post cannot possibly be the only correct definition. A perfectly reasonable thing to do. It would be an appropriate thing to do even if we agreed that the definition we are using was only intended for this thread. The alternative is to give up on discussing some concepts in English.

Panda,I think you've overlooked the real problem with FY's question. Evolution does not suggest that any animal such as a seal was ever ("used to be") an otter or beaver. The theory of evolution does not describe an animal turning into another animal, but instead explains why a population of animals has different characteristics than that of its ancestors. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Limiting the definition of observing is not the problem. The problem is limiting the definition of evidence to only that which can be observed or directly perceived that is the problem.I would not use the word "observe" in reference to the earth's core, yet we do have some knowledge about the earth's core based on evidence that has been directly measured, perceived and observed. Absolutely. The idea is to drag certain sciences (evolution and astronomy and perhaps geology) down to their own level so they can say that evolution is simply a faith based belief.