TB:
- Natural Selection translates into survival of the survivors or the fitness of the fit.
Except that one can determine ability to survive and reproduce with experiments and observations, and one finds that those organisms one sees are exactly those that are good at surviving.
- Using index fossils to date the rock layers, and then using the rock layers to date the fossils they contain.
Except that there are ways to escape this circularity.
The Law of Superposition states that in the absence of disturbance, rocks will always be in older-below-younger order.
This law can be tested by checking on the orientation of features with well-defined vertical orientations, like mud cracks, footprints, tree stumps, etc. And those features are always oriented in the "right" direction.
Also, radioisotope dates have exactly the order expected from this law.
- Using homology both as explanation of evolution and proof for it.
Homology is structural similarity that is greater than what is justified by functional necessity.
- Using the geologic column as descriptive of evolution and also as evidence for it.
No circularity here. The ordering of the geological column is worked out completely independent on hypotheses of what fossil creature is descended from what other fossil creature. Thus, trilobites are found only in Paleozoic rocks and teleost fish only in Mesozoic and Cenozoic rocks, and their order is useful even though teleosts are not descended from trilobites.
- Assuming long ages for radioactive half-lives, then using them to prove long ages.
Except that there is no good reason to suppose their decay rates to be variable in exact proportion. Different radionuclides decay by different processes and with different parameter values, meaning that decay-rate variation can be detected by looking for systematic discrepancies between different radionuclides' apparent ages -- discrepancies which are zero to within the accuracy of the measurements.
- Inventing a term as if it explains something: e.g., convergent evolution used as an explanation and an evidence for a Darwinian origin of like characteristics in unlike organisms.
Except that that is a very reasonable explanation. Flightlessness has evolved numerous times in birds, for example.
- Cohen?s Law: What really matters is the name you succeed in imposing on the facts ? not the facts themselves.
???
™ Version 4.2
