Evolution is not science

Oh, definitely not! Now, today the fossil record is very, very good evidence for macroevolution, but I think that the evidence in all the other fields of biology make the case even without the fossil record.In fact, remember that Darwin figured out the theory of evolution and the theory of evolution was quickly accepted long before the fossil record yielded clear transitionals indicating the lineages of known taxa.My favorite evidence, in fact, is the nested hierarchical classification of the species.- Well, what I am saying is that inductive logic is used to determine how much confidence we should place in the theories. Deductive logic has a place in the process, but not in the way most people think.So, yeah, that is pretty much what I'm saying.

---

In many respects, the Bible was the world's first Wikipedia article. -- Doug Brown (quoted by Carlin Romano in The Chronicle Review)

I don't know. How can you tell?

---

In many respects, the Bible was the world's first Wikipedia article. -- Doug Brown (quoted by Carlin Romano in The Chronicle Review)

We are not discussing whether the theory of evolution should be "sanctioned", whatever you mean by the word. This thread is about what science is, how it operates, and whether the scientists using and studying the theory of evolution are acting according to accepted scientific procedures.I will also warn you that this thread isn't what you think science should be. This thread is what science actually is according to the people who work within it and the people who study its methods and procedures, and whether the theory of evolution counts as science according to these criteria.This thread actually is about a topic that may be useful to some people. Please don't muck it up with your nonsense.Edited by Chiroptera, : Changed last paragraph.

---

In many respects, the Bible was the world's first Wikipedia article. -- Doug Brown (quoted by Carlin Romano in The Chronicle Review)

Well, that doesn't contradict my point that the theory of evolution was proposed and almost universally accepted before the fossil record was known in enough detail to give really, really good evidence for it.--As a matter of fact, people were proposing evolutionary explanations for natural history before Darwin. But I think that most people thought of each species representing a different, distince lineage. Lamarck, for example, thought that new life was continually arising and then evolved on its own -- the diversity of life we see around us is due largely to species that came to exist at different times and so are at different points in their evolutionary development.One of the main parts of Darwin's theory (and the part I think is most interesting) is the idea of common descent -- that all life has evolved from only a very small number (one, two, or three) of original ancestral species (and, in fact, today we believe that all life share one common ancestor). Actually I don't think this was necessarily original to Charles, either -- I think that Erasmus, the grandfather you mentioned, himself had an idea of common descent.The other important part of the theory is mechanism that causes the diversity -- natural selection acting over a long time on small, randomly occurring variations. Natural selection wasn't a new idea, either, but the thought at the time was that it is a conservative force, acting to prevent change from the archetype of the species. Darwin's great innovation was to figure out how what was considered a conservative force is actually a creative force, the leading cause of the diversity of life around us.So, Darwin's theory of evolution was, as a whole, different from what came before: that natural selection, acting over a very long time from on small, randomly occurring, inheritable variations will lead to great morphological change; that a separation of populations of a species can, therefore, lead to two new and distinct species; and that, in fact, all known species have evolved from a very small number of ancestral species.He also made a contribution in establishing the evidence for his theories. We all know that he wrote two books, The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man; he also wrote many, many treatises and monographs in which he explained, in minute detail, the evidence of his theories.Not only did Darwin give a complete, comprehensive, and logical theory explaining a variety of phenomena in biology and natural history, but he also produce a wealth of evidence in favor of it.

---

In many respects, the Bible was the world's first Wikipedia article. -- Doug Brown (quoted by Carlin Romano in The Chronicle Review)

So, you seem to be asking whether the theory of common descent, that all known species have evolved from a single ancestral species, can be tested in a scientific manner?The answer is, "yes." Douglas Theobald has written an essay that explains the manner in which macroevolution has been and continues to be tested.

---

In many respects, the Bible was the world's first Wikipedia article. -- Doug Brown (quoted by Carlin Romano in The Chronicle Review)

If by "proved" you mean that enough scientific evidence has been collected that evolution, common descent, can be considered a demonstrated fact, then the answer here is "yes" as well.I have already provided link to the evidence that supports evolution; I will provide it again. The nice thing about Dr. Theobald's essay is that he also makes the effort to explain why the evidence he discusses is evidence in the sense that science uses the term.

---

In many respects, the Bible was the world's first Wikipedia article. -- Doug Brown (quoted by Carlin Romano in The Chronicle Review)

Well, I, for one, am glad that you're happy. But was there a point to this exchange beyond you practicing the use of sophistry?

---

In many respects, the Bible was the world's first Wikipedia article. -- Doug Brown (quoted by Carlin Romano in The Chronicle Review)

The Theory of Evolution has two main parts:(1) All known species evolved from a single ancestral species.
(2) The main cause of this evolution is natural selection acting on randomly occurring, heritable variations.Now, (1) has been substantiated by a wide variety of evidence in a wide variety of different fields. Therefore, we can be as confident as we can be of anything that it is a fact that all known species evolved from a single ancestral species.(2) The existence of variations in heredity (now known as genetic mutations) has been demonstrated; there are examples where new variations do lead to a reproductive advantage; and it has been seen that in these cases, the new, beneficial traits do end up predominating in the population.Therefore, natural selection has been shown to be a viable mechanism for evolutionary change; nothing has yet been discovered that would make natural selection an unlikely mechanism; and there are no other known mechanisms that could produce evolutionary change that we know has occurred. Therefore, we can consider it a fact (perhaps not quite as certain as (1), but certain nonetheless) that the cause of the evolutionary change that has occurred is natural selection.I don't know if that clears anything up; you can try to fit these into your definitions of theory and fact if you can. It doesn't much matter to me; I'm pretty uninterested in word games unless someone is trying to use equivocation to prove a point.So, there is indeed a theory of evolution that describes what we see in biology as the result of the evolution of modern species from older species, and that also provides an explanation of how this evolution proceeded.But it is also a fact, as far as we can determine anything to be a fact, that life did evolve from previous life, and that this evolution was due to natural selection.

---

In many respects, the Bible was the world's first Wikipedia article. -- Doug Brown (quoted by Carlin Romano in The Chronicle Review)

Actually, I rarely see straight-forward creationists argue against natural selection. The closest I've seen is Intelligent Design, which, at best, doesn't argue against natural selection as a general source of evolutionary change; it seems to mainly attempt to point to a few features that supposedly could not have evolved naturally, and so required divine intervention. Behe, I believe, thinks that God front-loaded all the complexity we see in life in the first archean population three and a half billion years ago, and then life evolved after that.Well, there is this garbled attempt to use "information theory" to disprove the ability for natural selection to cause significant evolutionary change.Other than bad attempts to use ID or information theory, most creationists try to "disprove" macroevolution directly, either by disputing the fossil record, or trying to "prove" that the universe is only a few thousand years old. At least that has been my observation.But you are correct in that disproving natural selection does not disprove the macroevolutionary history of life. I have pointed that out many, many times on this and other message boards. Even if natural selection were shown to be completely unable to produce significant evolutionary change, even if genetic mutations were shown to be unable to provide new "genetic information", it would still be a fact that the overwhelming evidence shows that all known life evolved from an ancestral species billions of years ago, however that may have happened. That tends to confuse your average creationist.

---

In many respects, the Bible was the world's first Wikipedia article. -- Doug Brown (quoted by Carlin Romano in The Chronicle Review)